SUMMARY

 

Section 1.A brief history of daylight in schools.Explaining its political/critical strategies and the natural tendency for people to turn towards the source of light, or as it is called “phototropism” and its importance in the design of lighting in schools, the determinations between quantity and quality daylighting.

 

Section 2.The study of the 1960s St. Mary Magdalene Church of England Primary School.The implications of daylighting on the school that is highly glazed.The effects of lighting on the internal structures and floor, wall finishes.Discussing how the work of Norman & Dawbarn fails to address other aspects of energy conservation, security and maintenance in exchange for daylighting.

 

Section 3.An introduction to the 1970s work of J.F. Came, Hook Infants and Junior School, Hook, Hampshire discussing his work and that of Hampshire District Council and its contribution to daylighting in schools, highlighting the efforts of Colin Stansfield smith on its Architecture.

 

Section 4.A study of the 1980s work of Hopkins and Partners, Fleet Infants School, Velmead Road, Fleet, Hampshire.Discussing the problems encountered in the design process and the local residents’ view of the building.

Introduction to the Queen’s Enclosure School at Cowplain and its similarity with the Fleet Infants School.

 

Section 5.The study of the 1990s work of Fielden Clegg Design Partners;John Cabot City Technology College, Bristol.The idea of the school building being used as a visual aid to students “legibility”.Discussing the concept of Fielden Clegg abandoning the flexibility of space and encouraging the use of solid walls as partitions.The combination of hi-tech and natural low energy buildings and adopting the theme that in response to windows, in daylighting: “less is more”.

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Good daylighting design is inseparable from good architectural design and should be considered from the earliest stages of the design process.This is a more effective approach than applying daylighting techniques to a completed design.As good lighting is essential in all building types for a successful school building, a careful and informative approach is particularly important for they contain a varied range of activities embracing a complex array of different visual tasks, many of which may have to be carried out in the same room.It will also provide good conditions for children during their school life;not only so that they will not be handicapped in their learning but also that they may develop the habit of using their eyes intelligently and may carry into later life an awareness of the value of good lighting conditions.The most successful school building designs have been those in which planning to meet the educational requirements of the school is integrated with a skilful solution to the problem of providing for the physical needs of the occupants.This kind of solution is only possible with a detailed knowledge of the visual implications of the various activities in the school.

 

Prior to the Education Act of 1870 in Britain, schools provided for the children of the wealthy had been well funded.The provision of the Act to make education compulsory for all suddenly created a huge demand for school buildings and for them to accommodate much larger numbers of children within constrained budgets.This created the need to heat, light and ventilate large classrooms, at very low running cost.The provision of light and air in schools became a driving force in the evolution of school design, right up to the present day.E R Robson, Architect to the London School Board stated in 1874:Lighting from the side, especially the left side, is of such great importance as properly to have a material influence over our plans.”He goes on to give the rule of thumb - a classroom is only well-lit when it has 30 square inches of glass to every square foot of floor space.” (About 20% glass to floor area). E R Robson

 

He was also aware of the issue of visual comfort and the desirability of sunlight in classrooms, he writes:- It is well known that the rays of the sun have a beneficial influence on the air in the room tending to promote ventilation, and are to a young child very much what they are to a flower. Acting on this known fact, the builders of some schools have sought to secure as much sun as possible and produced results of light and glare painful in hot summer weather, either to teachers or pupils, or both.E R Robson (2).

 

The schools in Britain decided to move forward towards deep plans.Light for the Central Hall was “borrowed” light over the top of the tall classrooms.

 

This planning which is compact, suited the crowded urban site and the educational objective of centralised control through head teacher, teachers and assistants.Air quality was very poor in spite of using heating coils, roof-mounted cupolas and fans.A new plan was evolving by the early 20^th Century; the compact form was no longer a necessity due to the suburban sites where most new school building was taking place.The new plan was essentially a row of classrooms connected to the hall and specialist rooms by open corridors.This gave unlimited light and cross-ventilation and satisfied a renewed obsession with light and air.

 

These schools did not suffer from overheating in spite of their large area of glazing, mainly by the fact that the fabric was massive, and the generous room height permitted useful ventilation, e.g. Earswick School, 1911 (Fig. 1)

 

The schools of the post-War boom were infamous for two major problems:thermal discomfort and glare.The Department of Education did not make matters better when they announced that every classroom should have a minimum daylight factor. (DF) of 2%.This led to nearly three decades of lightweight, over-glazed and poorly insulated buildings.The 2% DF requirement when applied to small or medium sized classrooms would demand virtually 100% glazing above the work-place, up to the suspended ceiling, the variation of Daylight Factor was excessive and the large area of sky visible from deep in the classroom led to superior glare problems. Even though the 2% DF was met, artificial lighting was often used in order to reduce the brightness range.

 

We are aware of lighting quality as to quantity in particular:the significance of uniformity ratio glare.

 

In the 1970s, some local authorities abandoned this form of school design and began to adopt heavyweight systems with small windows and a deep plan, necessitating artificial lighting and mechanical ventilation, e.g. Elmstead Market, Essex, England, where the integrated Environmental Design was put into practice. This approach was not welcomed by all authorities.For example, Hampshire County Council reflected the system building approach. The Architects’ work led to much richer envelope design giving greater opportunity for natural daylight and ventilation.

 

As architectural tastes moved firmly away from modernism, the adoption of a more traditional vocabulary, with a more varied envelope design, provided more opportunity for well-distributed daylighting.Despite these, in most cases daylighting did not receive special efforts:it was treated as a bonus, part of the ambience of the building, but not part of the functional brief.

 

The intentions of this dissertation are to study daylighting in schools and answer the questions of why should we use natural instead of artificial light?Why do we rely on artificial lights when natural light is so abundant?And to show how closely educational and architectural aspects of school design are interwoven in reference to daylighting and to see if there had been some improvements concerning daylighting in schools over the years.

 

As a vehicle for this investigation, I will study daylighting in four schools in Britain; the choice of these four schools was motivated by a clear set of intentions which link social and institutional practice to daylighting.

 

Each school - St. Mary Magdalene Primary School, Islington, 1960s; Hook Infants and Junior School, 1970s; Fleet Infant School, Velmead Road, Fleet, Hampshire, 1980s; and John Cabot City Technology College, Bristol in the 1990s, were nominated for awards as low energy school buildings in these years respectively.Rather than taking daylight measurements, these schools would be studied critically in view of the architectural characteristics relating to daylighting.

 

Until recently, daylighting has been unchallenged as the most suitable and economic technique for providing working illumination in school buildings.It would be true to say that no simple influence other than education itself has been so powerful in shaping schools as the need to secure good daylight. Almost every layout, plan form, section, window and daylight and toplight disposition has been influenced by this. In recent years, developers have reduced the cost of artificial lighting to the point when it has been necessary to re-examine daylighting methods to see whether this use has been solely because they are cheap, or whether daylight has in fact some special properties which makes it desirable on other grounds as well.

For over 80% of the floor area in most buildings, daylight factors fall in the range of 0 to 5%.Close to the windows, however, they can reach 10-15%.The values of the daylight factors, therefore, provide a guide to the brightness achieved in a room (or part of a room) from daylight.

