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

Historic Basis for Lighting Criteria

I think, first off, a little-known fact about the lighting levels that all of us use daily to do our work and that we also find in lighting codes is that they were based on a study done many, many years ago, over 20, 30 years ago. And the study used young, normally sighted people to develop the [illumination] levels that are found in the Illuminating Engineering Society’s lighting levels.

So from the very beginning, the lighting levels really need to be questioned because they were not studied from a perspective of, you know, a large portion of the population, from older people to younger people. But we’re currently stuck with that, and it’s nothing that this group can change. But I think it’s important to note that the constant lowering of the lighting levels is based on false information.

Conflicts with Energy Codes and Standards

Another really difficult issue are [the] competing energy codes. And there’s just a ton of those. Most energy codes in the country are based on ASHRAE/IES 90.1. And then individual states – and I’ll take Oregon, since it’s where I live -- by mandate of the legislature, [the] Oregon energy code must be a minimum of 10 percent below ASHRAE/IES numbers.

As we said earlier this morning, when you factor in LEED™ and also some requirements from other areas – some large hospitals have their own requirements, et cetera, – you can get down to 30 percent below energy code.

When you’re looking at like one watt a square foot for an office, for example, that’s a really tough thing [to design to]. I mean, I do on a regular basis ambient lighting levels in office spaces that are 20-foot candles and have to be supplemented with task lights because 20- foot candles is simply not enough light.

But that’s the reality of where codes are taking us. And LEED™ in particular has been egregious in this area, striving for a good purpose, but basically making it very difficult for us to provide the kind of lighting that’s required for people to do their jobs, basically.

So these competing energy codes are a big issue for this group because it goes right down to individual cities, where codes are even more strict than the state code or ASHRAE, and you have to comply with all these things. It makes it real difficult to do your job.

If you’re looking at low-vision people, elderly people, and you want higher lighting levels, the codes are not allowing you to do that. And it’s an issue that we can’t ignore if we’re going to move forward and try to have some impact on all of this. So that’s a big issue for me.

Code Enforcement

The second part of codes is enforcement. There are a lot of places where there is an energy code, but the energy code is ignored. So New York, for example, has an energy code. If you’ve been to New York City, you can tell that the energy code doesn’t really function there very well.

Comment by [Participant]. That’s changed, though. Cracking down seriously.

Response by Robert Dupuy. Oh, it has? Well, that’s good to hear.

But you take California, Oregon and Washington, where those three states have had energy codes for a very long period of time. The enforcement is all on the front end. It’s a bunch of forms that you fill out. And it’s all based on the fact that you’re an honest person and that you’re not fudging those forms to make it work. There is little or no enforcement on the back end. So what you install or what actually gets put on the job may have no relation to what was on the drawings.

And to me, if we just had enforcement, we could stop lowering lighting levels. And if you take the South as another example, there’s hardly any enforcement of lighting codes in the South. So -- and again, this is outside of this group’s work, but it’s important to understand that these are the kinds of things that are impacting our work and requiring these low lighting levels.

Examples of Integrating Daylighting with Electric Lighting (slide 2)

The first photo on the top is about lighting controls, which are being now mandated by energy codes. So the state of Oregon, for example, requires controls for daylighting.

The second photo shows a medical office building, where we have daylight coming into the space. The first few fixtures are off because they’re on automatic dimming controls. And then the electric lighting is contributing to the people that are not within 15 feet of the window wall, which is the pretty much accepted standard for how far daylight will penetrate into a space, which is another big issue. How do you get daylight further into office spaces and so forth?

And you take Germany as an example: all the new buildings in Germany are skinny because the law in Germany requires that workers have access to daylight. They must be able to see daylight. The only way to really do that is to skinny up the building so it’s not very deep, to allow that light to penetrate all the work areas. That’s my presentation.

Introduction

Comment by Jim Woods: Let me just quickly introduce David because he’s taken the challenge to substitute for whom we originally had here. David is Senior Designer at George Sexton Associates. He’s a design consultant. He’s been there since 1985; managed many large projects, including the British Art Center at Yale, Peabody Essex Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, et cetera. He did his graduate work in art at Carnegie Mellon University. So we’ve got a big contingency here from Carnegie Mellon.

I played on the hockey team and the – (inaudible). In addition, I worked on MOMA downtown expansion and what we called the Swingline building. That was the MOMA Queens, and the Boston museum is about to open, early November.

