Daylight simulation in architectural practice: shading design for hospitals in London

To achieve precision and satisfy the standards in daylight design, incorporation of computer based simulation tools during design development and decision making process could be useful. In addition to environmental factors several issues, such as construction and aesthetic, need to be considered concurrently during building projects which sometimes difficult to judge by simulation program in early stage of architectural design. To optimise time and achieve sensible design solutions this paper presents a case of therapeutic daylight shading design for an imaginary hospital in-patient room window configurations, located at London, where simulation guided results and other practical factors such as solar control criteria, line of vision, aesthetics and intuitive judgements of the authors were considered to meet the design goals. Though the simulation study is based on London climate, the principle of developing shading devices presented in this paper is also applicable for other types of building windows.