J.R. Goulding (1)

 

Approach to daylight design has, like most other elements in design, been by precedent and experience. Until late into the 19^th Century, daylighting design would not have been identified by the Architect as an important element in building design.Windows were closely related to architectural style rather than access to daylighting.Technical limitations and construction practice also influenced that design. Even though they depended greatly upon precedent and example, that did not stop some 19^th Century architects being very systematic and consciously experimental. A good example is Sir John Sloane, practising at the beginning of the 19^th Century; he combined his passion of painting with an experimental approach to daylighting design at his home in Lincoln’s Inn.Looking down on the roof of the main museum, one is struck by the resemblance to an experimental area of a research lab.(Fig. 2)

 

His imaginative approach was incorporated in his famous Breakfast Room at Lincoln’s Inn where mirrors and inter-reflected light were used to achieve a complex lighting effect. (Fig. 3)

 

Since schools and office buildings and characterised according to the general layout of their plans and these buildings are mainly for daytime use, it seems wasteful to consume a large amount of energy to provide artificial lighting.School buildings and office buildings have their own characteristics of size and shape, which up to a certain point are typifiable.

 

From the initiation of an architectural project, the distribution of volumes between perimeter and interior zones conditions the potential for daylighting.This zone distribution depends in great part on the relationship between the enclosure area and constructed volume.In order to express this relation, a coefficient of compactness is used.This would mean that a greater proportion of the total volume may be in contact with the exterior. The different connection between the exterior, by facades or roofing, influences the type of lighting conditions in the interior zones.As a general rule, school buildings are not slender, since they are usually low whereas their degree of compactness has a greater range of variation.

DAYLIGHT

People’s attitudes to lighting design are paradoxical.Those who have never considered the subject in any depth accept it as part of life and living, requiring little more thought than the strategic placing of some 60-watt “bulbs” and the operation of a switch. And, to a point, they are right. After all, there are very few situations where there is insufficient light by which to see.The danger occurs when a person with this attitude has to make responsible lighting decisions on behalf of other people.

D.C. Pritchard - Language of Light (1)

 

In the 1940s, the importance of facilitating sunlight penetration into classrooms was restated and a minimum of 2% daylight sky was introduced in 1945 with a memorandum recommending 5% where possible.Sky factor was used then, rather than the daylight factor we use today.Hence, many schools were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s with highly glazed facades.

 

Unfortunately, many of these school buildings were thermally inefficient lightweight structures, which overheated uncontrollably during summer and suffered high rates of heat loss in Winter.Early system schools were particularly prone to these adverse effects.

 

The first recorded low energy school in the United Kingdom - St. Mary’s in Wallasey - was built in 1961. This is the only example of a school with no heating system.All heat was provided by Solar pains.(Fig. 4)

 

The crisis of the oil prices in the 1970s brought about the development of more energy efficient schools and since the early 1980s, a number of schools with low energy features have been built. In the last 25 years, because of improved energy efficiency and other scientific reasons like better like spectra, fluorescent lighting has been almost universally adopted in schools.

 

The discipline of daylight planning was often neglected as schools were planned to rely on electric light. Energy efficient measures concentrated on reducing heat losses by building with compact plan forums, small window areas and increased fabric insulation.In contrast, a good passive solar design would make much more effective use of ambient daylight thus reducing electricity consumption. A successful solar design involves the optimal balance of maximising daylight and utilising solar energy whilst excluding glare and avoiding overheating.

 

During the 19th Century and up until the turn of the century, schools were designed to take advantage of north light and so glare from the south or west facing windows was avoided.

 

In the 1910s to 1930s, there was an awareness of the importance of fresh air and sunlight.This led to the open-air school design movement, schools were oriented in a southerly direction and could employ folding and sliding windows so that teaching areas were exposed to fresh air and direct sunlight for at least some hours of the day.The daylight factor at a point in a room is defined as:The total indoor illumination on a reference plane at that point, expressed as a percentage of that simultaneously obtained out of doors, under a completely unobstructed hemisphere of sky having a luminance distribution in accordance with the definition of the international commission on lighting (C.I.E.) for a standard overcast sky, the effects of direct sunlight being excluded (2)

 

Direct sunlight in some areas such as entrance halls can contribute to the quality of the space. But on the other hand, the entry of beams of direct sunlight can be a source of discomfort and glare. (Fig. 5)

 

If sunlight is diffused or directed onto the ceiling or walls, then it can be a worthwhile contribution to lighting requirements.Rooflights are commonly used in buildings, to make the most of natural daylighting, for example the museum in Grenoble which was designed by Group 6 Architects, the aim was to design the roof apertures so that optimal natural light fell on the paintings (Fig. 6) The daylight factors in the range 0.7% to 1.5% so that degradation was reduced but there was insufficient illumination for display, illuminance of a surface will depend both on its reflection factor and upon the illumination falling on it. The surface’s apparent brightness to the observer will also be affected by the level of the eye.

 

In most schools, it is possible without undue expense to light all teaching space to a good standard by natural means, with the artificial lighting installation only being used to supplement daylight occasionally, on the dullest days.Buildings with normal ceiling heights, good daylighting can be provided in rooms lit from the side only, which are not deeper than 6m to 7.5m, or in rooms lit from more than one side not deeper than 9m to 10.5m. In rooms deeper than stated or which are of low ceiling it is often possible to provide additional lighting from a roof light.Hopkinson states: -

 

Good daylight is something most people like to have; it induces a feeling of well being and freshness, which, at the present time, even the best artificial light cannot.This point must constantly be borne in mind in what now follows.It would be tedious to reiterate it, but whenever we treat lighting purely in physical, quantitative terms, as we are now doing, we must constantly sit back and think of the implications of where our calculations are leading us. If they lead us to a design which common sense and experience tell us will be disliked, there is no choice but to examine the design on those grounds and to reject it if it is clearly at fault - R.G. Hopkinson (3).

 

In an ideal world, it is not practical to light a building only by the aid of daylighting, but to produce an integrated lighting scheme in which natural and artificial lighting is combined so that predominantly artificial lighting at a distance from the window does not appear to the users of the room to be deficient in quantity or quality when compared with natural lighting near to the windows.

 

In determining the quantity and quality of daylight in schools, it is advised to take note:the conditions of the existing site, the educational needs of the room and the economic considerations.These influences on the design may not always be compatible.

 

Creating a building that has a high standard of lighting during the day can be met in two ways: -

 

(i)Full daylighting, which requires a building with a complicated coastline and section;

 

(ii)The use in the deep rooms of which may still be the most satisfactory lighting solution, considering the building as a whole.

 

In the same way, the lighting requirements of the individual rooms will interact with the overriding needs of the whole school and as Colin Stansfield states:

 

Many old people’s homes, for example, seem to be designed more for the staff than the residents; de-personalised and easy to clean, and frequently built to a standardised plan despite using traditional construction which could have offered freedom from the routine.Maintenance and design were seen as separate issues and it was not uncommon to find a fine Victorian school re-rooted with coarse concrete tiles, or extended with a system-built block utterly insensitive to the materials and characters of the existing building - Colin Stansfield Smith (4)

 

The activities of the end user should be put first and an understanding of their visual needs:when considering the lighting of a school building. The majority of classrooms in schools were designed for groups of thirty to forty children in rooms of 500 sq ft to 650 sq ft, arranged mainly for formal teaching with the children seated at their desks and facing in one direction.The use of the rooms is, therefore, static and the lighting problem a relatively simple one.

