| About This Guide
Although many daylighting guides exist, they are generally focused on moderate or warm climates. Canada's cool climate and geographic diversity brings with it unique building needs, which affect daylighting feasibility and practicality. This guide provides the building design practitioner with some tools and techniques to design high-performance daylit commercial buildings in Canada.
Daylighting is an integrative process, with each design decision affecting other aspects of the building design. This guide has been developed to follow the typical building design process from the initial planning stages through to commissioning. At the end of the process, the designer will achieve a daylighting design suitable to the Canadian climate and will be able to predict the performance of the building with the aid of the Building Design Adviser (BDA) software. A new version of the BDA software was developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a supplement to this guide. The BDA can be downloaded free-of-charge from: http://gaia.lbl.gov/bda/index.html.
The guide is divided into four parts, as follows:
Part 1 The Case for Daylighting. An argument for the use of daylighting is introduced. The unique challenges presented by the Canadian climate are sum marized.
Part 2 Daylighting Concepts. Initial-stage planning parameters are outlined and specific functional objectives of the daylighting strategies are established. Basic decisions on building form and window size are followed by approaches for daylighting the building perimeter and core. Design considerations for glazing selection, shading strategies and occupant visual comfort are also discussed.
Part 3 Daylighting Integration. Proper integration of daylight with building systems is discussed with respect to electric lighting control and mechanical coordination. This integration can only be achieved through a carefully coordinated design and a calibrated daylight and electric lighting system. A computer software tool (BDA) is introduced to enable the designer to quantify the impact of their daylighting decisions in terms of lighting levels and energy savi ngs.
Part 4 Case Studies. Three successful daylit commercial buildings in northern climates are described. These buildings are recognized as having achieved high levels of building performan ce. | 