Computer-Aided Daylight Simulation - a Hybrid Approach to Recording and Exploring Ideas

Accuracy and facility for iterative exploration are two of the most appealing promises of computer use in architectural design. In this paper, we discuss daylighting visualization, a very important aspect of the architectural design process, where computers do not yet fulfill these promises. We initiated a project to understand the reasons for this and to develop methods to deal with it in architectural design education. We report our work in progress, which combines creative thinking with scientific procedures to resolve the bottlenecks in computer graphics technologies making them suitable for design exploration. Our strategy seeks to fill the gaps in the science of photo realistic visualization with time tested physical modelling techniques. We present some of our student work based on this strategy