Daylighting, Architecture and Health

155 Pages·2009·18.93 MB·English

Daylighting, Architecture and Health
Building Design Strategies
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Daylighting, Architecture
and Health
Building Design Strategies
Mohamed Boubekri
AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON • NEW YORK • OXFORD
PARIS • SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO
Architectural Press is an imprint of Elsevier ArchPirteecsstural
Architectural Press is an imprint of Elsevier
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First edition 2008
Copyright © 2008, Mohamed Boubekri. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights reserved
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work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Boubekri, Mohamed
Daylighting, architecture and health : building design strategies
1. Daylighting 2. Architectural design — Health aspects 3. Light -
Physiological effect I. Title
729.2’8
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2008928472
ISBN: 978-0-7506-6724-1
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08 09 10 11 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my mother and to my late father
To Farah, Elyes and Yanis.
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 Designing with the sun: A historical perspective 9
1.1 The sun god 9
1.2 Sunlight informing cave and underground
architecture 12
1.3 Sun-informed architecture of classical
Greece 15
1.4 Sunlight in the architecture of
classical Rome 22
1.5 The Industrial Revolution and the
Modern Age 26
1.6 Energy crisis 39
2 Daylighting legislation 41
2.1 Solar zoning legislation 42
2.2 Legislation based on window size 48
2.3 Quantity of illumination legislation 49
3 Seasonal Affective Disorder, depression,
and their relationship to daylight 53
3.1 Light and the human endocrine system 53
3.2 Daylight and Seasonal Affective Disorder 56
3.3 Stress and anxiety in relation to daylight 60
4 Natural light and health 63
4.1 Sunlight and vitamin D 63
4.2 Sunlight and hypovitaminosis D 66
4.3 Bone disease and the role of sunlight and
vitamin D 68
4.4 Heart diseases and the role of sunlight
and vitamin D 69
4.5 Multiple sclerosis and the role of sunlight
and vitamin D 70
4.6 Cancer and the role of sunlight and
vitamin D 71
4.7 Sunlight and diabetes 77
4.8 Windows and stress 77
4.9 Health and spectral quality of light 78
4.10 How much vitamin D is needed? 80
viii Contents
4.11 Dietary supplements 82
4.12 Cancer and urban density 82
5 Psychology of lighting 87
5.1 Light and mood 89
5.2 The psychology of daylighting and windows 96
5.3 Psychology of light and productivity 100
5.4 Light and the school environment 105
5.5 Daylight, windows and the therapeutic
environment 108
6 Daylighting strategies 111
6.1 Sidelighting systems 112
6.2 Toplighting systems 122
7 Conclusion 127
Bibliography 129
Index 141
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the many individuals who contributed so
graciously towards the realization of this manuscript. First
I’d like to thank my family for their love, sacrifice, moral
support, patience and forgiveness. Many friends and col-
leagues have been more than generous in providing me
with illustrations included in this book. Here I need to men-
tion the eminent architect Tadao Ando, my friends and col-
leagues Jay Davidson, Scott Murphy and my former student
Angel Valtiera. A very special mention of gratitude goes to
my friend and colleague James Warfield who has provided
me with many photographs for this book. I need to men-
tion the extraordinary work of Audrey Hodgins whose pro-
fessional contribution in the editing phase of the book was
invaluable. I also can’t overlook the help of two my graduate
students, Mohamad Araji and Nora Wang who helped with
many of graphics used in this book and I am very grateful
for their help. Finally, this book would not have been pos-
sible without the financial support of the board of trustees of
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.