CONCLUSION

“The amount of direct sunlight is so variable and also so unpredictable in countries with climates like that of the UK that most of the calculations of illuminance due to daylight are limited to estimating the amount of light received from an overcast sky – sunlight is, however, taken into account for estimation of solar heat gain, glare and damage to works of art – D.C. Pritchard (1)

The reduction of electric lighting demand through use of daylight designs is influenced by the level of daylight available and its geographical and seasonal variability. There has been no systematic attempt to gather this data previously across the UK as a whole, but I have attempted to show firstly in the 1960s school building – The St. Mary Magdalene Church of England by Norman & Dawbarn, that special care needs to be taken in the detailed design of the windows and large windows do not necessarily mean quality lighting.The lighting shows to be notorious and flat.This normally refers to the degree of shadow, and related to the ratio of the vertical and horizontal illuminance.The shadow is, to some extent, a function of the light distribution and it also shows that a greater degree of downward light will produce deeper shadows.

The simplest method of daylight cannot be applied intelligently, unless the user has some knowledge of the principles on which it is based.

Furthermore, it has been the subject of this dissertation to try and show how the Hampshire’s Department of Architecture misunderstands the highly specialised nature and environment of whom the buildings are to be used.After almost a year in use, its floor to ceiling glazings, the Fleet Infants School project architect is understandably unhappy about the “abuse” of his building, believing that it violates its formal clarity and spoils the beautiful view into the woods by the plastering of the glazed windows with children’s drawings and paintings.But children do not enjoy their environment by contemplating “view” – after all they are too young to have been initiated into the Western tradition.Visual education alone is not enough, for the Architectural profession has still, in what purports to be a truly democratic society, to come to terms with the practice of making buildings with people, rather than being content to design for them and then complaining about the misuse of their buildings.

The idea that all walls, either structural or not, are made of brick walls contradicts the thought of flexible designs in the John Cabot City Technology College.Fielden Clegg was more concerned in the thought that partitions to create flexibility in classrooms is like leaving the design work to others to do for you.With this thought, he created a single function room.One cannot help thinking of Walter Gropius, one of the pioneers of the New architecture, his concept of pre-fabrication by components rather than units of structure has been turned around by Fielden Clegg.Even though Hampshire schools of the 70s and 80s by Architect J.F. Came and Hopkins respectively are committed to lightweight system building, maybe the 1990s is moving away towards another style of Architecture.

Innovative architecture frequently brings its problems and the Hook Infants School in Hampshire which had impressive articles on daylighting and a recommended low energy building – some of the classrooms windows had to be filled with shutters and sun screens to avoid glare which is against the policy of the council where Stansfield Smith points out that windows should not be fitted if not needed.The school building seems to define in educational terms, the re-emergence of strongly defined classrooms, marked an extreme reaction to the open-plan, team-teaching trend and in use, the spaces seem slightly claustrophobic, a feeling which might be exacerbated by the heavy roof structure.

In contrast to the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s school buildings the earlier schools usually had small windows and often ecclesiastical in character with English proportions.Although the level of illumination they provided was usually low, the quality of lighting was often better than one might expect, as splayed reveals and millions were common and the buildings were small enough for windows to be placed in more than one wall.

In the Victorian and Edwardian schools, the lighting conditions shows not to have improved.This was due to theories about ventilation, which led to excessive room heights with tall windows, which induced conditions of glare that more than cancelled out any advantages of the higher levels of illumination.

Furthermore, it has been the subject of this dissertation to try and show that the lighting of a school interior should fulfil three important functions.It should: –

(a) Ensure the safety of the people in the interior

(b) Facilitate the performance of visual tasks; and

(c) Aid the creation of an appropriate visual environment.

The idea of options in the most fundamental decisions to be made when designing the lighting of the school is the relationship between daylighting and electric light.This can take three forms:-

(a) Rely on daylight during the daytime and use electric lighting only for night-time conditions

(b) Use daylight as available but supplement it as required by electric lighting

(c) Rely only on electric lighting

The CIBC Code 1984 explains that the decision as to which of these relationships to adopt will be influenced by the Energy Consumption and cost involved, the building forms and the need for a controlled environment.

The failure of the 1984 code in visualising the possibility of daylight storage, to use at night as a possible substitute to electric lighting leaves room for improvement.But as it states: –

That the recommendations given in the code are representative of good practice. They are the result of considering scientific knowledge, practical experience, technical feasibility and economic reality.The recommendations have no statutory standing – CIBS CODE 1984 (2).

It is all these:the environment, the nursery of fertile ideas, which has been able to bring together disparate influences from the Arts and Crafts movement to hi-tech and submit them to the forcing ground of the design, so that they re-emerge in a series of eloquent and original architectural themes.

The desire to create a stimulating light, sunny, spacious and airy interior is a longstanding goal of school design. Victorian schools were notable for tall windows and high ceilings.In the 1980s, several schools in Hampshire attempted to use solar gains for heating with varying degrees of success.Exploiting direct solar gain requires not only south-facing glazing but also that room surfaces, especially floors which receive direct insulation, are of sufficiently high thermal admittance to absorb the solar gains and avoid overheating.

These requirements are not always compatible with soft finishes needed for acoustic reasons.The excessive areas of glazing, even when they are south-facing, normally leads to local cold radiant effects and glare. Glazed facades or atria can provide valuable circulation space if unheated, but heating them to full comfort temperatures as teaching space can turn them into an energy penalty.Sun-spaces like glazed facades, reduce the availability of natural ventilation and daylight to the rooms to which they are attached.

In the 1990s, higher levels of insulation and double glazing have become more general and fabric heat loss have reduced, so ventilation losses have become relatively more significant. Concern about indoor air quality has focused attention on adequate ventilation rates to dilute internal pollutants. There is also greater awareness of the cost to the school and the effect on the global atmosphere (of using electricity). The provision of well-distributed daylight in schools is then vital, not just for the students but also on global environmental grounds.

Daylight, by replacing electric light use, reduces carbon dioxide emissions and in turn, the greenhouse effect. Energy savings achieved by better daylight design are important and must therefore regard better daylighting design of buildings as playing an ecological role, in addition to its other contributions, such as energy saving, improved work performance and increased human well-being.Improved daylighting design can also reduce air conditioning cooling loads and so reduce the air conditioning plant sizes and hence the volume of CFC’s associated with them, in addition to making substantial savings in lighting and cooling energy consumption.

Many of the architects in Europe have always resisted the contemporary tendency to ignore the visual richness offered by the creative use of daylight in their buildings,but even the most perceptive still have to assimilate new opportunities, for example new glazing materials like reflective glass, prismatic glass systems and so on.They have to resolve successfully any inherent difficulties and avoid the pitfalls, like excessive heat pain in Summer.

There are always risks in intuitive design, especially in situations involving innovation: a combination of art and science is needed to achieve a balanced solution.