I have several low-vision clients. And there are some here in town that we’ve been working with since 1988. They’re very faithful, energetic clients that have always seemed to have projects. And I met them when they were in their 50s. So now they’re experiencing problems with low vision. And they have said, use us, experiment with us. We’ve done some very unusual design with them. They own an art collection, American art, and they own glass, Tiffany glass, American paintings. And as you can probably tell, one of my specialties and interests is museum lighting, art lighting, and building environments related to art. So I’m going to tell kind of parallel stories here.

Museum Lighting

We’re helping preserve the Louis Kahn’s British Art Center at Yale. And I’m involved with three projects up there. Recently completed was the photo studio. And the challenge that they had was re-photographing the entire collection, digitally. And they needed to have a design so they could color-match the actual painting to the monitor readout. And I hadn’t done anything like that before. But in interviewing the clients, which were five people, the photographer, the registrar, I began to understand what they needed.

So I designed a series of custom fixtures and we customized the [lighting] for these fixtures. We elevated the color temperature. These were all MR-16-based lamps, banks of fixtures that roll on racks. The photo studio [is in] a basement area. That’s another thing to point out, because usually the photo studio’s in the basement. Very gutsy, all the structures shown. So we designed this, what I thought was a really neat system.

I got feedback after the installation. People would walk by the door and just do double takes. And the common comment would be, “when did you get a skylight, because just a beautiful quality of light -- basically, the whole back wall of the studio.” They’ve got large portraits, small portraits, large landscapes, varying sizes. So basically, the entire back wall of the studio is magnificently lit with this quality of light that was evocative of daylight.

So I finally went up and saw it and they were doing a photo shoot. And I don’t know if it was a Rayburn or a Joshua Reynolds painting on the easel, a beautiful woman, this scale. And when they flipped on the photo lights, it’s a warmer color temperature. But when the monitor check comes on, elevated color temperature is available. And it was amazing to see the difference in the rendering of the painting. You saw the whites and reds more vibrantly when the new lighting system was on for monitor check. So I registered that. I said there was all sorts of definitions that I hadn’t seen before. And it became intriguing to me.

Application of Museum Lighting Principles to Low Vision Persons

And so I’m going to switch stories back to the collectors. One of them said – there’s a couple in town, and one of them said I just can’t see anymore; I’m having a problem shaving. And I said we can add more fixtures in your bathroom. So we ordered another series of high-quality adjustable fixtures. And I kept in mind that he said [to] experiment with these. Think about how to solve this problem.

And so I spent about an hour, hour-and-a-half focusing, and I did all sorts of arrangements with the lamps, used different wattages, beam spreads and color temperatures. So I got the mix that I thought was appropriate. Then I went away and let him use it. Interviewed him. So, just to let you know, I’m going to jump around here as well.

Importance of Post Occupancy Evaluations

George [Sexton] has a strong feeling – or a principle - that as we finish the project we need to go back and visit the users after about six months to a year to see how everything is working. And we do these interviews and we ask how things are going and how things could be improved, so it’s for their benefit and ours that we learn how to better our designs.

The point I’m trying to make is that I picked up on details that I couldn’t see under just normal tungsten halogen lighting. It’s an ongoing experiment, of course. But this mixing is a very interesting, intriguing facet of lighting for me. What I saw at Yale, that reds were vibrant -- there was a vibrancy that I experienced at Yale and I brought that to this client. And so he gets -- so total facial illumination was better than just distinction – (inaudible). So that’s a direct experience that I wanted to share with you all.

Balance of Glare and Brightness

In the museum environment we deal with all sorts of issues that relate to glare, to balance, brightness balance. When we light an exhibition [in a gallery], we attempt to light the perimeter to offer generosity with space [and to] balance the lighting that aims on the objects with that backdrop. So we’re building more or less a tableau, you might say. So it’s all about the sensation of well-being, comfort, protection against glare. Just building this total environment wrapper.

There’s a great publication by Gary Thompson, who is the head of conservation of the British Museum; it’s called “The Museum Environment.” And he goes into all the components that make up the museum environment – lighting, temperature, humidity, and so forth. There are some great passages that he’s written about lighting that kind of dissects the glare and ways to control it.

