Advocating for view and daylight in buildings: Next steps

With the exponential growth in population and commensurate increased density in urban cities, access to daylight and views to nature is being severely curtailed in buildings. In parallel, increasingly urgent demands to sharply reduce building energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions are being made to mitigate climate change. There are many challenges and performance tradeoffs associated with the building facade (i.e., daylight and view versus solar and glare control); increased prioritization of health and well-being as a fundamental human requirement could adversely affect building energy-efficiency. Given the current state of knowledge on the effects of daylight and view on health and well-being in buildings, we identify critical needs in research, tools and technologies that if satisfied may enable more effective use of daylight and view in buildings within the constraints of climate change. Lack of knowl-edge regarding the complex causal mechanisms of window views on human factors is a severely limiting factor in forward progress. Current models and methods to derive bidirectional scattering distribution functions (BSDFs) will need to be modified. Developers of energy-efficient window technologies will need more guidance to shape product development. Advanced window technologies and integrated design can enable attainment of both health and well-being and net zero energy goals, but considerable work will be needed to make such options turnkey and broadly available. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creative-commons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

With the growing population and urbanization, buildings are facing challenges in providing sufficient access to daylight and views to nature. At the same time, the need for energy efficiency and reduced greenhouse gas emissions is becoming increasingly urgent. The lack of understanding of the causal mechanisms between window views and human factors is hindering progress, and research, tools, and technologies are needed to address this issue.