Daylight has been demonstrated to directly impact the health, well-being, productivity, and overall satisfaction of building occupants. This makes daylight not a mere supplement for artificial lighting, but an essential environmental factor to be accounted for in building design. Daylight in buildings is, however, not only continuously changing with exterior conditions, but also affected by manual or automated operation of shades and blinds. This dynamic nature of daylight in buildings has been addressed by the development of, e. g., representative climate-based daylight metrics, advanced control algorithms, and models of visual and non-visual human response to daylight conditions.
The precise description of the representative daylight conditions in buildings is contrasted by a rather anecdotal knowledge of how these are experienced by individual building occupants. Preferred daylight conditions and reported visual comfort can vary greatly in a group of subjects, challenging predictions on acceptance as well as the operation of shading devices and artificial lighting. Daylight exposure for different occupants has been demonstrated to vary significantly even in the same office. This raises the question if effects on health, well-being, and comfort are sufficiently accounted for by current methods and may suggest a new, human-centered perspective on daylight performance - the perspective of individual rather than average occupants, and their experience over the course of the day and the week.
The Bright environments: Daylight in Sustainable Building Design Conference offers a platform to discuss aspects of daylight in buildings, taking into account this human-centered perspective. In particular, researchers as well as practitioners from all involved disciplines are invited to share and discuss their knowledge.