And one thing that I think is intriguing is that when you want to wash a wall then you’re working at cross-purposes because in terms of glare and comfort, that to light a wall you might need to use lenses and reflectors that are naturally glare-producers. So it comes down to design, fixture design to be able to offer the most sophisticated fixture to deliver that ability to wash a wall [that] makes an environment feel comfortable and balanced.

When we’re lighting an exhibition, we’ll typically say that a painting should be [at] a value two in terms of illumination, and a wall should be a value of one. So that ratio is very important to us. Gary Thompson even writes about all that and he says that the best and sharpest viewing relates to that general ratio, meaning that if you were to spotlight, purely spotlight, your viewing ability drops off because you’re actually comparing it to a dark wall, comparing a painting to a dark wall. So he talks eloquently about balance.

In the museum environment it’s about balance and keying. So I think that there are applications in the other built environments that relate to what one can do in the museum environment. I mean, you can think of your favorite museums in town and nationally and internationally, and you might relate your comfort that you experience in these environments somewhat to light. So next time you experience an exhibition, just pay attention to what you think is being done with the lighting. I think there are things to learn from museum applications and museum lighting.

Introduction

Before I start in, I’d like to kind of pick up where Robert ended relative to energy focus. Right now people are designing buildings for security reasons, although they are not on top of the energy savings that we can have by controls; not having to light buildings when they aren’t occupied is also a factor. So we need to start shifting the view as to how we use energy.

For those of you who may not know the lighting power density that Robert referred to, or the LPD as we use for shorthand, and just being how much energy we can use for the connected load for our lighting. It’s very easy from a code official standpoint to say, “Uh oh, the total has exceeded the loss per square foot that you can have.” However, [the LPD] really discriminates against people with low vision, and also doesn’t take into consideration the amount of energy that’s used over the day. We need a different formula and the Department of Energy needs a different formula to start regulating energy use, and then I don’t think we’ll be handicapping people quite as significantly as we are now.

Low Vision Standards (slide 2)

ANSI/IES RP 28-07: Lighting and the Visual Environment for Senior Living

Several times I’ve heard the reference for this document that I’m going to hold up. It’s an ANSI standard developed by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, the lighting for the aged and partially sighted committee. Robert, Jeanne Halloin and I serve on that committee but it was first formed back in 1992, to give you a sense of how long we’ve been dealing with that. Then Mariana has joined the committee later on. This is actually the second publication. It was first published in ‘98, then it became an ANSI standard in 2001, and in order to keep the ANSI [status], [it was updated in 2007]. I have one copy here with me. I will put it in whoever’s hands will make the best use of it.

[This standard] was developed for the senior housing market, where we have a lot of people with low vision. In your own home you can make whatever modifications you want. But in a care environment you are not free to add lighting, take lighting out, whatever it was. So what we needed to do is come up with a general standard that would apply to most people who are low vision, living in these care facilities, from nursing homes, assisted living, [and] residential care.

It should be noted that it’s more of a function of age. The average age for living in care facilities is like 85, and you have people who are 85 living in independent living and you have people who are 85 living in nursing homes and assisted living. So it’s not the level of care. It’s based on age of the end user, not the adult children of the aging parents.

And so, you know, I offer this up to you. It’s been fully vetted as an ANSI standard. It’s a consensus document. And we do go a lot into low vision, glare, [and] contrast. All that kind of stuff is already in here, so if there’s parts of it that can be gleaned for this next step of the group here. It’s not my document, I can’t give it away, but you can certainly talk with the IES about incorporating some of the findings that we have here.

Need for Additional Standards

I strongly urge both the VA and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to start looking at [ANSI/IES RP 28-07] because it does talk about light levels. It [states]: this is desired light level[s] measured at 30 inches [above the floor], on the floor, in corridors, how much light you need on a dining table, and how much light you might need on the face for shaving and make-up. It goes through, task by task, selecting clothes [and] all those different things. There is a section on circadian rhythms, to play into what Mariana was talking about.

One of my biggest frustrations is that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services does not have a lighting recommendation that is measurable in nursing homes. And they’re writing the code for nursing homes all across the country. [The visual environment] should be comfortable. But who makes the judgment of what’s comfortable? The administrator who’s 24 years old, who’s been trained for six weeks? I don’t think so

So it’s just that there’s a big disconnect between the understanding of age-related changes in general on the part of the people who manage these facilities. So we need to stand up for them as a subgroup. And, you know, when we came here, I thought we were going to be talking about office environments, so I’d say, yes, the principles that are in here could apply to low vision in the workplace and in public buildings. But we also need to stand up for the older people.

