2019 - Daylight Symposium
"Daylight Amenity Impacts in the Growing City" by Phillip Greenup
Speakers
Phillip Greenup
Senior lighting designer
Presentation from the 8th VELUX Daylight Symposium that took place in Paris on 9 October 2019. For more information please visit http://thedaylightsite.com & https://www.velux.com/veluxdaysinparis
The City of Melbourne is growing rapidly. The population has recently reached 5 million, and is now growing at a rate of one small city per year, to double in size by 2050. All these new people need places to live and work, and this is putting increasing pressure on the city and its infrastructure. This raises significant challenges in city planning, and impacts on amenity within buildings and around the city. The Victorian state government and the numerous local Councils around Melbourne are responding with changes to the Planning Scheme, allowing the city to densify, but recognising the amenity impacts this could create. This includes amenity within apartments and for pedestrians and transport users around the city. Much of this consideration relates to access to daylight and sunlight.
This presentation will discuss the issues relating to daylight amenity impacts in a densifying city. A variety of case studies will be used to demonstrate how developers, architects and all levels of government are identifying and responding to the challenges faced in an era of growth. With a desire to maintain amenity within apartments, the state government issued the Better Apartment Design Standards (BADS) in April 2017. Daylight amenity is considered in terms of building sizing, spacing and setbacks, room depth, access to windows, and daylight and sunlight access to building entries, circulation and communal spaces. The Arup Melbourne Lighting team assisted the state government in developing the daylight amenity standards, and have applied the BADS and related guidance across a range of apartment developments around greater Melbourne.
The impacts of densifying built forms on daylight and sunlight access in the urban canyons between buildings have been specifically considered by the City of Melbourne. We have applied this same methodology on commissioned projects to consider the impact of development massing and streetwall heights on adjoining urban spaces. How do we maintain enjoyable daylight experiences with increasing urbanisation? How can we increase the health and happiness of city dwellers in an increasingly dense CBD? We can only achieve this by working together. All of this needs to be addressed firstly at a strategic level in city planning, and then continuously throughout design development of new and altered built forms around the city.
Phillip Greenup is a senior lighting designer with broad international experience. He offers integrated design and technical expertise in natural and artificial lighting, and is widely respected for his expertise in daylight design, assessment and consulting. He understands daylight design from both architectural and technical perspectives, and is passionate about helping to create spaces that are a joy to occupy. Phillip has gained valuable international experience working in four of Arup’s offices in Australia, the UK and the US. Phillip’s project experience includes numerous boundary-pushing and award-winning projects across a wide range of markets.
