Green buildings are more than a fashion statement. Many architects, builders and clients agree that smart, sustainable buildings are becoming a necessity. Why? Because according to some estimates, buildings account for almost one-half of the world’s material and energy consumption, one-sixth of fresh water use, and a quarter of all wood harvested. As costs for sustainable materials and products drop, building green is really the most cost-effective kind of design and construction. More and more, you can’t afford not to build green.

Paul Hutton

Denver architect, Paul Hutton, AIA, LEED AP, is a recognized expert in daylighting and sustainable design. His firm, Hutton Architecture Studio, focuses on building designs that harvest daylight to improve occupant performance and reduce energy costs.

We first encountered Paul’s work when he was brought in to solve a particularly challenging sun control problem for the Wyoming Depart of Transportation’s new Port of Entry building in Torrington. His expertise helped reduce energy costs and improve the indoor environment, while giving agents the unobstructed views they need to do their jobs.

As a board member for AIA’s National Committee on Architecture for Education (CAE), Paul is particularly committed to exploring what benefits daylighting and green design impart in learning environments. He examines that and other pedagogical issues at the Hutton Architecture Studio Blog.

We caught up with Paul again this week to glean deeper insight into daylighting, outdoor views, sun control technologies, building codes and related issues.

Maximizing daylight in buildings has obvious economic and ecofriendly benefits like reduced lighting costs and energy consumption. But what is the latest and greatest research that says natural light and outdoor views have measurable benefits for the people indoors?

Hutton: A lot of our work is in the educational sector.  The ground breaking studies conducted by the Heschong Mahone Group starting in 1999 really shook that realm because of the reported impact of daylighting on test scores.  Those studies have been used, and occasionally misused, to justify a great variety of daylighting in schools.  Many architects now take for granted the connection between daylighting and academic performance, but we desperately need new studies to test the potential benefits of all the daylighting that has been implemented in the last decade, and to separate the truly  beneficial design concepts from those that only pose as effective daylighting.
Is there a biological basis for saying natural light trumps artificial? 

Hutton: I get asked that question a lot, and I attempt to answer it in my graduate class on daylighting at the University of Colorado College of Architecture.  The research here is a bit vague, but I believe daylighting is beneficial for humans in comparison to electric lighting for these reasons: 

Spectrum – despite lighting manufacturers’ claims of “full spectrum” lighting, no electric light source is a true replacement for daylighting.  I believe that as architects we have a responsibility to provide the best spectrum light we can for the occupants of our buildings, and I have no doubt daylight is by far the best (as well as the most affordable) source.

Variability – Within any daylighted space there will be continuous and natural variations in light level.  While drastic fluctuations can be irritating, and electric lighting should be used to even out some of this, I believe the variations are a healthy and gentle stimulant for our nervous systems.  I think it is analogous to music.  Any note, no matter how pleasing, will quickly become monotonous and then maddening if it is heard without interruption.  So it is with light – we need variation to stay engaged.

You worked with electrochromic dynamic glass in the Port of Torrington project. What are some other new technologies, techniques or strategies for optimizing daylight in buildings?

Hutton: Allow me to answer this question by explaining something about the Torrington Port of Entry project.  A key to success there was not just the use of SageGlass windows, but combining that with high quality lighting from above, or top lighting.  This top lighting was provided by means of several tubular daylighting devices, or TDDs.  This seemingly simple device has revolutionized our ability to daylight buildings by effectively combining light from the side with light from above.  TDD’s are so much more efficient and cost effective than skylights that it is easy to overlook the profound impact they have had.

What are some of the biggest mistakes you see architects or building owners make when it comes to the daylighting strategies in their design? 

 Hutton: Architects in general have no idea where the sun is in the sky, and they have little understanding of how the sun’s position in the sky affects the design of their facades.  This may sound like hyperbole, but I give my graduate architecture students a quiz every year to test it.  Few architects can take a very simple window in a south wall with an overhang, and accurately project the shadow cast across that window from a specific combination of solar altitude and azimuth.  This lack of understanding leads to all manner of inappropriate shading devices, from overhangs to sunshades to lightshelves.  Much of what appears to be sun protection on building exteriors is really just architectural ornament.

Does it matter what kind of view to the outdoors I have? For example, are woods better than parking lots? Where does a plain blue sky fit on the continuum?

Hutton: Research from more than three decades ago showed a positive link between the quality of view and patient recovery rates in hospital settings.  Essentially, the more natural elements, the greater the benefit.  So, grass, trees, shrubs, woods, ponds, and mountains are all highly desirable, whereas man-made elements such as walls are less so.  As a result, we take great care when locating windows to maximize views that include natural elements a much as possible.  Interestingly, the research also showed that views of the sky alone are less beneficial that views of the ground.  The biologist E. O. Wilson coined the term Biophilia to summarize this innate human love of the natural world.  As architects, we should honor that fundamental human need.

Some new building code standards are moving towards reducing the window-to-wall ratio in order to create a more thermally efficient building envelope. What do you think about that idea?

Actually, one of my primary concerns with the emergence of daylighting as a key sustainable strategy is the tendency of architects to overglaze in the pursuit of daylighting.  A cursory look at the design magazines will show there are more new all glass buildings than ever before.  Improvements in glass technology and performance have made it possible for architects to get away with this, but that doesn’t make it a responsible thing to do.  We have not had any problem achieving our daylighting goals with the reduced window to wall ratios.  In fact, all glass walls, or nearly all glass walls, are almost never a wise daylighting strategy, and they will lead to greater energy consumption, not less.

As the correlation between environmentally friendly design choices and health benefits becomes more evident, the global health care sector is starting to make greater inroads into the Green Building game.

