Simulation for Daylighting in the Real World

Technology has been an obvious solution to the increasing complexity of the built environment. As the number and specificity of use requirements increases, designers, clients and managers tend to segment the overall problem to manageable aspects only tentatively linked to each other. As a result, aspects such as ventilation and lighting tend to rely more on mechanical means than on the affordances of the overall design. Ironically this increases the complexity and opacity of the built environment probably to a greater extent than rules, regulations and requirements. The paper presents a review of available computational methods and techniques that aim at a more coherent approach by supporting integration of (day)lighting into architectural designing. It proposes that the two main courses of further action are the improvement and updating building regulations, and the combination of quantitative knowledge of good, existing daylight designs with advanced simulation-based analyses of early design proposals. Improvements in daylighting design and the integration of daylighting in design solutions depend primarily on design guidance based on the coordinated development and thorough understanding of usable measures such as the Daylight Factor, the Daylight Performance Index and function factors. A major prerequisite to both simulation and design guidance are robust and detailed geometrical 3D models that accommodate both the input and the output of design actions and transactions