Summary
This thesis explores architectural strategies—including fenestration design, skylight use, frame depth, room height, and floor plan layout—to optimize daylighting in Finnish townhouses, where deep building frames and dark winters create challenging conditions. The findings provide practical guidance for architects and planners to create health-supporting light environments in a climate with severely limited daylight availability.
Key Findings
- Limited building frame depth and increased room height improve daylighting penetration into townhouse interiors.
- Upper window frames positioned higher guide daylight deeper into living spaces, reducing dark core areas.
- Skylights identified as a powerful strategy for delivering daylight to the building core in narrow-facade townhouse typologies.
- Strategic placement of auxiliary spaces and dividing walls is necessary to prevent formation of dark zones in the building interior.
Categories
Sleep & Circadian Health: Examines how architectural daylighting strategies in Finnish townhouses can support health and wellbeing, with reference to light's effects on circadian health.
The Science of Light: Investigates daylight metrics and architectural design solutions affecting indoor daylight availability, relevant to lighting standards and design guidance.
Author(s)
A Marttila
Publication Year
2019
Related Publications
Sleep & Circadian Health
- Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock
- The mammalian circadian timing system: organization and coordination of central and peripheral clocks
- The two‐process model of sleep regulation: a reappraisal
- Melanopsin is required for non-image-forming photic responses in blind mice
- Strange vision: ganglion cells as circadian photoreceptors
The Science of Light
- Phototransduction by retinal ganglion cells that set the circadian clock
- Color appearance models
- The mammalian circadian timing system: organization and coordination of central and peripheral clocks
- Diminished pupillary light reflex at high irradiances in melanopsin-knockout mice
- Melanopsin is required for non-image-forming photic responses in blind mice