A step-by-step working companion to C19 — run the metric method on a live project, space by space.
This guide turns the masterclass into a working method. Run the six stages in order for every project, and the per-lecture checklists below for every space. Each checklist item is a deliverable; collected, they become your daylighting analysis report.
| Stage | Activity | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brief & Targets | Four numbers: sDA target, ASE ceiling, UDI band, DGP limit (+ view tier, melanopic EDI) |
| 2 | Basis of Design | Latitude, altitude, sky model, exterior design illuminance/luminance, data source |
| 3 | Quantity Analysis | Climate-based sDA result per space, grid + schedule + blind logic stated |
| 4 | Over-Lighting & Glare | ASE plan (read with sDA), UDI band profile, annual DGP from occupant eye |
| 5 | Aperture, View & Circadian | Head heights, light shelves/toplighting, EN 17037 view tier, melanopic EDI provision |
| 6 | Dynamic Shading & Report | Shading + control spec co-designed with glazing; bound report + commissioning protocol |
| Symptom in the metrics | What it means | Design response |
|---|---|---|
| Low sDA, deep zone | Light not reaching room depth | Raise window head / clerestory; add light shelf; lift surface reflectances |
| ASE > 10% | Excessive direct-beam sun | External shading geometry + selective glazing; dynamic ASE-driven control |
| High UDI-exceeded | Frequent over-lighting (glare/heat) | Selective glazing (trim exceeded band); dynamic shading hour by hour |
| DGP > 0.40 | Visual discomfort at the eye | Lower source luminance (shading/glazing); shift view direction; DGP-driven blind |
| View tier below target | Eye-level landscape layer lost | Venetian / top-down blind; higher fabric openness; protect middle view layer |
| Low morning melanopic EDI | Weak circadian dose | East/NE glazing to early zones; high neutral-VLT glass; keep morning shade open |
Daylight is the only building material that arrives free, changes by the minute, and simultaneously carries heat, glare and biological signal. This opening lecture reframes daylighting from a vague aspiration into a measurable design discipline.
You cannot control what you cannot measure correctly, and most daylighting confusion comes from mixing up two fundamentally different quantities: illuminance and luminance. This lecture builds the photometric foundation the rest of the course stands on.
Daylighting strategy is only as good as the sky model behind it, and South Africa's skies are not European skies. This lecture equips you to characterise the daylight resource for any SA site and to choose the right sky assumption for analysis.
Before you can use the modern annual metrics with confidence, you need to understand the metric they replaced and exactly why it fell short. This lecture dissects the Daylight Factor — its definition, its components, its enduring usefulness and its three fatal blind spots.
Spatial Daylight Autonomy is the metric that finally answers, across a real year and real skies, the question DF could only fumble: is enough of this space daylit enough of the time? This lecture defines sDA precisely, works through its thresholds, and shows how to read and challenge an sDA result. We unpack the LM-83 definition — sDA300/50%, the percentage of floor area receiving at least 300 lux for at least 50% of occupied hours — and the IES benchmarks of sDA at or above 75% for 'preferred' and 55% for 'nominally accepted' daylight.
If sDA tells you whether there is enough daylight, Annual Sun Exposure warns you when there is too much of the wrong kind — direct sun deep in the space, the precursor to glare, overheating and permanently lowered blinds. This lecture defines ASE, explains the LM-83 criterion ASE1000/250h, and shows how it acts as the essential counterweight to sDA.
sDA and ASE each capture one edge of the daylight problem; Useful Daylight Illuminance folds both edges into a single banded picture of how often a space is actually well lit. This lecture defines UDI and its bins, and shows why a metric that explicitly counts over-lighting is so valuable for South African clear-sky conditions.
Glare is the daylighting failure occupants notice first and forgive last, and it is the reason blinds get pulled down and left down — defeating every daylight gain the analysis promised. This lecture gives you the metrics to predict and control it.
Daylight is only half of what a window delivers; the other half is view — the connection to the outside world that affects wellbeing, satisfaction and the perceived quality of a space as much as illuminance does. This lecture formalises view as a designable, gradeable quality rather than a happy accident.
The most significant shift in daylighting thinking this decade is the recognition that light does more than let us see — it sets the human body clock, and the right daylight at the right time is now a measurable design objective. This lecture introduces circadian (non-visual) daylighting and the metrics emerging to specify it.
Metrics tell you whether a daylighting design works; aperture geometry is how you make it work. This lecture turns the targets of the preceding lectures into built form — the size, shape, position and detailing of openings that deliver daylight deep and even rather than bright and shallow.
Every metric in this course points to one conclusion: a static daylighting design cannot satisfy goals that conflict and change by the hour, so the resolution is dynamic shading under intelligent control. This lecture is where the whole method converges.
A daylighting design is only as good as your ability to assemble it into a coherent, defensible whole and carry it through documentation, compliance and commissioning. This closing lecture binds the course into a deliverable.
Application-based questions. Minimum pass mark 70% (7 of 10). Reveal each answer to check your reasoning and the lecture it draws on.
Assemble the outputs from every checklist above into a single report with this spine: