How to design a daylighting project without the worry of too much or too little light
The daylighting dilemma is how do you design a large enough skylight to bring in adequate light during the winter months without bringing in too much light and heat during the summer months?
The answer is simple, design a daylighting system that is controllable. In the past controlling daylight required a separate shading device, either passive or active. Passive overhangs works well on vertical applications and clerestories can work for getting light back into the interior spaces, but they have their disadvantages, too. Active shading devices are expensive and hard to maintain and eventually quit working properly. I have even seen an exterior baffle system on a military base where the architect used electric motors to open and close the air-foil type baffles. Only problem was they didn’t plan for the snow and ice and all the motors burned out the first time they received a heavy snow.
All of this sound familiar? Ready for the best solution I have found in over thirty years of being in the daylighting business? Great, because I was skeptical at first until I actually put my hands on the product, saw the testing data and then saw an application installed on a defense contractor building. The results were amazing. The control was amazing and scalable. The ability to monitor and control the daylight was futuristic, but here it is working the way it was designed, and well-designed I might add.