CONTROLLING HEAT & GLARE
Daylight is good. Sunlight is bad. Nigel Hill, Managing Director at Umbra Shading, explains the benefits of Dynamic Shading Systems in the management of daylight in buildings.
When it comes to health and wellbeing, we are constantly bombarded with conflicting messages. Whether it’s protein, statins or red wine, they are alternately the hero or the villain of various scientific studies. Sunlight suffers the same fate. We are encouraged to get exposure to the sun for vitamin D and for healthy circadian rhythms; but we must also cover up due to skin cancer risks. Likewise for buildings. We harvest the free energy for daylighting, and to generate
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May/Jun 2019
electricity and heat via solar panels; but we grapple with overheating and with glare from the same source.
So how do we manage this dichotomy? How can we maximise the good whilst minimising the bad? Firstly we must acknowledge that this is a dynamic challenge. The sun tracks across the sky from sunrise to sunset, and its track is different for every day of the year. At least this is fully predictable variance. The weather is another big
www.daylightingmag.co.uk