The way I got to this, and Jeanne and Robert too, we were all facing similar kinds of situations where we were very interested in the lighting of care facilities and there really wasn’t a document like [ANSI/IES RP 28-07]. And actually one of the engineers from Robert’s own office was the one that drove me over the edge, and I was trying to talk about how he needed to be doing his lighting. I was doing interior designing and he was the lighting administrator, so I was kind of explaining how we had done it before. I was working with their company, that engineer, and he was saying, finally, “Well, until it’s written where an architect, a lighting designer or lighting engineer can find it, I’m going to ignore you.” I did not take that lightly.

But I mean, as much as I hated the guy, wanted to strangle him, try to get him fired, it was a good statement because until this was published. So when we first published in ‘98, I thought, done. Well, we’re still fighting it today. Robert and I advised the state of Oregon on what was needed for people in memory care. Here you have the most disadvantaged people possible. There are special conditions relative to their vision. They kind of have tunnel vision. They don’t have the peripheral vision, and a lot of different things like this, and yet it was coming back to us by the for-profit administrators that there’s not enough evidence to state that older people need higher light levels than young people. Not enough evidence.

I encourage you to get a copy of this if you don’t have it. See what can be applied. It’s already here, already vetted.

Design Issues

Glare and Shadows (slides 3 and 4)

Okay, these are some of the problems that I see. Shadows in the foyer (slide 3). This happens to be an Alzheimer’s care facility; I didn’t intentionally bring senior care facilities, but I have a lot of good examples of [glare and shadows]. So we’ve got clear glass, we’ve got glare, we’ve got heat. But then what is that pattern on the floor? And here these people have [difficulty in deciding] ‘is that a beam that I’m supposed to step over on the floor, or what is it?’

The other thing that I see is uneven light distribution, where Mariana says ‘cave light,’ you know, lights the lower part of the wall that doesn’t hit on the side, or gets you that kind of cave environment. Again, the glare coming in from the daylight, highly polished floor, the light just on one side bouncing up. It isn’t being distributed very much down the wall. So these are problems that we see.

Adaptation: Transition from Daylight to Interior (slide 5)

[Another] thing that I think is a problem is this adaptation, which has been raised several times. [In slide 5], you can see how bright it is outside and how dark that intersecting vestibule is that you have to go through. The glass doors have a chrome bottom so you can’t really tell where they are. [The] front doors don’t align with the next [interior] row of doors, so you have to know that you have to jog over a whole door panel, and the handle is chrome. So it’s like this is all reflected. Your eyes [have to adjust to] this transition; a real hazardous situation trying to go from the outside to the inside.

Direct – Indirect Lighting: High Light Levels without Glare (slide 6)

Since we are talking about lighting, I just took some photos in Robert’s office of indirect-direct lighting fixtures. What we have found with older folks is that if we want to get a higher light level, we have to have the indirect or the general illumination bouncing off the ceiling and the upper walls to kind of light the space, and then have more light coming down.

Stairwell Lighting (slides 7 and 8)

So we need the NFPA at this table. We need to get them to understand that not everyone has perfect young eyesight (slide 7). Currently they allow an average of one foot-candle – and that’s an average, so that’s not a minimum – of one foot-candle in stairways like that. And the ratios they will accept, you can’t exceed the 40 to 1 ratio. Well, you know, the 40 is going to be on the landing where there’s no hazards, but there’s a lot of hazards going down to that. Low-contrast definition for the handrails or the – (inaudible) – from the stair.

Another [issue for] stair lighting [is] pattern (slide 8). Here’s the pattern going down (left photo). This happens to be a theater. So you’re going down, you can’t see, but then if you turn and look up, you will see that every third step is lighted (right photo). So what are you supposed to do – trip over the two in between?

Influences of Artificial Lighting

[Artificial lighting] can be very influential in the way we behave within the environment, giving us spatial clues. And I’ll show a few quick examples.

Behavior within the Environment (slide 2)

This is a breakout area from an office space. The client, Lifetime Entertainment, wanted to create a very interactive, more casual environment for the office space, let people do more teaming in the space, and the lighting helps to transform that office environment into a more casual space.

