Creating sustainable design - why daylight matters
Photo: Lasse Olsson
At Light Bureau, a part of AFRY, we believe in the power of light – both electric light and natural light. Natural light is a healthy and freely available source of light. But the quality of daylight is location dependent and seasonally affected. The incorporation of daylight early in the energy and sustainability strategy - be it for a city or a building - offers incredible potential by adding substantial value in terms of comfort, health, energy, and economy.
As lighting designers, our prime objective is to design light for people and create sustainable spaces. Part of this is creating spaces that benefit from good daylight, because our wellbeing depends on this; too much daylight can be just as harmful as not enough. At the same time, we know that daylighting has the potential to provide significant cost savings. By integrating daylighting strategies in construction design we can reduce total energy costs.
Reducing Energy
Reducing reliance on electricity, minimising waste and optimising a building’s whole-life costs can be accomplished with the right daylight planning and analysis. Daylighting is a crucial part in meeting new benchmarks in sustainability and building certification programmes like BREEAM; LEEDS, DGNB and WELL Building Standard.
In today’s construction design industry, the expertise to understand the best sustainable solution for each project is essential. Light Bureau’s Daylight Team is dedicated to daylighting and sustainable design. They know how daylight analysis and daylight design are crucial in order to improve the energy use and whole-life cost of any buildings.
Daylight Services
Our daylight team deliver services ranging from Radiation & solar analysis, sunlight-hours analysis, overshadowing, orientation studies, impact of building shape, volume, fenestration and shading design to evaluation and validation of design, daylight levels, and climate-based daylight modelling.
With a focus on designing a daylighting-conscious and energy efficient building we implement practices which ensure that we meet our clients’ sustainability goals.
