Effect of Occupants’ Behaviour of Daylight Controls on Residential Visual Environment

Abstract

This paper aims to assess how occupants perceived their visual environments of diverse luminous ambiences created by daylight in apartment buildings. Daylighting can have a large influence on environmental condition to improve ambience, visual comfort, well-being and health of occupants. Thus, it is essential to understand what visual adaptive actions for the satisfaction of occupants and how they respond to given visual environments. A purpose-built living room with balcony extension was situated at Kyung Hee University in Korea (latitude 37.17N, longitude 127.01E) to monitor data throughout a 1-month period in winter. Thirty-two subjects participated and each subject spent a day in the test room. All subjects were given the opportunity to have artificial lighting and blinds control over the lighting ambience appropriate for their activity. Physical measurements such as illuminance levels of vertical and floor-planes, window luminance were monitored simultaneously which were cross-linked to the subjective assessment of blinds control. Experimental results revealed the factors affecting the occupant use of shading systems; visual comfort, seating orientation and blinds types could have an effect. The results of this study should provide useful information on daylighting as a function of photometrical and behavioural factors for future application in building design.

Post-occupancy evaluation of sunshades and balconies’ effects on luminous comfort through a questionnaire survey

“…To mitigate the obstruction of view, sunshades could still provide good views for occupants by adjusting the slat angle according to the solar angle at a particular time 18 and create visual comfort by controlling the natural inflow of light. 19 Unlike a sunshade, a balcony is an area with walls or parapets around it that projects from the building fac¸ade. It often exists for living rooms of residential flats in Hong Kong.…”

“…To mitigate the obstruction of view, sunshades could still provide good views for occupants by adjusting the slat angle according to the solar angle at a particular time 18 and create visual comfort by controlling the natural inflow of light. 19…”

Heating, ventilating and air conditioning system and environmental control for wellbeing

“…32 Thereby, proper operation of windows and lighting system has been recommended to minimize indoor thermal load without compromising comfort. 33,34 To increase the environmental and health co-benefits of housing, 35 a feedback regulation mechanism should be established between the environmental control and human behaviours that is orientated by occupants’ demands, 36 e.g. the design of a human behaviour-dependent and a variable-flow ventilation system.…”

Spaces in-between impacts on indoor environment and energy efficiency in dwellings

“…However, depending on the climatic conditions and the type of construction, the glazed spaces (GB) can compromise the indoor environmental conditions, as thermal comfort, air quality and lighting comfort. The elimination of the balcony space (EB) transformation on buildings, could create serious problems on the thermal comfort conditions, on indoor air quality and on lighting comfort, as well increase the energy consumption both in summer and in the winter [7] lighting comfort + overhang effectblock the undesirable penetration of sunlight [24] light filter effectcontrol the passage of light reducing glare discomfort [14] ---light barrier effectdecreasing the daylight [25] loss buffer space effect -cause excessive penetration of direct sunlight [26] , 0…”