A holistic approach to sustainable lighting design in educational buildings

While educators have been discussing the components of a successful educational program for decades, the physical environment has often been excluded from evaluation. Studies aimed at improving education were not able to achieve the desired results because the quality of school buildings was considered to have no effect on academic performance. Later studies have shown that one of the most important parts of getting information is the school buildings. The fact that the physical characteristics of schools are influential on education has been studied and proven experimentally in many studies. In this regard, school settings also determine the behaviour of the social group that influences and interacts with educational activities as a designed environment. In this context, it is an important condition for the education of qualified individuals to keep up with the requirements of the times, starting from the beginning of the school and serving to the whole population of students, ranging from primary, middle, high school and higher education to various age groups. It is important to think about how the existing schools can be improved and how new school buildings should be designed to raise the educational standards and the learning performance of students. When designing a school, only the room sizes and the number of classrooms should not be reserved, all the components of the school should be considered, and the physical comfort conditions, especially lighting, must be considered. The lighting issue has many positive effects such as increasing students' academic performance, protecting their eye health and making them satisfied with the place they are in. The sustainable lighting design approach presented within the scope of the thesis provides information and suggestions for designing, evaluating and improving the lighting schemes of the existing and new designed school buildings. For this purpose, "post-occupancy evaluation (POE)" methods for determining the condition of existing lighting systems of educational buildings were introduced and field studies were carried out with the evaluation tools. In addition, the "Analytical Hierarchy Process" (AHP) method has been utilized from "decision support systems" to make a decision easily in lighting system selection. Lighting guideline charts have been created for the design of lighting schemes in school buildings, and with this guide lighting recommendation for the improvement of the lighting system of an existing middle school building have been presented. With the developed approach, it is aimed to guide the designers and practitioners by providing lighting solutions that are competent, energy efficient, and least harmful to the environment in terms of visual acuity in the places where visual comfort should be used all day long, especially in "educational buildings". In the first part of the thesis in the direction of the determined aims, the literature research about the studies about the lighting in the educational buildings is given and the purpose and scope of the thesis are explained. In the second part, the concepts of sustainability and its effects on architecture and sustainable schools are addressed. Sustainable lighting and the main components of sustainable lighting design are the visual comforts, energy use, environmental impact and cost, were considered. In the third part of the thesis, the characteristics of the lighting in the educational buildings, lighting criteria and lighting systems have been introduced. In addition, the definitions, required conditions, retrofit process, which enable the improvement of non-functioning lighting systems, and use of renewable energy in the lighting have been addressed. In the fourth part, areas, where should be illuminated in educational buildings, have been defined and the guides prepared by the various institutions for the design of the educational buildings or the lighting systems have been examined in detail. The natural and artificial lighting conditions and reference sources of these guides published by various institutions and organizations are given, and the information in the guides are presented in charts. In the fifth part of the study, the sustainable lighting approach presented in the study is defined, the scope and parts of the approach are explained. Within the scope of the approach, the workflow diagram for the new and existing education buildings and the steps of the process are introduced. Later on, a proposal guidebook of lighting for new school buildings was presented, which is the first step in the sustainable lighting approach. Measurement, observation and questionnaire forms were prepared for the second step of the approach to the determination and improvement of the conditions of the lighting systems of existing school buildings. In order to implement the approach, a field study was carried out in a secondary school in Adana. After determining the status of the lighting system of the school building in question and providing the lighting recommendations in the proposal lighting guide, the information provided was evaluated and decision support systems and the lighting system proposal were selected in the most appropriate way. In the sixth part, the conclusions obtained from the results of the study and the achievements with the approach of sustainable lighting are explained and the information and suggestions are presented. In addition, suggestions were presented to form a base for future works.