Glare Analysis of Daylit Spaces: Recommendations for Practice

Christoph Reinhart, J Alstan Jakubiec and Rashida Mogri

Glare, physical discomfort caused by contrast or luminous intensity, is an underutilized parameter in contemporary architectural design. This page presents a series of interrelated projects that are concerned with experimental and computer-based design analysis techniques to asses the appearance of glare in daylit spaces.

• Survey: If you are a practicing architect, lighting designer or consultant we invite you to participate in an online survey on Glare Analysis and HDR Photography in Contemporary Architectural Practice.
• Online tutorials and design tools: If you would like to learn more about HDR photography, please refer to our online tutorials on 'glare'. If you would like to learn how to conduct a computer-based glare analysis, have a look at DIVA-for-Rhino.
• Adaptive Zone: In this study we developed a concept for assessing glare throughout daylit spaces based on the daylight glare probability metric. Part of our results is a new glare visualization mode that we call 'Multidirectional Time-Lapse Simulation' (see below). Initial project results were presented at the 9^th International Radiance Workshop in September 2010 in Freiburg, Germany (Workshop Presentation). In January 2011 we submitted a full paper to Lighting Research and Technology (Abstract).
  

Multidirectional Time-Lapse Simulation - The animated image shows a cylindrical 360^o view of a work space in Gund Hall. The color coded lines at the bottom show the predictions of different glare indices (DGP, DGI, UGI, CGI and VCP) whether discomfort glare will be experienced in a particular direction at at different times of the day (Green=Imperceptible Glare; Yellow=Perceptible Glare; Orange=Disturbing Glare; Red=Intolerable Glare).

Follow these links for more black and white Multidirectional Time-Lapse Simulations for Gund Hall, a sidelit office and a sidelit office with venetian blinds.