Daylighting Design for Academic Environments
Daylit architecture lifts the spirit. Today we’re celebrating the positive impacts quality daylighting design can have on academic environments in two recent projects.
Lam worked closely with HMFH to craft the daylighting design for the Fales Elementary School, completed in 2021. The project utilized sawtooth roof designs to incorporate northern facing monitors with slanted roofing for southern facing photovoltatics. The building orientation maximizes natural daylighting while high-efficiency, cost-effective sources work with daylighting specific controls to finetune the lighting during cloudy days or evening hours. Lighting outputs were heavily curated to ensure that any indirect light was purposeful, balancing brightness perception and visual comfort with stringent energy goals. The collaborative effort amongst the design team resulted in a negative net zero building generating 11.6% more power than it consumes.
At Gund Hall, home of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, a significant facade upgrade was recently completed to address both thermal and daylighting quality concerns.
Lam provided holistic daylighting analysis and design support in collaboration with Bruner/Cott Architects and Vanderweil Engineers.
A recent article in Architecture Record shows the finished product, illustrating the significant improvements to daylight availability throughout the studio ‘trays.’
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