Daylight and solar design
Daylight is much more than a source of illumination. It’s essential for our physical and emotional wellbeing. With natural light, however, comes the risks of glare, overheating in summer fuelled by solar heat gain, and large heat losses in winter arising from excessive or inappropriate glazing. We offer a scientific examination of the daylight potential of projects of all kinds, optimising all aspects of this valuable resource for museums, galleries, sports clubs, and public institutions.
About daylight and solar design
Our specialist daylight design team uses state-of-the-art solar analysis combined with extensive experience to guide the design of daylight for the most demanding projects. Together with our environmental design strategists and our architectural lighting designers, our goal is simply to fill a building with natural light and fresh air.
Our team have backgrounds that range from electrical engineering and physics to architecture, product design, and fine art, and, as a result, our approach to daylight and solar design blends scientific analysis with design flair. We collaborate with architects, clients, and urban planners from the earliest stages of a construction project to advise on façade design and massing, balancing solar control with abundant natural light, views, and access to the outside. We also work with MEP engineers to carefully calibrate the ingress of sun and skylight via glazing and shading while minimising both overheating and energy consumption; with artists and curators to bring daylight into galleries and museums without compromising on strict conservation requirements; and with wellbeing specialists to create comfortable and beautiful environments of all kinds.
Case studies
Total of 3 projects
All services
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All buildings should be comfortable and a pleasure to be in: warm, well-lit, well-ventilated, well-used, and well-loved. Our mechanical and electrical engineering, vertical transportation, acoustics, daylight, and lighting design services can help ensure just that. We maximise passive measures such as natural ventilation and daylighting, seamlessly dovetailing our designs with the building’s own form and architecture to result in simple, low-energy, and low-cost building services.
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In the face of an increasingly urgent climate emergency, it’s crucial that buildings consume as little energy as possible in their operation. Low energy, low carbon, and low operational costs are our watchwords when it comes to designing new buildings or retrofitting existing ones. We help our clients build sustainability goals into masterplans or early-stage feasibility studies, decarbonise existing estates, and optimise how a building performs against its targets for sustainability and user comfort.
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Meeting net zero carbon targets and minimising a building’s impact on the environment means reducing embodied carbon – the carbon tied up in the materials like steel, concrete, and plastic that go into a building’s construction and services design – as much as operational carbon (the carbon a building produces in its heating, cooling, and lighting). We facilitate material reuse with circular economy strategies, steer low embodied carbon design from the earliest project stages with whole life carbon assessments, and offer advice on planning and compliance, all helping to reduce the carbon footprint of construction.