MASTER THESIS Biomimetic potential of sponge ... - IAP/TU Wien

Brundtland Report, is “development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987).
It might not be obvious how this relates to dark (Figure 22) or well-lit offices.
A closer look at the demands that sustainability makes, in this case on the construction
industry should shed light on this issue. In 2005, heads of states of the United Nations
declared their intention to foster sustainable development considering three factors:
“economic development, social development and environmental protection as
interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars” (UN, 2005). While environmental
protection is intuitively understood to be essential for ecological sustainability, the social
aspect (Gebeshuber, 2007b) (Gebeshuber et al., 2011) has got less attention (Smith & Pitt,
2011).
Not to consider this aspect would be negligence, though, since by building we provide
the environment for society. As stated by Dickie and Howard (2000): “what we build today
will provide the built environment of the future and will influence the ability of future
generations to meet their needs”. This holds, of course, especially in a modern, urban world,
where people’s lives are closely connected to buildings. We eat in buildings, we work in
buildings, we sleep in buildings.
In this context, it is interesting to find out what makes for a good, sustainable workplace.
This question will be addressed here with a focus on light and more specifically, with the
potential roles of natural daylight in mind.
An obvious demand regarding a workspace is that there be sufficient light to perform
visual tasks like reading well. With natural daylight colours are rendered very well, better
than with many artificial light sources that give colours an unwanted hue. In general,
daylight matches our visual response closely (Li & Tsang, 2008), as is to be expected
considering that our eyes evolved to make use of this light source. During the last century,
new building designs, especially deep-plan buildings that cannot only be lit by daylight
through windows became possible thanks to artificial light. Yet, the era of cheap energy has
passed, leading to a reappraisal of our oldest and cheapest light source (Mayhoub & Carter,
2012). The expectation of energy savings, raised from common sense and early publications
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