Lighting Conditions of site

Lighting is a very important aspect of any design. Lighting helps to create a mood, a particular atmosphere. A space that has bad lighting is uncomfortable and sometimes interesting spaces fall victim to this problem. Light is important when it comes to making people feel a certain way, soft warm natural light is idea for relaxing situations and would be beneficial in such a calming space. Ideally natural lighting is preferred. But in difficult spaces compromises have to be made.

The bathhouse site and space will most likely to be a problematic in regards to getting light into the basement space. Not only this but also the close proximity of the surrounding buildings make it difficult for natural light to filter in.

Sun Angles

To understand how lighting effects the site it is important to look at the suns activity, both during the summer and during the winter.

This image above shows the movement and positioning of the sun mid summer on the 15th of Jan 2019. The orange line represents the sunrise and the red line represents the sunset. As in summer there are more hours of day light the two sunrise and sunset lines create a reflex angle. In summer the sun also sits higher in the sky, resulting in better light exposure.

This image above shows the opposite. This is portraying the 15th of Aug 2019. As you can see the angle of sunrise and set is now at an acute angle. In winter the sun sits lower in the sky and there is less hours of daylight.

Being a bathhouse, its most used months would most likely be during winter, when natural light is compromised. In an attempt to use a little artificial light as possible I will investigate several solutions.

One possible solution to this problem could be to include some sort of light diffuser/filtering system into my designs. Below is an example of a similar solution. This is actually in AUT’s new WZ building. In an attempt to let more natural light into the building these mirrors are positioned on varying angles, redirecting the light down throughout the building. I think that this is a very effective solution. I would like to incorporate something of similar nature into my bathhouse design if possible.