(Overview) (Method) (Survey) (Mt. Airy) (Michigan) (Exeter) (Syllabus)

Overview

The daylighting analysis 'assignment' was part of a design studio offered at the University of Oregon (Winter Term 1995) and subsequently at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Fall 1995-Spring 1996). This report describes lessons learned from the assignment in the context of the studio and provides 'Building Work-up Reports' of the three case study examples, which include scale modeling, field testing, and occupant surveys, along with student self-evaluations. The most important lessons come from iterative learning-from scale modeling, raising questions and hypotheses and then field testing-all the while seeking design principles that can be incorporated into the continuing studio assignments.

Two students with the model of the Mt. Airy Libray they built for the research/design studio.

The assignment was given in the initial two and one-half weeks of the design studio. Teams of two to three students constructed lighting models based upon available documentation (magazine articles and books). The models were tested under real and artificial sky conditions (including photographic documentation and foot-candle measurement), raising questions that might be followed up by field observation, measurement, and occupant surveys. The survey was adapted from a "one visit" lighting evaluation protocol developed for office buildings by Peter Boyce and Russell Leslie of Rensselaer's Lighting Research Center, offering the advantage that results might be compared to a developing multi-building data in formation.

Design inquiry and research are thus combined, engaging the students' evolving understanding of daylighting quality, and its variations in climate, seasonal and occupant comfort, along with comparison with electric lighting evident in the case study results. Corollary lessons result from the students adopting the researcher's curiosity and need for accurate methodology and replicable results.

Overall, the conclusions of this daylighting analysis and selective case study methodology are as follows: Before the field visit, the various preconceptions developed through scale model study were either too limited or incomplete and in two of the three cases, proved to be somewhat off-base. One could conclude that field testing is an essential correlate to model testing. Understanding the annual flux of lighting through model testing was also valuable, providing insights not achievable through field tests alone.

The obvious lesson is to combine scale modeling and field testing, selecting examples that can be easily visited by students several times over the course of the assignment. The examples reported here were selected from across the U.S., each requiring several days travel by car to visit. This was not impossible, only difficult, given demanding academic schedules. There is a case to be made for selecting some local examples for intensive investigation but including others from across the world. In various studios in which this daylighting analysis was assigned, students developed lighting models of the Pantheon, Aalto's Riola Church, and several of Tadao Ando's designs in Japan, to name only a few. The examples were placed in a much broader historical and contemporary context when students were able to compare many world-rank exemplars of daylighting, indicated in Greg Malone's self-evaluation (his and other students' evaluations are included with the building reports).

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All contents copyright (C) 1998. Vital Signs Project. All rights reserved.

Created: 05/13/97
Revised: 09/09/02

http://www-archfp.ced.berkeley.edu/vitalsigns/workup/rpi/watson_overview.html