 

An interior, which is lit by daylight, has some advantages over that which is artificially lit which includes that:

 

I.Light from a window falls horizontally across the room, making a useful contribution to modelling and softening the shadows cast by overhead lighting.

 

IIA view through a window provides a distant visual release and avoids an oppressive sense of enclosure, and finally that the sun and sky, the clouds and wind, and the play of light and shade outside are never static and a window is a link with the interest of the constantly changing world out of the doors.

 

HEALTH

 

Recent research studies developed in the USA have demonstrated that there is no generally accepted evidence that low levels of illumination will damage the eye, any more than indistinct sounds damage the ears or foul smell damage the nose.The result states that the need for wearing glasses arises only from organic causes, not from inadequate illumination levels.Common complaints by visually poor conditions are eyestrain, muscular aches and pain: more general reactions are fatigue and headaches.

 

Eyestrain normally occurs when trying to overcome a difficult viewing condition and the strain is only temporary and does not damage the eye.Eye damage can only be caused by over-exposure to light.

 

As well as the ability to stimulate vision, daylight acts on the body in many other ways.Years ago the photo-biological techniques in medicine came into question because of the controversy surrounding the safety of some lamps. The most prevalent notion is that light is for seeing and has no effects on people, other than ultraviolet light, which is harmful.The most controversial issues in lighting are the statistical relationships between fluorescent lighting and malignant melanoma, a particularly dangerous form of Skin Cancer.

 

Daylight also regulates metabolic processes in the human body, and keeps the body’s resistance to unfavourable agents. Psychologists also advise that the light indoors has a considerable influence on the state of mind and affect the psychological, psycho-emotional health of human beings. Researchers have now come up with suggestions that there is a layer of the retina which has no function in vision, but serves as a receptor for light-waves, which is then carried along non-visual connected fibres of the optical nerve to the master endocrine glands in the brain that controls the entire metabolic system.

 

Daylight is also believed to be involved in setting of the “biological clock” and that lack of light for long periods, particularly such as during the winter seasons can also manifest itself as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) where a general depressive mood may set in at the onset of Winter.

 

Daylighting cannot be considered in isolation.The LT method (Lighting and Thermal method) is a manual procedure to estimate energy use in non-domestic buildings.It estimates annual primary energy use for lighting, heating, ventilation and cooling: these conditions to which daylighting is associated.It is useful to know the implications for energy conservation of the designer’s early decisions. The energy consumption will also depend upon other parameters such as artificial lighting levels and plant efficiencies. The plan from, the facade designs and the arrangement of internal areas all play a crucial part. The integrated energy use analysis through the LT method, which is an energy tool, was mainly developed to address the problem concentrating on the following points:

 

·Local Climatic Conditions

·Orientation of Facade

·Area and Type of Glazing

·Obstruction due to Adjacent Buildings

·The inclusion of an Atrium

·Occupancy and Vacation Pattern

·Lighting Levels

·Internal Gains

 

The energy used is usually read off graphics, which are derived by a mathematical model.The model evolutes the heat conduction through the external envelope and ventilation heat loss or gain.The model then evaluates the solar gains (Fig. 7)

 

The heat gains from solar, casual pains from occupants and equivalent are then subtracted from the gross heating load to establish the net heating load.

 

The original version of the LT method was prepared for the EC Architectural ideas - working in the City.

 

CHAPTER 2

ST. MARY MAGDALENE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

PRIMARY SCHOOL, ISLINGTON

ARCHITECT:NORMAN & DAWBARN- 1960

 

This particular primary school was designed having the effect of daylighting in mind.This primary school was built in 1960 for 480 children to replace the old school destroyed during the War.The site (Fig. 8) is divided into two blocks, the first phase, built for 320 children and a further 160 places provided in the second phase.The first block is rectangular in shape with the entrance from the main road only.It is approximately level, uniformly 0.5 m above the street level.The site included old foundations and a bomb crater, which occurred in the position of the new boiler house.The site necessitated two-storey planning and it decided to divide the street horizontally, with infants on the ground floor, juniors on the first; each with their own assembly hall. The staff wing is common to both, and all dining is in the ground floor assembly hall.The floor level of this ground floor hall was dropped 0.9m below general level, to provide the additional headroom, the entrance hall thus forms a 0.9 m stage to the hall due to the drop and is separated from the hall by curtains.

 

The part of the building, which I would concentrate on mainly on the subject of daylighting, would be the classrooms.(Fig. 9 & Fig. 10).In the classroom wings, a light steel frame of box columns and channel beams supports pre-cast, pre-stressed concrete floors and roots spanning at right angles to the windows.Tie beams at column centres are contained within the thickness of the floors, so that no beams project below the ceiling level.

 

The floors in the classrooms are thermoplastic tiles and wood block in assembly halls and heather-brown quarries in the kitchen and toilets.

 

The continuous glazing on both sides of the building on both levels offer fine views in and out of the classrooms. (Fig. 11).Solar gains are controlled to some amount on the south side of the classrooms by the inwards built openings, but the ratio of the size of the glazed area is greater than that to the wall which would be encouraging to daylighting, but a problem to overheating in the Summer.This school lacks the roof light system, which was not common in school buildings in the 1960s, but instead made use of the high level windows.Glare can be caused during the daytime by the view of excessively bright sky through the window, particularly if it is very close to places at which the school children have to look.It will be seen that very large windows are not in fact necessary to give good standards of lighting and there are ways in which the problems can be solved so that daylighting in schools can be enjoyed without reservation. The main cause of glare is stated as:

 

Whenever one part of an interior is much brighter than the general brightness in the interior.The most common sources of excessive brightness are luminaries and windows, seen directly or by reflection.Glare can have two effects.It can impair vision, in which case it is called disability glare (Fig. 12) and it can cause discomfort, in which case it is called discomfort glare (Fig. 13).Disability glare and discomfort glare can occur simultaneously or separately (1)

 

This clearly shows that both excess and less brightness are equally unsuitable in school buildings or in any building at all.

 

The assembly hall of the school (Fig. 14) has beams spanning across its width with pre-cast beams spanning parallel to the decking covered with felt roofing sheet.On the first floor, lightweight concrete blocks faced with a waterproof membrane and vertical cedar boarding is used for the walling whilst on the ground floor the panel walls are of brick with an inner skin of concrete blocks.The external brick facings are left alone whilst the steel frame is covered, externally with pressed aluminium casings. The exposed timber in the building is Gold Coast Mahogany, naturally polished.The plastered walls are treated with emulsion paint with the exception of the staircases.All these have great effects on the amount of internal reflected lights and could be greatly affected by the colours on main interior surfaces, particularly the ceiling.Where the furniture or workspace layout is fixed and is likely to remain so, the lighting can be related.

 

A very good example would be a library, which uses localised lighting between the book stacks with, perhaps, local lighting on the reading tables, and general lighting in the main circulation area. It has an advantage of improved appearance and more efficient lighting.the disadvantage is the lack of flexibility in the use of the room. It encourages one use only.

 

Except in special circumstances like sky darkened by a passing thunderstorm, this tolerable minimum condition will normally occur near the beginning and end of each day; in midday, the illumination level will be much higher.However, the effect of this will be partially compensated for by changes in the sensitivity of the eye and there is therefore a clear-out distinction between the tolerable minimum condition and where natural illumination falls below its minimum standard and artificial lighting has to be used.

