We designed the active daylight control systems for the new suite of temporary exhibition galleries. One long barrel vaulted gallery had horizontal blades on special curved carriers; another vertical blades on inclined east and west facing windows and the third an artificial daylight system above rooflights (photo) that had been obscured by past air-conditioning installations. A remotely controlled guided horizontal roller-blind system was also designed for the rooflights in the foyer outside of the galleries to control adaptation conditions for those entering the galleries.

With this school we worked with the architects, Terence O’Rourke, to ensure that their design would bring daylight into the teaching spaces without undue solar gain or glare. A number of shading systems were considered for the various window types and orientations.

This brand new school has been built as a Private Finance Initiative project. We worked for the contractor/developer, Jarvis Construction, to ensure that the design of the building’s windows would deliver the correct level of daylighting provision throughout the main spaces of the school in an economic and maintainable way.

In the refurbishment of the North Gallery of this large National Trust property four existing shallow roof lights were to be removed and the original square lanterns reproduced. A computer study was undertaken in conjunction with Buro Happold Consulting Engineers to determine the effect on the daylight distribution of this change. We recommended a two blind system to provide both variable daylight control and blackout. A large scale model was built by the National Trust to test the proposals over one season outside the gallery. This confirmed that there would be more daylight on the walls of the gallery. The scheme was carried out the following year and has proved very successful.

As part of our comprehensive survey of the lighting within this large office complex the existing daylight control blinds were studied. We made recommendations to reduce their opacity so as to reduce their brightness when sunlight hit them. This would reduce the intensity of any image of the blinds that might be reflected in any of the large number of display screens in use throughout the office space.