A Complex Problem.

Progress, Volume IV, Issue 2, 1 December 1908, Page 60

A Complex Problem.

As the height and extent of buildings tends to increase, the problem of daylight illumination is becoming almost as complex as that of artificial lighting, and methods which, when combined with experience, are sufficient to predetermine successfully the daylight illumination of, say, a country mansion, can be hopelessly at sea over town schools, hospitals, and libraries, or blocks of buildings covering large areas.

Even if private clients may be satisfied to trust to their architects' skill and experience, the erection of practically all large modern buildings is in the hands of public or semi-public bodies or their building committees, the architect for any large building being almost invariably selected from the result of an architectural competition. Quite properly such committees, as the trustees of other peoples' money, look very closely into all possible details of proposed buildings. Architects need now, and will need even more in the near future, to justify their plans before such committees with regard to illumination as in other respects, and in terms certainly more exact than are in general use at present. Even if unable to state in candle-feet the illumination which, having regard to all the circumstances, will be given by the windows they have designed on the desks of schools, on the tables of libraries and public offices, and in the wards of hospitals with any given degree of sky brightness, they will, at

least, require to be in a position to state definitely whether such illumination will vary from standard existing buildings, and approximately to what extent. They should certainly be able to explain in exact terms the illumination resulting from the artificial lighting they propose to employ, instead of merely stating the candle-power, and to refer to existing examples of similar illumination. None of these would be particularly difficult problems were the illuminometer added to the everyday working tools of the architect or of the expert advising him.