 

Norman & Dawbarn stress that since sufficient natural light is seldom available during the whole of normal daylight working hours throughout the year, it is necessary to decide the percentage of working hours for which adequate lighting is to be provided. To cope with this, it has become customary in many countries to base daylighting design on what is termed tolerable minimum conditions.

 

Today, other environmental factors may demand equal consideration - solar gain in summer, fabric heat loss in winter, natural ventilation, the entry of noise and dirt from outside, the view in and out, the composition of the architectural facade.

 

The CIBS Code of 1984 states that some of the rooms appear to be fairly evenly daylit.In a deep side-lit room, the lighting in the depth of the interior looks very dull when compared with the lighting just inside the window. This is likely to occur when the depth of the room, from window to back wall, is greater than the limiting depth calculated from the expression:

 

D=2 w h

(h + w) (1 - R_B where D =limiting depth

W= width of room

H=height of window

R_B=area - weighted average reflectance of surfaces

 

If the room is lit from opposite sides, the limiting depth, calculated as above, may be doubled.(2)

 

The following illumination values are taken from the 1961 Code of the Illuminating Engineering Society. It was stated that it does not represent the official recommendations of the Department but will help to indicate relative values in different parts of the building.

 

	Recommended Illumination 1M/FT2	Limiting Glare Index
Assembly halls:
General	15	16
When used for examinations	30	16
Platforms	30	16
Class and Lecture rooms:
Desks	30	16
Chalkboard (b)	20 to 30
Embroidery & sewing rooms	70	10
Art Rooms (c)	45	16
Laboratories	30	16
Libraries:
Shelves, stacks (b)	5 to 10	---
Reading tables	30	16
Manual training:
(Varies according to trade)
Offices	30	19
Staffroom, Common Rooms	15	16
Corridors	7	---
Stairs	10	---

- Building Bulletin - (3)

 

HOOK INFANTS AND JUNIOR SCHOOL, HOOK, HAMPSHIRE BY ARCHITECTS J.F. CAME, COUNTY ARCHITECTS DEPARTMENT, ESSEX- 1970

 

Following the Second World War, the progressive cause was taken up in earnest and Hertfordshire, under the direction of its Chief Education Officer, John Newsom, became the focus of attention.For John Newsom, education was inseparable from environment and in response to the unprecedented demand for new schools to cope with the post-War baby boom and to replace what was then considered outmoded Victorian buildings.

 

The Hertfordshire Architects pioneered the use of system building based on Gropius’s concept of pre-fabrication by components rather than units of structure.Some ideas can be gained from Hertfordshire architects ideological commitment to lightweight system building.Bruce Martin, one of the most theoretically inclined Architects in Hertfordshire states:

 

Bricks and stones, tiles and concrete are materials for defence against a hostile world ...We must build lightly for a life of free and changing activity, for families with the space in which to grow as needs and ideas change - Martin (1)

 

Hampshire County Council has inevitably raised Architectural attention on the innovative designs upon which the Department’s reputation is based, but the ultimately grander design with which the Architects are involved is that of the public estate as a whole.

 

These estates comprise mainly of primary schools and secondary schools of which many have won recognisable awards.

 

The Hook Infants and Junior School was a prototype in its approach to the maintenance and refurbishment of school buildings and represents the first combined approach to building and site rationalisation with the aim of integrating two schools under one roof (Fig. 15).It is also aimed at upgrading an existing building to current teaching standards within the new schools brief.Another aim was to provide an energy efficient environment to contemporary standards for both new and existing structures. This school, which was built in the 1970s, has been extensively increased in size and remodelled considering the effects of daylighting by incorporating an electrically operated sliding roof in the courtyard.(Fig. 16)

 

The building was enlarged by extending each leg of the H-plan and adding a central glazed pitched roof, which runs the length of the building, thereby creating atria between the classrooms in each leg of the H-plan.On the first floor level under the atrium roof seats the staff room.The infants of the school are occupying the northwest part of the building whilst the juniors are occupying the southeast.

 

The occupants of the north end of the building would be experiencing coldness in the Winter whilst the occupants of the south end of the building can avoid glare and overheating with the aid of window blinds or adjustable shutters.In some circumstances, it is worthwhile introducing some device to reduce the brightness of the sky seen through the top of the window, as this will lower the level of illumination, which the occupants of the room will require.Other ways that these could be achieved is by having opaque or semi-opaque louvres fitted at the top of the window, prismatic or neutral tinted glass in the upper portion of the glazed area.Even with any of these methods it should be stressed that it is necessary to clean, repaint, ventilate and use sun controls when needed.

 

A studied energy record of the school building was carried out by the Architects Department, Essex County Council in 1986, 1987 and 1988, even though the school was completed in 1978 and the records are thus: -

 

Annual Energy Consumption (Kwh)

1986/1987 Electricity on peak 27,064 Kwh

1986/1987 Electricity off peak 4,600 Kwh

1986/1987 Gas 172,870 Kwh

1987/1988 Electricity on peak 30,306 Kwh

1987/1988 Electricity off peak 3,988 Kwh

1987/1988 Gas 149,924 Kwh

 

Estimated Catering Consumption

Electricity on peak 5,880 Kwh

Gas 37,800 Kwh

Actual Average Annual primary energy consumption (corrected from region and annual degree days to national 20 year DD average and to exclude catering) = 276 Kwh/M²

 

The Gross Floor Area= 1059m²

(excluding 92m² atrium)

Teaching Area: 64m²

Unheated Glazed Area: 92m²

Number of pupil places: 280

Cost of Building :£171,129 excluding external works

External Works: £46,879

Base Date :4th Quarter 1977

BNC/Gross Floor Area: E191.21/m²

Completed :1978

Energy and Building Statistics,

Architects Department, Essex County Council (2)

 

Although the glazing area is about 14% of the teaching area, there is no glare as the main window looks on to timber screens and is placed to restrict a direct view of the sky.

 

Another good example of old schools with very low lighting standards is Greenhead High School, Huddersfield (Fig. 17, Fig. 18).

 

It was found that the minimum daylight factor in many of its classrooms was well under 2% due to small-obstructed windows and dark interior surfaces.The walls had an average reflection factor of about 20% and the floor almost 10%. The steps taken were to improve the ventilation factor of the wall from 20% to 60% and of the floor from 10% to 40%.

 

This eventually had the effect of doubling the minimum daylight factor from 0.5% to 1%. The old windows were replaced from heavy frames to lighter sashes and the sills on the windows were lowered from 1200 mm to 900 mm high.This doubled the glazed area to about 20% of the floor area and the minimum daylight factor then rose to 2%.

 

Although Hampshire’s achievement is inspiring, it cannot be considered apart from the society in which it is produced.Teachers and children gave the impression that it is a pleasure to teach and learn in the building. But walk out into the surrounding housing estate.Unless you speak to someone whose child goes to the school, you will be told how awful it is - more like a garden centre, factory or railway station - the same familiar metaphor you encounter as responses to the Fleet Velmead School in the next chapter. It is tempting for the architects to dismiss such criticism as the typically ill-informed comments of a visually “illiterate” populace and to return to refining the steelwork details on the next job.The gulf between “professional” educated taste and popular taste in Britain is vast that it may appear naive to suggest that it can be bridged.

