The effects of daylight design features on the visitor satisfaction of art museums

Abstract

Daylight is an important element of lighting design strategies. Daylight allows visual comfort and enhances visual environmental quality within architectural spaces. Daylight usage also allows sustainability by allowing energy conservation. In this manner, proper daylight design issues and control strategies have significant role. However, in art museums, daylight is a very difficult element to deal with. The difficulty is caused because of the damage that can be caused by daylight exposure on different objects with different sensitivity levels in art museums. This study aims to search the effects of daylight design features on the visual environmental quality of art museums and visual comfort of the visitors. A case study was conducted in İstanbul Modern Art Museum, Istanbul. The thesis is based on the user data obtained through a survey questionnaire and daylight simulation data obtained by Autodesk 3D’s Max 2014. A three part questionnaire was conducted with 100 participants for both overcast sky and clear sky condition to rate visitor satisfaction with the museum and importance levels of daylight design issues by considering all art museums in general. The daylight illuminance data of the museum was measured in a scaled model by a computer simulation program. According to the statistical analyses and simulation renderings, daylight design is a multi-parameter task. There are many significant correlations between visual comfort and satisfaction. The study concludes with a number of daylight design guidelines.