Lighting characterization of an Italian beginning twentieth-century school building

Abstract

Nowadays, visual comfort in classrooms is considered crucial for the quality of students' learning processes. In Italy (1888 and 1901), many educational buildings, which constitute a cluster of historic school buildings, were built following specific national regulations. These buildings are characterized by the careful design of the classrooms both in relation to the orientation and their size. Among the design criteria, educational buildings structures had taken into account the orientation of the facades, as well as the arrangement and size of windows and other light inputs The study presented in this paper is aimed at evaluating if these educational buildings, designed according to ancient rules, are able to meet today's standards of visual comfort. With this purpose, the assessment of lighting levels, luminance distribution, average daylight factor, and daylight autonomy (DA) was carried out for all classrooms for a case study, typologically representative of this school buildings' cluster. The daylight analysis showed that most classrooms were subject to glare and lack of uniformity of illumination, while in other environments low values of illuminance levels were found. However, it is believed that a lighting refurbishment, respectful of the cultural value of these historic school buildings, can be considered.