Syncing with the Sky: Daylight-Driven Circadian Lighting Design

Abstract

The use of daylight in the built environment is preferred to artificial sources as it provides visual comfort and satisfaction along with significant energy savings. Daylight is also the primary source for stimulus that establish a healthy day/night cycle, or circadian rhythm. With the discovery of photosensors within the eye that are specifically linked to the portion of the brain responsible for maintaining a healthy circadian rhythm, a new field of lighting design has come in to being focused on controlling the spectrum of light that they are sensitive to. Currently, work in this field of lighting design, called circadian lighting design, is concentrated on artificial sources circadian stimulus. This is largely due to the advent of the widespread use LED technology, which has proven that it can be a significant source of circadian light. The use of daylight to provide circadian stimulus has been a given in this field of design, however, there has not been very much research into how the built environment affects our ability to effectively receive this stimulus from daylight. In this thesis, the groundwork will be established to start to create a set of guidelines to help architects and designer maximize the potential for daylight to provide circadian stimulus at the earliest stages of a project. This is accomplished through a series of case studies and lighting simulations that explore and test various architectural parameters that affect daylight-driven circadian lighting.