The idea of ‘healing spaces’ is tearing through both the health care and building and design sectors, changing the way we design, build and view our health care facilities.  Those facilities are moving from institutional bodies that are primarily function-based to becoming more creatively-designed spaces that aid in the healing process of patients.

Australia’s DesignBuildSource has the story.

From the Earthtechling blog:
In Georgia, aesthetics and ethics combine in the newly expanded and remodeled building that houses the Georgia Museum of Art (GMA) at the University of Georgia, Athens (UGA), which recently took LEED Gold certification. The remodel was designed with LEED certification in mind, and makes use of a number of green building systems.

This includes the use of natural daylighting in corridors and galleries, despite the fact that direct daylight can be harmful to works of art — the museum got around this with deeply recessed and shaded skylights that render all natural light in the building indirect.

Read the full article here.

Daylit Living Room (Photo credit: Jeremy Levine Design)

If your home will be on the market this spring, you’re probably looking for every possible edge that will make it stand out to potential buyers. But even if you’re staying put, you still want to make your home as attractive and valuable as your budget will allow.

“Daylighting” improvements that boost your home’s brightness and energy efficiency offer substantial return on investment for both home sellers and those who will be staying in their homes for the foreseeable future.

Continue reading the article here:

Numerous studies show that people inside buildings flourish in measurable ways when provided abundant daylight and a view to the outdoors. The following infographic tells the tale.

Churches and other sanctuary spaces pose another beneficial dimension to daylighting strategies, particularly in terms of creating a spiritually conducive environment. Where and how one positions and controls windows, skylights and other sources of natural light in churches has enormous sway over the effectiveness of creating such environments.

John E. Freshnock of WSKF Architects and author of the Church Architect blog talks about his experience with daylighting places of worship:

When I design a sanctuary space the effort is grounded in the principles of day-lighting.  Sustainability comes into play but the work of designing with light is about much more.  Like no other space a church sanctuary needs light but not just any light. The goal is to create a singular atmosphere that distances one from daily life’s familiar pace and rhythm to open the mind to a transcendent experience.  The distancing is the part that is the most challenging especially when the sanctuary is also a gym or a fellowship hall, or has a need for AV screens.  How do you bring a worshiper out of their normal mind and into a transcendent mind ready to experience God’s revelation?  

We’ve seen the impact first hand in places like the Immanuel Bible Church, which installed SageGlass in the clerestory windows of its newly expanded church. Optimizing daylight in buildings benefits not just the biology of people, but their consciousness as well.

We used to measure a nation’s stature by military muscle. Then we shifted the ruler to economics and the nation’s GDP. Now some are suggesting a new measure based on the well-being of a country’s citizens.

But how do you measure it? How do factors such as life expectancy, sustainability and educational attainment fit into the calculations?

Justin Fox at the Harvard Business Review examines the issue this month. He cites how rankings such as the Human Development Index (HDI), Legatum Prosperty Index and others were created to measure well-being from economic perspective. But they are “vulgar” and can be easily manipulated by countries to match their priorities. One of the interesting alternatives to  GDP, HDI and other rankings Fox cites was based on software developed by global health expert, Dr. Hans Rosling, which he sold to Google.

In the late 1990s, after decades of practicing medicine in the developing world, Hans Rosling began teaching a course in global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. As he struggled to convey the complex story of the progress he had witnessed, he enlisted his son and daughter-in-law—both artists—to help. The result was software, since acquired by Google, that animates the movement of different indicators over time. Complete with Rosling’s unhinged-sports-announcer narration, it makes an improbably compelling alternative to GDP rankings. How compelling? A talk Rosling gave at the 2006 TED conference has been viewed more than 3.8 million times.

The software crunches enormous quantities of public data and turns them into stunning data visualizations to reveal the past, present and future development of the world. For exampke, check out Rosling’s The Joy of Stats video, which tells the story of 200 countries over 200 years, plotting life expectancy against income.

 

We at SAGE also believe in the importance in quantifying the well-being of people…in our case, in terms of the impact of architecture and daylighting on people who live, work and develop inside buildings. Numerous academic studies have shown how daylight and a connection to the outdoors improves everything from worker productivity and happiness to smarter students and faster medical recoveries.

Click here for the HBR article

Image via Wikipedia

Earlier this week we highlighted the new Department of Energy’s Advanced Energy Design Guides (AEDGs) for designing more energy-efficient retail stores. We talked about how daylighting can contribute to those sustainability efforts.

But optimizing daylighting in stores can also yield another important benefit: increased sales.

Energy Management magazine makes the case for daylighting retail operations, citing a variety of studies and real-world success stories of how retailers have cut energy costs and boosted sales:

The value of energy savings from daylighting is far overshadowed by the value of the predicted increase in sales due to daylighting. By the most conservative estimate, the profit from increased sales associated with daylight is worth at least 19 times more than the energy savings.

When you consider that the average retailer spends $300,000 on artificial lighting, it’s not hard to see the economic benefit of daylighting stores from an energy savings perspective. More interesting is the impact daylight has on the consumer experience. The Meschong Mahone Group studied shopping patterns at 79 stores for retail chain and found that the stores naturally illuminated with skylights experienced 40% higher sales than those without. In addition to improved ambiance, some of the reasons for daylighting benefits include better visibility for customers to find and compare products. more attractive products, more relaxed customers, better customer loyalty, and higher employee morale.

Then let there be light.

Click here for the article.

The Green Energy TV blog has produced an excellent laymen’s video on daylighting basics for buildings, including how it works, how it saves energy, and why it benefits the people inside.

It explains strategies and technologies — including electrochromic ”dynamic glass” — for solving the glare, heat gain and other sun control problems when trying optimize daylight in architectural designs.