FLEET INFANTS’ SCHOOL, VELMEAD ROAD, FLEET, HAMPSHIRE

MICHAEL HOPKINS & PARTNERS - 1980

 

This is another recognised primary school in Hampshire - Velmead Road, Fleet.On the outskirts of the small town of Fleet in Hampshire, it is sheltered by a narrow belt of pine trees to the north and looks out to the south onto woodlands across a narrow tract of sandy heathland.This school was built in the 1980s and the building designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners.The Education Department was keen on them to apply their favourite Teflon-coated fabric technology, later deployed successfully in the Mound Stand at Lord’s and the practice responded with an elegant and incisive analysis which resulted in a sea of translucent fabric beneath which the accommodation would be housed in a rectangular, glazed envelope (Fig. 19) which could open up to allow the classes to migrate when the weather is fine.The hall/gym, music/drama room, kitchen and administration areas are on the north side of the circulation route with its shared use niches.The central entrance opens onto a library area, while the administration, kitchen and toilets are in enclosed cellular pods.

 

The form of the school building has a low-angle, pitched, profiled sheet steel roof rising to a continuous central barrel-shaped polycarbonate roof light.On the north and south facades, it has a full double glazed height, and a concrete slab with underfloor heating.(Fig. 20).

 

Despite support for the project, the proposal proved too much for the Education Committee to take, behind the scenes they were strongly encouraged to reject the scheme by the education officers who were not convinced by the idea in principle and the main concern was that the projected 20 - 25 years’ life of the fabric would cause financial problems when it needs to be replaced, no matter how much cheaper it might be initially compared with a conventional roof.

 

The rejection of the fabric roof did not stop the scheme continuing.It acquired a flattened-out metal version of the familiar “barn” roof and a lighting space or spine and as Stansfield explains: -

 

The result is architecturally impure - the spine (or ‘street’ as the Hampshire architects like to term such spaces) is over-emphasised; its linearity at odds with the patterns of entrance and use - and the lack of attention to energy conservation and spatial uniformity due to the minimum 3.2 metre height determined by the hall are open to criticism - Stansfield (1).

 

The Fleet Infants’ School was voted the best primary school building in Britain alongside the Queen’s Enclosure First School Cowplain.It was awarded the R.I.B.A. architecture aware in 1988 with the result as the regional and national winner.

 

The Queen’s Enclosure School at Cowplain (Fig. 21) which was completed in 1989 and was awarded the R.I.B.A.’s 1970 Building of the Year Award, is a direct development of the Fleet School plan which looks exactly the same apart from the facade where the changes were made.The Project Architect of this school had prepared a timber-based design, but when it became apparent that this was going to be too costly, he was faced with a complete re-design with only a few days before an important deadline.Hence the changes in the buildings facade to the original Hopkin design.

 

The external stretched fabric of the Fleet School on the south side protects the glazing from solar gain in summer. Ridge vents, which are in the rooftlight, are opened automatically by thermostat or can be opened by a switch and are intended to general natural ventilation for the 10 metre deep classrooms. The building has relatively low thermal mass in which to store solar panels and has a polythene pipe hot water under the floor hence the underground heating.There is a report, which explains that although the building has awards under its belt, overheating happens in the Spring and Autumn. There are places in the building, which needed the aid of mechanical ventilation:such places are the kitchen and toilets.The same applies to the lighting system in the building where it had to rely on electric lighting in such small areas.

 

The actual average primary energy consumption was recorded as 256 Kwh/m² (corrected for regional difference)

 

The energy use is high when compared with figures for other well known modern Hampshire designed schools.The ventilation loss accounts for 41% of the empty use, as shown by the diagram in Fig. 22.This may be due to the use of louvre-type window vents, which are notoriously leaky and were replaced in many London schools, partly for this reason.

 

Energy and Building Statistics

 

Actual annual primary energy consumption (corrected for regional differences but not to the 20 year degree - day average and adjusted to exclude catering - 256 Kwh/m²_.

 

Gross floor area - 1188m²

Number of pupil places - 315

Number on roll- 220

Building Net cost (BNC)- £651,674excluding external works

 

External works- £74,674

Base Date -2^nd Quarter 1987

BNC/Gross floor area- £548.62/m²

Completed in -December 1986

 

Energy and Building Statistics, Architects Dept., Essex County Council (2)

 

It should be noted that unlike the traditional “chalk and talk” technique of teaching, this primary school is based around small group working and the spacious interior of the school provides an ideal setting for the varied activities in which the children engage. With the advent of the National Curriculum, these are set to become even more varied and learning rather than formal teaching will depend on group and individual working using a range of educational resources.

 

In response to these new demands, it was decided to re-organise the school around subjects/activities rather than the normal age-defined classes and it is credit to the design that it can accommodate such change far more effectively than would be possible in a traditional school with cellular classrooms.

 

There is, however, always the danger that those variations can become ends in themselves, not necessary in the work of Hopkins & Partners but in works of the Hampshire Council as a whole. One can detect slight signs of this in some of their recent work. The “Barn” at Four Lanes, Chineham, has an over-worked entrance canopy, which is far too high to keep off the rain and lacks the spatial magic internally of its predecessor.

 

Similarly, the new Junior School at Hatch Warren, although formally elegant also feels somewhat over the top and and has poor quality of light.In the light of the office’s remarkable achievements, these might seem like minor matters but the tendency of new staff to want to outdo an office’s previous successes is quite understandable and needs to be closely monitored if architectural rigour and vitality are to be maintained.Even though the heyday of primary school building is almost over, the Fleet Infants School would be the last Hampshire built school chosen for this dissertation and the future will bring new challenges, which should keep Hampshire on the architectural map.

 

Little, if any, critical writing appears to have been written about Michael Hopkins & Partners. The majority of his work and other well-recognised architectural firms seemed to avoid school buildings. Fosters and Partners are said to have designed only one school building - The School for Children with Special Needs while Hopkins only school building is the one chosen for the 1980s school, which won the R.I.B.A. award as the best school building for the year.

JOHN CABOT CITY TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE, BRISTOL

BY FIELDEN CLEGG DESIGN PARTNERS

 

The last school building for this study is a city Technology of College rather than a Primary School. This building was designed by Fielden Clegg Design, Bath and started in May 1992 and was completed in July 1993. The original idea was to build links with the commercial world that would help not only to finance the school’s construction but also to enhance the way in which scientific subjects were taught.A 20% private funding was to be found in each case: at John Cabot the sponsors are Castle & Wireless and the Wolfson Foundation, the second is a charitable foundation without specific bias.

 

The Fielden Clegg design was the winner of a limited competition.It is mainly a two-storey building and an existing orchard has been retained and forms a new grass amphitheatre.In a crescent-shaped block housing central facilities such as the library, administration and seminar room.

 

Just behind this is a covered internal passway which connects the assembly hall at one end of the hall and the sports hall at the other.The teaching areas or classrooms are located at the south side of the internal passways to encourage daylighting.John Cabot had some problems with the brief, which remained uncertain until very late in the programme.It was decided to adopt a fast track management approach and John Cabot states:

 

It was decided to adopt a more conventional relationship, using the Jct.1980 Contract with quantities.JTC 80 does not seem to give you more control than in management contracting, says Project Architect Andy Couling.Although the majority of the labour force here is sub-contracted, the fact that the main contractor takes responsibility for the work as well as for the process comes through in the quality of the construction work - John Cabot A.J. (1).

