Building Design

Maximizing your industrial buildings daylight has several operational benefits. Good daylight provisions increase the comfort, health and productivity of your employees. Good daylight design can also help you to make safety an operational priority. Whether a warehouse, factory or HQ-VELUX Commercial can help you select the safest solution.

Incorporating daylighting into healthcare building design has several benefits. Good daylighting canassist with patient recovery and connects people with the outdoors. This is particularly important for patients spending long periods of time recovering from treatment or operations. But it also helps employees to feel more comfortable in demanding roles. In the winter months, people suffering from (SAD) can improve mood by maximizing natural light exposure. Windows and roof glazing can play an important role in positivity, health and productivity.

Brick and mortar stores competing with online buyers need to maximize customer experience. Retail spaces with natural daylighting deliver a fuller shopping experience for customers; good daylight also creates an enjoyable environment for employees. Natural light creates a comfortable space that is inviting to spend time in. Roof glazing solutions can be cost-effective and have the potential to reduce artificial energy consumption.

Daylight solutions for airports and railway stations represent a challenge to designers. But it is one that has excellent rewards for people who often use these crowded spaces. In airports or train stations commuters often feel frustrated or overwhelmed. But these emotions can be positively affected by good daylight design.

Daylight solutions can improve productivity, comfort and the well-being of office employees. Daylighting is also energy-efficient and cost effective, reducing reliance on artificial lighting. Check out our eBook: Designing daylight solutions for commercial buildings for a closer look at the impact of daylight on occupants in commercial buildings and incorporating daylight into building design.

Outside of our homes, most of our time is spent at work. Since the digital age began workplaces have made the move into office-based settings. But it is still possible to maintain a connection with the outdoors with good daylight design.

Daylight solutions enrich the recreational experiences people have when using sports facilities. Natural light in a well-being environment assists in keeping users comfortable when exercising. Communal facilities are better utilized when your building has evenly distributed illuminance levels, and lots of fresh air. A connection to the outside is proven to improve mood and the overall well-being of people.

While the science of well-being is relatively nascent, the UK Government’s ‘Foresight’ project sheds a great deal of light on five factors that have a proven effect on well-being¹, leading to the definition of the Five Ways to Well-Being (connect, keep active, take notice, keep learning, give).² The question remains, though, how do we design buildings that can positively influence these five factors?

By Koen Steemers, Professor of Sustainable Design and has been Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge.

Daylight solutions help to create quality, attractive, and comfortable spaces to spend time in. A range of rooflight solutions are available to maximize natural light exposure in public buildings. Public buildings are freely available to the public and accessible for use by all citizens. Community spaces such as town halls are also considered to be public buildings.

We all know that the best antidote to the ‘winter blues’ is a break in a warmer, sunnier climate, preferably with white sandy beaches and clear blue waters.

When choosing a new daylight solution as part of a refurbishment project, understanding a building’s functionality plays an important role in decision making. If able to establish the influential factors involved in design, specification and installation, better decisions can be made.

There are several factors that influence the success of commercial rooflight refurbishment projects. From choosing the correct daylight solution and getting the right technical advice through to installation support and ongoing service and maintenance. Schedules are often tight, so it helps to have the involvement of a rooflight manufacturer who can offer support, knowledge and technical expertise that can deliver a renovation project within a set time frame.

Ventilation contributes to the provision of good indoor air quality, removing carbon dioxide and unwanted pollutants while introducing fresh air. People spend 90% of their time indoors but with the right design strategy, occupant well-being and comfort can be improved thanks to mechanical, natural or hybrid ventilation. A reduction in energy use, as well as a boost in productivity, focus and performance are additional benefits of implementing a ventilation strategy in a commercial building.

If no ventilation strategy is in place, a commercial building can experience overheating, especially in spaces where there is increased internal gains caused by machinery, occupants, electronics or a lack of solar shading during hot days. Natural ventilative cooling works to improve thermal comfort in commercial buildings with the introduction of outdoor air at the right time and rate. This cools indoor spaces, reduces heat gains and provides building occupants with a comfortable indoor environment for work, study or leisure.

Atrium rooflights are designed and built in a variety of configurations with the option of bespoke designs available to create centrepiece spaces within any commercial building. Atriums create inviting daylight spaces throughout new and refurbished buildings.

When viewing the night sky, most of us feel an intimate connection to the universe. Yet starry skies and moonlit nights have become increasingly rare for city-dwellers today. Given the harm that too much light at night is inflicting on human beings and ecosystems, it is time to reconsider our relationship to the ‘nocturnal side’ of our lives and our culture.

By Paul Bogard, a writer and assistant professor of English at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA

Over the last one and a half centuries, artificial light and the restructuring of working times have seemingly ‘liberated’ us from the diurnal cycles of light and dark that nature imparts on us. Yet recent research has shown that this separation from nature comes at a considerable cost, causing health and social problems. A reconnection to the rhythms of nature is therefore needed – and this will also have a profound influence on architecture.

By Russell G. Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience and the Head of Department of Ophthalmology at Oxford University

One important function of the building envelope is to protect the interior from unwanted outdoor noise. Sound insulation is an important parameter of building components, as outdoor noise can have negative effects on health, mood and learning capabilities.

Well-designed classrooms can help boost the academic performance of students. One of the deciding factors is a good acoustic environment. In this article, we look at what noise in classrooms really means, and how architects and designers can minimise its negative effects.

Giving young school children a sense of ownership of "their" classroom promotes a sense of self-worth and responsibility and has also been shown to improve academic performance.

While stimulation, colour and visual complexity are important to creating a vibrant learning environment in classrooms, what is the healthy balance between under-stimulation and over-stimulation?

Children spend more time within the walls of their school than anywhere else but their own homes. How much time are we talking about?

Schools are complex environments, where a wide variety of factors interplay to determine the kind of experience children will have, whether in the physical, intellectual or social domain.

Have you ever thought about how 64 million European children spend more time at school than anywhere else other than their own home?

A complete roof and façade refurbishment has transformed Almere Centrum railway station into a commuter space bursting with natural light.