Occupants and daylight in office buildings under sunny skies.

Abstract

It is expected that the climate of North Africa, one of the hottest regions of the world, will become still more extreme due to the effects of global warming. This would result in higher energy consumptions for cooling purposes in buildings. Daylight could be an efficient energy saving strategy as well as for enhancing productivity. This research aims to explore the relationships between occupants and climatic parameters, with a focus on sunlight and daylight. Previous research revealed the importance of daylighting design to office occupants. The POE method was used to assess the daylighting quality in South Algerian contemporary buildings where the sky is sunny and clear almost year around. This assessment investigates an office building that is over-protected against sunlight and aims to identify the occupant’s reaction (behaviour and satisfaction) to daylighting design. The results presented in this paper are the occupant’s appreciation of : i) The importance of daylight, ii) The illuminance levels under which the occupants are working, iii) The sunlighting control means operated by occupants, and iv) The current sittings (desks position and distance) of occupants in relation to the window location