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The Effect of office design on workstation lighting: a simulation study

From National Research Council Canada

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Affiliation
  1. National Research Council of Canada. NRC Institute for Research in Construction
FormatText, Article
ConferenceProceedings of the IESNA Annual Conference: 01 August 2002, Salt Lake City
SubjectOffice/Workstation design; Office lighting; Open-plan offices [cubicles]
Abstract
It has long been recognised that the lit environment in open-plan office space is influenced by the density and properties of the installed furniture. Indeed, the Lumen Method includes a procedure involving look-up tables to account for the effects of workstation size, partition height, and partition reflectance on the mean working-plane illuminance. As part of a larger project on open-plan office environments, we used the Lightscape TM simulation tool to further explore the effect of office design on the lit environment in workstations. The office design variables of interest were workstation size, partition height, workstation reflectance, ceiling reflectance, and ceiling height. In addition to desktop illuminance, our outcome variables included illuminance distribution and partition luminance. We performed simulations for combinations of these parameters for fourteen common lighting designs for North American open-plan office space, including direct prismatic and parabolic luminaires, and indirect and direct/indirect luminaires. The results are expressed in simple linear or curvilinear relationships between office design variables and luminous variables. Results follow expected trends, and are consistent with previously published work in this area.Furthermore, in going beyond mean desktop illuminance, our results extend knowledge of therelationships between office design variables and the luminous environment.
Publication date
NoteAlso published in Journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society, Summer 2003, pp. 52-73. The electronic version does not include the comments of the 3 discussors which appeared in the JIES version (but that we cannot make available electronically because we do not own them).
LanguageEnglish
Peer reviewedYes
NRC numberNRCC 45357
NRCC 14333
NPARC number20386379
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Record identifier77d7b813-5fda-4a80-afd6-45dec09f5e28
Record created2012-07-25
Record modified2020-03-30
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