Lighting in Relation to other Components of the Total Environment

Abstract

In the past environmental studies have tended to concentrate upon one topic at a time. Matters that are often interrelated, like aspects of lighting, heating and acoustics, have been treated as though they were isolated and each has been studied from a different viewpoint and to a different depth.

Such an approach may have been difficult to avoid if knowledge was to be advanced but one major practical consequence has been that, in spite of a vast accumulation of knowledge of individual subjects, the everyday design of the built environment has continued to be a largely intuitive activity concerned with 'one-off' situations. This has happened because design decisions have to be made so that their effects upon many different factors achieve the best overall solution in a particular context. There is no point, for example, in achieving an exceptionally good visual environment if, as a result, the thermal environment is unacceptable, the return on the investment uneconomic or the working organisation unsatisfactory. Since such side-effects of environmental decision-making are rarely considered in research literature designers are often unable to use the researchers results and so find themselves thrown back upon their own resources.

This paper provides a background for a report upon a series of studies of the 'total environment' in factories, offices and schools made by the former Pilkington Research Unit (PRU) of Liverpool University. The interaction of the visual environment within buildings with such components as the thermal, aural and spatial environments, and their consequences for individuals and social groups will be discussed as will the evaluation of total environments on the bases of annual costs, user-response and subjective appraisal.