DAYLIGHTING INITIATIVES IN BRAZIL - The Daylight Site | Daylighting research, architecture, practice and education The Daylight Site

by Paulo Scarazzato, Prof. Dr. University of São Paulo and University of Campinas

In recent years, Brazil has experienced an interest growth on questions related to daylighting. Currently, five public Brazilian universities are engaged in a research supported by Eletrobras, a mixed economy and open capital stock corporation, with have the Brazilian Federal government as the majority stockholder. Such research is investigating several aspects of daylighting in buildings, in order to serve as basis for future recommended practices or standards. Another initiative is the revision of the Brazilian Standard NBR 15.575 that treats several aspects concerning housing buildings, daylighting among them.

At the University of Campinas, there are currently two researches working on sky analysis with HDR images, and another one investigating issues of daylighting and artificial lighting in industrial buildings, especially in regard to the visual field of employees. Those three projects are supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation. In the same university, a research team called iluminARQ (Research Group on Lighting Applied to Architecture and Urbanism) is being formed and structured.

At the University of Brasilia, researches are running around themes of lighting quality and lighting standards, with user opinions, and also the impact of architectural variables (windows size, room geometry and so on) in daylighting performance. The research group is called Qualilumi (Environmental quality, lighting and energy efficiency in built environment).