 

The site of this school was originally occupied by an approved school, but long before that, it used to be a coalmine.Due to this, the foundations needed special measures, which included capping mineshafts, which were funnily enough found on the side.A network of ground beams were cast and all the voids found by these beams were vented to the outside air to prevent any build-up of methane gas. The structure of the building is a steel frame, clad in cavity brickwork and it falls into four parts: the assembly and sports halls at each end, the crescent block, the classroom wing and the internal pathway. (Figs. 22 & 23).The roof structure towards the wings and halls is constructed in profiled steel, and towards the crescent is in terne-coated stainless steel and to the pathway street high-performance felt on timber decking.(Figs. 24 & 25).

 

Block works were used internally with plastered walls apart from the two halls.Screeds are 75 mm thick with reinforcement, unbounded due to damp-proof membranes at ground floor level and Ethafoam acoustic absorbent on first floor slabs.

 

Fielden Clegg, the designer, was faced with the challenge and positively being encouraged by the client to invest the building with a measure of “legibility” as a visual aid for pupils. Clegg met this challenge symbolically, reflecting the idea that legibility does not necessarily mean exposing every last bolt or wind-brace in the building.The roof is supported by means of cylindrical columns that remain exposed and therefore “legible” while the first floor slab, cast on permanent, profiled steel from work, is held by I-section stanchions, which is “illegible” because it is built into the wall structure.

 

The system, says Couling: -

 

has allowed us to control what it looks like from underneath, but without hiding the root structure.AJ (2).

 

In contrary to other common school buildings, Fielden Clegg felt that the degree of flexibility required in the teaching wing did not call for partitions; instead, blockwork walls are used as structure divisions.The reasons he gave were that the frequency with which walls are likely to be moved is not sufficient to justify instant demountability while acoustic separation and durability are not so easily achieved with partitions.This school was specifically explicitly designed as a low-energy building, the section of the classroom wings was derived as a result of the desire to maximise the use of natural light and ventilation.On the first floor where a central corridor is flanked by classrooms of various kinds, a continuous rooflight and louvred air vent alternately lights and vents the classrooms.In every three way structural bays there is a ventilation shaft, which connects one of the ground floor spaces directly with the ventilation louvres.In the whole building, three rooms have “comfort cooling provision”, a form of partial air-conditioning.The telecommunications room, the network manager’s office and the seminar room are the three rooms, whereas the average school would not consider air treatment to be a priority in this sort of space.Specifications are higher in the business sector and air conditioning was judged to be a necessity.

 

The first thing that catches the attention on visiting the building is the curve of the crescent block and as the Project Architect points out: -

 

The trick with such building is to define which elements follow the curve literally and which works better split into facets.The question is one of balance between architectural expression and practical expediency - Couling (3).

 

The window frames are faceted because of the complications created by curving the aluminium frames. There is no inner column on the first floor, the brickwork is also faceted at this level in order to follow the window frames.The clerestory windows are faceted and the stud partitions below are curved with radius of about 47 metres.The architect hoped it had achieved its aim of designing a building that is architecturally interesting, environmentally appropriate, robust and practical.This school building has the combination of modern hi-tech and natural low energy systems and as Couling states: -

 

With its building management system, condensing boilers, general insulation, natural lighting and ventilation systems, it will be interesting to see how well its energy performance compares with other schools in the UK - Couling (4).

 

In response to the daylighting quality (Fig. 20) the maximum daylight is achieved from the glazed rooflight in the classroom wing. And since the classrooms are on the first floor, hence the rooflight, it would be a permanent space in order to achieve this lighting quality, unlike other school buildings where the interchanging of rooms are encouraged.Although cylindrical columns that remain exposed as mentioned earlier support the classroom wings roofs, the first floor is supported by a separate structure, which was concealed.

 

Energy and Building Statistics:

 

The design annual energy consumption in primary energy units is 173 Kwh/m².This can be compared with the 1981 Department for Education Design Note 17 required maximum of 240 Kwh/m².

 

U-values are much lower than the current Building Regulations Standards:-

 

	Regs.	Actual	% Improvements
Walls	0.45	0.32	40%
Roofs	0.45	0.30	50%
Ground Slab	0.45	0.45

 

Calculated annual energy consumption value in primary energy units = 173 Kwh/m²

Gross Floor Area-8720m² excluding unheated

Sports Store -50m²

Teaching Area- 4330m²

Number of Pupil Places- 900

Building Net Cost (BNC)- £5,242,946 excluding external works

External Works- £781,641

Base Date -4^th Quarter 1992

BNC/Gross Floor Area- £601,26/m²

Complete in 1993-(5)

 

Client -John Cabot CTC Bristol Trust Ltd

Architect -Fielden Clegg Design, Bath

Quantity Surveyor-BHQs, Bath

Structural/Services Engr.-Buro Happold, Bath

Main Contractor-Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd. (5)

 

NOISE POLLUTION

 

In buildings, particularly school buildings, it is necessary to formulate certain design targets at the preliminary planning stages in order that the desired environmental conditions may be attained. The acoustic requirements will vary according to its type and usage, for example “a library and sports hall”. A series of acoustic design maxims should be drawn up for the guidance of all members of the team.This will refer broadly to either noise control of to room acoustics and will be able to maintain optimised speech perception throughout all parts of a lecture room, ensure acoustic privacy for designated offices and to avoid flutter echoes and room resonances in studios.

 

Vibration of building structures has tended to increase in recent years with the growth in density of roads and rail traffic and the incorporation of extensive mechanical services throughout buildings.At the same time, the construction techniques have tended to move away from the use of massive elements, which tended to dampen to inhibit vibration transmission to encourage daylighting.

 

Furthermore, the sub-audio frequencies generated in a structure may induce higher frequency noise components where a partition or slab vibrating with high amplitude at a very low frequency will tend to cause fixtures to rattle and re-radiate noise components. This is an important reason to isolate the building structures from all potential sources of excitation and it is therefore necessary to be able to specify permissible limits for structural movement by vibration.

 

Where human tolerance is of vibration or re-radiated noise from a vibrating surface is not crucial it will still be necessary to ensure that no vibration induced damage occurs to the building.It is generally advised to undertake measurements of structural insulation and room reverberation time to assist in establishing design criteria for a major remodelling of an existing building or as acceptance trials of a complete project.

 

In the past, sound level meter response was used extensively by acousticians for all types of internal environmental noise studies but it soon became apparent that its advantages, when used during acceptance tests on finished buildings were more than offset by its shortcoming as a design criterion.

 

It is generally advised that when an acoustical site survey is to be determined, the following points are necessary.

(a) The noise and vibration climate at the site

(b) The tolerance of surrounding sites to an introduced noise source

(c) To assist layout, grouping and zoning onsite in order to maximise natural noise control provided by adjacent buildings and ground topography.

(d) To establish the insulation and isolating performance of existing structures prior to renovation.

(e) To assist designs for room acoustics and sound reinforcement systems in existing areas prior to renovation and renovation and remodelling.

