Proceedings of: Workshop on Improving Building Design for Persons with Low Vision

Open Discussion (Panel 4)

Issue 11: What environmental and perceptual data on natural/daylighting are available from buildings with low vision occupants?

Question by [Participant]: Jim, can I just ask one quick question? So did you actually survey persons with low vision to come up with this information?

Response by Jim Woods: We didn’t ask that question. That was the general population. We had 50 to 70 [responses from employees] in [each of] the buildings.

Question by [Participant]: Were these GSA-owned buildings or were these the leases?

Response by Jim Woods: These are GSA-owned. These are all federal courthouses.

Comment by [Participant]: I just looked up a COB [acronym was not defined] study from 1928. This thing had 90,000 observations of glare. They can tell you the angle, the contrast ratios. The point is, try to write a law around this. It’s impossible. It’s all depending on that room, that architecture, that brightness, that view angle.

Response by [Participant]: We don’t need a law; we need guidance.

Issue 12: What design guidance on natural lighting for low vision persons can be provided in the short term?

Comment by [Participant]: Yeah, but we could come up with a list of what are good practices and designs (in the space) to try and avoid these issues of glare. It gives architects at least something to feed on, so we have more of a chance of making things better.

Comment by [Participant]: Right. That’s what we have to do.

Comment by [Greg Knoop]: Again, going back to the glass gluttons of America here, ‘but we want a big glass atrium. Ooh. That’s what I want.’ Okay, but you want all the problems with it? ‘I don’t care to hear about the problems that happen with the glass; I want my glass atrium.’

Comment by [Participant]: We had very successful atriums of 5 percent and 10 percent transmission glass in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The problem is, people tend to forget why we did that. You go to Germany and you walk into a building with clear glass, it’s glarier than hell. You walk into a building that was built here in the ‘60s and ‘70s, 20 percent transmission vertical glass, it’s fine.

Comment by [Participant]: But the fundamental problem today is we’re not measuring it.

Comment by [Participant]: You could walk in and say, “Is this comfortable or is this not comfortable?”

Comment by [Participant]: But they don’t.

Comment by [Participant]: But if you take on putting something like a big glass atrium, then you have to manage what you’re putting up there. You can’t do that and have clear glass, and then wonder why you’ve got glare.

Comment by [Participant]: If we designed architecture like airplanes, we could all define it and they’d all look the same and it would be fine. But architecture is an ever-changing cycle.

Comment by [Participant]: Well, site specific. You have to respond to every site, every climate. Every project is a research and development project.

Comment by [Participant]: Our agency has had a habit getting award-winning designs on buildings that don’t really fit the environment they’re designed for. Why would we put a glass box in the middle of the Arizona desert and think that’s good design? And yet the AIA was convinced that it was because it gave the building an honor award. It was a courthouse. And it’s a glass box in the desert. I mean, what the hell is that about?