Daylighting Systems for Sustainable Indoor Lighting

In contemporary architecture, building industrialization and technology innovation have resulted in an increasing development of innovative systems to control sunlight and skylight, in order to influence both daylight and solar gains admitted into an interior space. Openings have evolved more and more and become ‘daylighting systems’, that is integrated packages which consist of both transparent and shading components. They are designed to be multi-purpose systems that have the purpose of controlling different functions: daylight penetration in a space, the shading of solar gains and sunlight, the view outside, daylight chromaticity, ventilation, thermal insulation in winter and sound insulation. Some of these components have passive behaviour, as their thermal and optical properties do not change in response to boundary conditions in terms of temperature or illuminance, while other components have active behaviour, which means that their performance can be automatically or manually varied through HVAC and lighting systems.