within a building - requires careful
planning to balance heat gain and loss, control glare, and adjust
for variations in daylight availability. This design strategy can
significantly cut energy use in buildings and has wide
applicability to many different types of facilities.
- Design Brief: Understanding Daylight Metrics
it is important to understand the various
daylight terms, calculation methods, and metrics that are used in
the rating systems and by the daylighting community.
- Case Studies: Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences
is a three-story, 45,000 ft2 building on
Sierra Nevada College's Lake Campus that demonstrates how an
ambitious project team can successfully reduce energy usage by
implementing a variety of innovative mechanical designs at minimal
additional first cost.
- Design Guidelines: Daylighting Guidelines
about carbon emissions, global warming, and sustainable design, the
planned use of natural light in non-residential buildings has
become an important strategy to improve energy efficiency by
minimizing lighting, heating, and cooling loads. The introduction
of innovative, advanced daylighting strategies and systems can
considerably reduce a building's electricity consumption and also
significantly improve the quality of light in an indoor
- Design Guidelines: Skylighting Guidelines
are a collection of documents intended to help architects and engineers use skylights to maximum advantage in commercial and industrial buildings.
- Design Brief: Lighting Controls
productive in a well-lit space that fosters better visual comfort.
Lighting controls can increase the value of commercial buildings by
making them more comfortable, productive, and energy efficient.
These controls work either by turning lights off when they are not
needed or by dimming light output so that no more light is produced
- Design Brief: Glazing
influencing glazing selections, whole-building lifecycle analysis
is the best tool for determining the most costeffective solution.
Few decisions that a designer makes have more impact on the
appearance and utility of a building than the glazing
- Design Brief: Skylights with Suspended Ceilings
in large, low-rise commercial buildings have been custom designed
and site built, an expensive and labor-intensive process. This
design brief explores the benefits of a better alternative: splayed
modular skylight wells specifically designed for use with suspended
- Case Studies: Choosing the Right Photocontrol System for a Warehouse
boots and outdoor clothing, opened its new distribution center in a
400,000-square foot warehouse near Ontario, Calif. This warehouse
came equipped with skylights, and lighting controls were installed
during tenant improvements.
- Design Brief: Building Simulation
early in a project can lead to design solutions that, though they
appear simple, significantly improve building energy