Perception of the Environment (slide 3)

It can change our perception of the environment. This is a completely below-grade executive conference center. The prime objective with this project was [to light the space] so that you do not feel like you’re below grade, that you get some sense of brightness; not really emulating daylight but [giving] some sense of volume.

Sense of Well-Being (slide 4)

It can influence our sense of well-being. It can, in creating entry areas for this spa and making the space feel very inviting.

Visual Comfort (slide 5)

It also can influence our visual comfort in terms of seating area, reception area, having people feel like they want to go into the space and sit in the space and have the space feel comfortable.

Navigation throughout the Environment (slide 6)

It also can assist with our navigation through that space. This is a back-lit translucent wall, which is actually the base of the escalator going into the below-grade conference center, so that you don’t feel like you’re going down into the basement of the space. So as you’re entering the space, you’re looking at illuminated surfaces.

Productivity (slide 7)

It can influence our productivity, although, as in earlier discussions, that hasn’t really been substantiated with scientific studies. But if you create a comfortable environment for the people who are occupying it, I don’t see how it can’t influence productivity.

Safety (slide 8)

It also can influence our sense of safety and wanting to go into a space and having it feel welcome.

Basis of Lighting Design (slide 9)

Having said that, I think it’s really critical that the lighting design has to be developed in concert with the requirements of the occupants. It is so critical to understand who’s in that space and what their needs are. We were just talking about something that may seem very fundamental, like office lighting. We would certainly provide a very different environment for a law firm than we would for a creative media client. It’s very important to understand what’s happening in the space.

We were just recently awarded a new project. There were three other lighting design firms involved in the interview process. The feedback I received was first of all everybody was equally qualified in terms of their basic experience and the fees were all very similar. But they said that I was the only one who really addressed what their needs were and wanted to understand how they work. The first thing we do when we get a new project is look at their existing facilities, see what they’re doing, and try to make sure that the lighting really supports their business and their culture.

It’s also important to understand the requirements of the owner. If they’re really focused on trying to streamline their capital operating expenses, they’re going to be trying to minimize different types of lamps on the project, so that they can really look at their maintenance and controls, and how the space will operate.

Involvement in the architectural and interior design is so important very early in the process, so that we can really integrate the lighting into the space, not have it look like it’s an afterthought.

There’s nothing worse than getting a blank RTP and the job is going out in two days, and they say, here, design the lighting. Well, what’s happening in the space? I need the furniture plan. I need to understand what’s going on in the space.

It’s not, you know, putting dots on a drawing or putting lines on the drawing. It’s really thinking three dimensionally and what’s happening in that space. That really influences the whole perception of glare in the space, the issues of contrast, and making sure that we are providing the appropriate --

I know everybody’s probably tired of hearing about the energy code, but it’s the law and we all have to abide by it. Is the law flawed? I think it’s certainly flawed and it really needs a lot of reevaluation, and this is certainly influencing the way that we design.

Trends in Lighting Design (slides 10 and 11)

A lot has been already mentioned about the drive toward sustainability. And sustainability is not a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing, but it needs to be implemented thoughtfully, making sure that we’re not compromising any quality-of-life issues [while] providing a sustainable environment.

There is a drive to improving color rendition [in] the lamps that we have available. We do have very good color rendering qualities, and so that’s been a tremendous plus in the lighting industry in terms of having things rendered and people rendered much more accurately.

What is very detrimental right now, and in some ways it’s a good thing, physical bulb size and shape [of lamps are] getting much smaller. [These bulbs and lamps help in terms of trying to reduce energy consumption but they create a tremendous glare bomb with these small lamps. They really need to be controlled carefully, and we really need to make sure that the luminaires that they’re going into are thought about in terms of controlling that glare.

Approach to Lighting Design (slide 12)

So some of the things that we really need to consider are making sure that we have [consistent levels] of lighting in circulation zones, with the exception of major intersections or decision points, [where] actually increasing the lighting levels can assist with the Wayfinding process.

As I mentioned yesterday, task illumination [is] such a critical component in space, giving people control over their environment.

And we’ve been talking about the transition zones again. Now, it’s very regulated in tunnels, when you’re driving. It’s not thought about in terms of architectural spaces [but] it’s very important for pedestrians walking through.

Vertical illumination is an important tool in defining a space and assisting with Wayfinding and just how your sense of comfort is in the space. If you’re in a space and you’re looking up constantly at a darker wall surface, it really creates a lot of difficulties with your eye transitioning in terms of the lighting.