INDOORS AIR QUALITY CONTROL

 

There is some evidence that, in certain situations, mixed-gas indoor air quality sensors in buildings may pick up traffic-related pollutants.Current sensor technology indicates that, generally, the only cheap, practical option is a CO cell, although in certain circumstances CO₂ or mixed-gas sensors may be feasible.

 

Locating a CO sensor in the air intake will cause the control to activate if outdoor air quality is poor and continues as long as the outdoor air exceeds the set points regardless of indoor levels.If the pollutant episode lasts for an extended period, at some point the indoor concentration will exceed that outdoors, but a sensor in the intake will not recognise this situation.

 

A number of ways had been identified as solutions, but the obvious way of overcoming the limitations of sensors in the air intake or return air alone is to use them both.(Fig. 26)

 

The use of one electrochemical CO sensor stretches the technology to its limits and two would need a dead band sufficiently large enough to account for the accuracy of both sensors.

 

The most appropriate control is a simple on/off type, the control objective being simply to minimise the effects of pollution.The pollutant set point is not a limit that can be controlled to, but an indication that action is required.

DESIGN METHODS

 

A distinction to be made between those buildings, which possess the relevant quality, and those, which lack it, a tool is required to draw the distinction.

 

There are several ways to specify sets of projects possession or lacking specific qualities.Firstly, it is advised to catalogue all the elements in the set that should be adopted.This method is impractical for all but small sets.

 

Secondly, one can present the typical elements in the set and the transformation processes for generating, through various procedures.

 

The third approach is to provide some testing tools to eliminate all the elements lacking the defined quality. This approach characterises the engineering or “neo-positivist” method of non-intuitive design.

 

The last approach, one that is followed here in developing the proposal for a more efficient daylighting design tool, consists of providing the designers with a grammar for generating the elements of the set.

 

Building researchers need to transfer their evaluative tools into typological models and structure them in an architectural grammar.The current, traditional design process presents many disadvantages, mostly in relation to its relevance to one’s design skill and the lack of opportunity for consultants to contribute specialised knowledge early in the design process.Even when a design team is encouraged to work together from the earliest stages of design, it has been found that design ideas are mostly generated by one person, in the form of visual concepts.

 

Two types of approach to architectural design are encouraged:

 

The non-intuitive design: machine design, the systematic methodology, or the engineered design process

 

The traditional design: the intuitive design, or the typological design

 

It is assumed that there is a visual thinking process analogous to, but different from, a literary or mathematical one through which architectural designs are expressed.

 

Building plans and elevations map these notions as drawings, embodying the knowledge developed in solving the design problem.Forms are the legitimate supports of this problem-solving design and typological precedents are collected and synthesised to provide their knowledge.

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.

 

LIGHTING IN THE FUTURE

 

A high technology manufacturing environment offers the architect and lighting designer challenges that reflect the differing nature of the work done in the various spaces.And to meet those challenges successfully, it was recommended that designers must fully understand the exacting nature of the industrial tasks performed.The Lighting Research Centre at Reusselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA investigated the effectiveness of one particular lighting scheme by surveying the workers themselves as to their perception of the lighting.The findings of the centre DELTA (Demonstrations and Evaluation of Lighting Technologies and Applications) were protected in a case study conducted at the Sony Disk Manufacturing Plant in Springfield, Ove.

 

The Delta Team evaluated how well the Luminaires, light sources and controls performed in meeting the illumination programmes of five distinct manufacturing tasks.

 

Designers can apply these concepts and the lessons learned to other industrial and assembly-plant applications with similar task-specific lighting requirements.

 

Opened in 1995 as at state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for digital optical disks, the Sony plant operates 24 hours a day.The 324,800 square feet facility sits on a 120 acre, forested, park-like site and with 350 employees, it currently produces as many as 6.5 million disks a month.

 

The lighting in the Sony Disk Manufacturing spaces was designed to accommodate the many visual tasks involved in CD production and to meet clean-room standards for some manufacturing processes.In non-manufacturing spaces, the lighting provides good task visibility with a minimum of glare while accentuating the architectural design providing visual interest. The design team, Boucher Mouchka Larson, Architects and PAE Consulting Engineers, carefully co-ordinated architectural designs with lighting and control equipment.There were five lighting objectives for the design, which should be applied to school lighting.They are: -

·Create work spaces with good task visibility and visual comfort for employees

·Minimise energy consumption by specifying energy-efficient lamps, ballasts, luminaries and controls

·Achieve bright, visually stimulating spaces to help keep workers alert in early morning hours;

·Keep the initial cost of the lighting installation within budget; and

·Install energy-efficient lighting products

 

Daylight first played its major role in sacred buildings and the admission of light through the massive elements of the fabric covered symbolism, which was irresistible to the architects of the great churches and cathedrals.It was in sacred buildings too that glass made the earliest impact; the use of stained glass in the great cathedrals was widespread by the 12^th Century.The technique was pioneered in France and Germany and artisans from these countries often travelled Europe-wide to trade their wares and sell their skills. It is difficult to overstate the impact that a sunlit, stained glass window, of majestic proportions would have had on an illiterate peasant.For the task of promoting religious beliefs, it was “state of the art” remaining unchallenged for its visual impact until the cinema, nine centuries later.

 

Gradually, glass manufacturing became more established and costs came down.The land-owning classes were the first to adopt glazing, as violence and strife subsided and the fortification of their dwellings became of lower priority.Windows began to be larger and by the 16^th Century we see the celebration of windows, as typified by the oriel windows in the Cambridge Hall (Fig. 27), Church in Medina, Malta (Fig. 28), Queen’s College, Cambridge (Fig. 29), Corpus Christ, Oxford College Library (Fig. 30) and the Clevestory windows at Guildhall in Lavenham, UK (Fig. 31)

 

It was in spinning and weaving that the saw most impact on building design.The need for light would have meant that production was crucially dependent upon prolonging the availability of daylight to a maximum.It must be realised that in the 15^th Century, the real cost of artificial light was about 6000 times more than today (in relation to living costs).

 

Even before industrialisation, there were certain indoor activities that made real technical demands on daylighting. Writing, printing and painting all would have needed good light and with only primitive artificial lighting available, there would have been a heavy reliance on daylight.

 

Despite the increase in the use of glass in the 17^th Century, mainly in the form of small by modern standards.This was partly due to structural limitation, especially in masonry buildings, although in grand architecture amazing structural features were achieved with stones and even moulded brick mullions.

 

Even though we look upon daylight as our principal source of light, it is important to remember that, especially in southern countries, it may be difficult to use directly in everyday working life because of its high intensities and constant variation due to sunpaths and meteorological changes.It is important therefore that architects envisage the visible environment as highly structured, three-dimensional light fields.Architecture becomes the shaping of this future luminance field.

 

Studies on lighting have considered artificial and natural light as equivalent, addressing merely the illuminance level.Studies had also shown to illustrate to what extent daylight is preferred over artificial lighting sources, making its quality as an illuminant an important reason for using it in buildings.Daylight, which is the combination of sunlight and skylight, is the light source that most closely matches human visual responses unlike artificial lighting. Years ago, the human eye evolved using this light spectrum as the source against which all other light sources are compared, thus daylight is likely to provide the best visual environment.

 

Often, designers are unable to determine whether a space is sufficiently illuminated or too dark. It is important to realise that the way surfaces are illuminated is often more important than how much light falls on them.

