Improving Natural Lighting Performance in Historical Education Venues: Ulugazi Primary School

Abstract

Natural lighting is an essential factor in the design of educational buildings, as it creates an environment that provides psychological satisfaction, increases motivation, encourages healthier conditions and saves energy. Using the same finishing materials in classrooms facing different directions and sizes in educational buildings causes natural lighting effects of different quantity and quality. This situation creates psychological, physiological and cognitive inequality among students. This negativity can be annihilated by changing facade elements, the ratio of the transparent surface and the materials. However, these applications should be made with minor interventions in the historic structure. Within the scope of this study, which aims to determine the current natural lighting performance of the classrooms in Ulugazi Primary School, a historic school building in Kocaeli, the scenarios are designed with approaches that will have the most negligible impact on the building identity. In this context, with the Climatestudio analyzes were conducted for four classes with different characteristics. Visual comfort problems were determined with the Spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA) that evaluate the illuminance level annually and with the Annual Sunlight Exposure (ASE) that reveal the glare probability, within the scope of Leed V4.1. Furthermore, scenarios were created with the choice of finishing materials and curtains with different optical properties for the interior wall surfaces and ceiling, which have lost their authentic value, based on the same metrics. Thus, it has been revealed to what extent the quantity, quality and distribution of natural lighting in classrooms have changed. According to the simulation results, it was determined that there were significant glare problems in two of the four classes, with ASE ranges ranging from 0% to 31.4%. Class B facing south and east, has the most significant glare potential. In addition, all classrooms spatially provide the sDA value. However, more illuminance levels are required in the back corners of the classrooms.