Designing Daylight into Buildings
Marilyne Andersen has come back to EPFL from teaching at MIT to bridge the gap between building physics and building design and take advantage of research opportunities between the two different climates of the campuses in Lausanne and in Ras al-Khaimah. An interview.
Your laboratory at EPFL is called the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Performance-Integrated Design, what is the subject of your research?
My research team is looking to improve energy efficiency and human comfort levels in buildings. This is what we mean by ‘performance’. These qualities need to be designed directly into the architecture of the building in order for architecture to be more sustainable. Along with the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies, we are creating a sustainability cell here at EPFL.
You received your PhD in Building Physics, but you have come back to EPFL to start your own lab. Where does building physics fit in to your research now?
Building physics still plays a large role in my research. I see my research as establishing an interface between architectural design and the work done at the Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (LESO) where I received my degree. These disciplines need to dialogue. We need more design elements to turn building physics’ research results into practical applications. Equally, architecture has an increasing demand for research-based design criteria. And what about daylight? Daylight is at the center of my research because the sun is an essential parameter when establishing both the comfort level and energy efficiency of a building. Whether putting solar panels, daylight harvesting systems on a building, shaping spaces and generating visual effects, or simply creating comfortable working conditions with natural lighting, the problematic of daylight is at the crossroads between architecture and building physics.
You will also be collaborating with EPFL Middle East, what do you hope to accomplish with this exchange?
The sustainable design field is currently lacking in evaluation criteria, or metrics. By conducting similar experiments in two radically different climates, we will be able to better establish metrics performance and comfort criteria based on different positions of the sun, insolation and weather conditions. We can then asses the different ensuing needs for the effects of thermal mass and different forms of shading strategies for building physics. Having to think ‘back and forth’ between the two climates will also make for a more complete educational experience for our students.
But couldn’t computer modeling tell you all you need to know about building physics in different climates?
Modeling works wonderfully when all parameters are known, as well as how they interact with each other. This is of course never the case, especially in buildings where a multitude of parameters and variables have to be combined with an additional human, subjective element. From a design perspective, the comparison between studies conducted at EPFL and EPFL ME will be particularly interesting to have by revealing cultural differences as well as variations in climate response. There is always a human, subjective element to the design that is impossible to simulate. By having laboratories and different students working on new façade prototypes, design methods and evaluation approaches, we will hope to be able to creating new paths towards performance-integrated design, based also on real world reactions from the people who may one day inhabit or work in them.
Marilyne Andersen received her PhD in Building Physics at the EPFL Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory. Before coming back to Lausanne as a professor, she founded the MIT Daylighting Lab in 2004, where the worlds of building physics and design meet to tackle the problems of sustainability and comfort in architecture.