 

Taking all these points and realising the way technology takes over society, we are torn between good health and advanced technology.And taking all other aspects of life, we are known to select technology over good health as long as the technology makes our life easier, even for just a little while.

 

Most of the advances in science and industry during the past hundred years have been improvements in technique leading to lower production costs.Chemical industries pollute air and water and it is only afterward, when the damage becomes unbearable that measures have been taken to reduce the harmful effects.Insecticides and chemical fertilisers disturb the balance of nature and are exterminating more and more species.The automobile industry produces more and more cars: it was only after half a century in some attention being paid to safety and to the complete combustion of petrol.

 

Environmental problems these days can largely be met with the aid of instruments and formulae available now, but still insufficient attention is being paid to the factors that bear on the positive well being of the individual, completely ignoring the psychological factors.

 

The whole development of the technique of lighting up to this day has been inspired by the 19^th Century conceptions of society, ignoring completely the well being of the worker and letting commercial interests dominate all research.

 

The future of daylighting looks more blink than bright.Due to the problems that dominate daylighting, there is the fact that accuracy is limited by the superficial treatment of the optical physics involved and its being commonly acknowledged that many daylight control implementations do not produce internal conditions that satisfy the occupants’ comfort criteria. The potential for energy-saving and improved internal comfort is apparent, but the means through which they can be achieved is less obvious.The ability to simulate accurately a wider range of architectural design options would undoubtedly help to establish those criteria that have the potential to provide the requisite benefits, otherwise the future of lighting hangs in the hands of new technology and heading to the end of daylighting schools even though the negative effects are obvious.The dynamic nature of daylighting needs to be understood and also the occupants’ reaction to time rate change, spatial distribution and relative contrasts caused by daylight in an enclosure.

 

REFERENCES

 

INTRODUCTION

1. ENERGY IN ARCHITECTURE - The European Passive Solar Handbook, 1980, p117

2.DAYLIGHTING IN ARCHITECTURE - European Reference Book

3.PRACTICAL BUILDING ACOUSTICS - Sound Research Laboratories Ltd

CHAPTER ONE

1.Lighting - The Language of Light - D C Pritchard, p1

2. Lighting in Schools - Department of Education & Science - Building Bulletin 33, p69

3.Architectural Physics - Available Daylight Part 1 - R G Hopkinson, p28

4.Schools of Thought - Hampshire Architecture - Colin Stansfield

CHAPTER TWO

1.CIBS CODE - For Interior Lighting - 1984, p19

2.CIBS CODE - For Interior Lighting - 1984/85

3. Lighting in Schools - Building Bulletin 33 (Values of Illumination in Schools & Colleges, p8

CHAPTER THREE

1.Schools of Thought - Richard MacCormac, p7

2.Energy and Building Statistics - Architects Department, Essex County Council, p50

CHAPTER FOUR

1.Schools of Thought - Hampshire - 1974-1991, p25

2.Energy and Building Statistics - Essex County Council 1978/Alper B. Forrest R. Department of Energy R & D Programme - 1977-1988, p45

CHAPTER FIVE

1.Tim Ostler - Building Which Explains Itself - Building Study Architectural Journal - March 1993, p16-18

2.Tim Ostler - Architectural Journal - March 1993

3.Tim Ostler - Architectural Journal - March 1993, pp 18-20

4.Tim Ostler - Architectural Journal - March 1993

5.Energy and Building Statistics, Bristol 1992 / John R. Goulding - Energy in Architecture, 1992

CONCLUSION

1.D C Pritchard - Lighting, p28

2. Dean Hawkes - Architect’s Guide to Energy Principles - Conscious Atrium Building Design - 1984, p9

3.L C Kalff - Creative Light

4.Daylighting in Architecture - European Reference

5.Charles Linn - Innovative Architecture for Image, Efficiency and Users’ Comfort

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

D C Pritchard- Lighting Publisher: Longman Group.UK, Scientific & Technical, 4th Edition, London, 1990

 

Department of Education and Science - Lighting in Schools Publisher: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1967

 

Richard Weston - Schools of Thought, Hampshire Architecture 1974-1991 Publisher:Hampshire County Council

 

Alper, B;Forest R A;Long G - Active Solar Heating in the UK Publisher:Department of Energy R & D Programme, 1977-1984

 

R G Hopkinson - Architectural Physics, Lighting - Publisher: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1963

 

P R Bryce - CIBC CODE for Interior Lighting Publisher: The Chartered Institution of Building Services, London, 1984

 

International Commission in Illumination Committee - Daylight Publisher: I.C.I.C. 1970

 

John R Goulding, J Owen Lewis - Energy in Architecture Publisher: Batsford for the Commission of the European Committee, 1992

 

ECD Energy and Environment Ltd - A Review of Methods for the Evaluation of the Energy Contribution of Daylight inBuildings, 1996

 

Dean Hawkes, Architects - An Architects Guide to the General Principles of Energy-Conscious Atrium Building Design, 1994

 

Halcrow Gilbert Associates - Report on the Meadowbank School, Warfield, Berks, 1994

 

Tim Ostler - Building Which Explains Itself, Construction Study, Architects Journal, 1993 March

 

ILLUSTRATIONS

 

 

(Fig.1) Earswick School

 

(Fig. 2) Lincoln’s Inn - Sir John Sloane

 

(Fig. 3) Famous Breakfast Room (Lincoln’s Inn)

 

(Fig. 4) St. Mary’s in Wallasey, 1961

 

(Fig. 5) Direct Sunlight (Source of Discomfort)

 

(Fig. 6) Group 6 Architects - Museum of Grenoble

 

(Fig. 7)Solar Gains - Museum of Grenoble

 

(Fig. 8)Norman & Dawbarn, St. Mary Magdalene Church of England Primary School 1960 (Site)

 

(Fig. 9)Norman & Dawbarn,St. Mary Magdalene - Classrooms

 

(Fig. 10)Norman & Dawbarn, St. Mary Magdalene - Classrooms

 

(Fig. 11)Norman & Dawbarn, St. Mary Magdalene - Glazed Classroom

 

(Fig. 12)Norman & Dawbarn, St. Mary Magdalene - Disability Glare

 

(Fig. 13)Discomfort Glare

 

(Fig. 14)Norman & Dawbarn, St. Mary Magdalene - Assembly Hall

 

(Fig. 15)J. F. Came - Hook Infants and Junior School - 1970

 

(Fig. 16)J. F. Came - Hook Infants School - Courtyards Roof - 1970

 

(Fig. 17)Greenhead High School, Huddersfield

 

(Fig. 18)Greenhead High School, (Classrooms)

 

(Fig. 19)Michael Hopkins & Partners - Fleet Infants School - Velmead - 1980

 

(Fig. 20)Fielden Clegg - John Cabot City Technology College - roof structure

 

(Fig.21) The Queen’s Enclosure - 1989

 

(Figs. 22/23)Fielden Clegg- John Cabot City Technology College, Bristol - 1990

 

(Figs. 24/25)Fielden Clegg - John Cabot City Technology College - roof structure

 

(Fig. 26)Sensors - Air Intake

 

(Fig. 27)Cambridge Hall

 

(Fig. 28)Church in Medina, Malta

 

(Fig. 29)Queen’s College, Cambridge

 

(Fig. 30)Corpus Christi - Oxford College Library

 

(Fig. 31) Clevestory Windows at Guildhall, Lavenham