Dense and Proximate Development—Daylight in the Downtown Area of a Compact City
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
It is a great read. Unfortunately, almost all numbers and texts in the figures, as well as sometimes the entire content of the figures, are difficult or impossible to read.
Line 71: Another great reference that you can add here would be this one https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421516300167?via%3Dihub with the following statement: Doubling the population density increases CO2 efficiency typically by 42%.
Line 101: There is a current development at DIN. DIN 5031-100 describes the melanopic light effect of natural and artificial light sources. As this standard will soon come into force and is therefore very up-to-date, the reader should be informed. A review paper about the standard can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/9/5131
Line 158-160: That's a broad statement. Many architects would state that the openings, orientation and thus daylighting are the basis of their design. Please rephrase
Line 181: Please tell the reader that this information is about heat isolation. Also: [W/m²K]
Line 222: No spacing between number and %.
Line 240: The image looks great, but the numbers can hardly be read. Enlarge them please.
Line 248 and 255: The software used should be described in the method section.
Line 253 and 290: Represent multiplication consistently with a large X or with a small X
Line 261: The format of the table makes it difficult to read. The row with the column headers is also missing
Line 293 and 317: Again, the design of these images is good, but the numbers cannot be read. Please enlarge them.
Line 344: The proposal with the side reflection is understandable, but have you also considered that the upper part of the "collar" considerably blocks the daylight coming from middle to higher latitudes? This might be beneficial to some extend in summer, but also unfavorable in winter months if the collar is too deep.
Line 348: If you show the underlying calculations, the proposal would not be just a concept, but a concrete scientific statement with sound basis.
Line 370: The text cannot be read. Please enlarge.
Line 403: Citation needed.
Line 404: These images are too small. You can neither read the text nor grasp the content properly. Maybe you should arrange them 2 x 2. You can also take the respective explanations under the picture into the caption if it fits better.
Line 455: The panels come as a surprise to the reader. Where are they? Please explain the proposal in general before describing the materials used. Are you describing the materials that you simulated in CAD or are these the materials that are actually installed in G59? Please specify.
Line 464: Why is the image skewed? Is the room oriented north? If so, please write it in the image caption.
Line 472 and 544 and 619: Hard to read.
Line 482: Hard to read. The hook is not necessary, in my opinion.
Line 515: How was the ray tracing done? Is Rhino capable of it?
Line 529: Numbers cannot be read. The hook is not necessary, in my opinion.
Line 551: Basically, there are still some inconsistencies in the form of the whole text. Double spacings, missing spacings in between numbers and units, in this case missing spacings before and after the equals sign, superscript numbers that have not been superscripted and so on. Please review the text and use the automated functions of your text processing program.
Line 560: ray tracing
Line 566: At this point it would be beneficial to give the reader a false color representation of the respective floor plans, where he or she can investigate the differences of daylight supply. In this way, it is possible to see how the light is distributed in the room and whether the 300 lx according to the workplace guideline is maintained over the entire area (comparable with Fig. 19).
Line 642: It would still be very important that you clearly elaborate the main statements of your work. Please create a table with the most important factors in which you compare the advantages and disadvantages of the options described, as well as a paragraph in which you evaluate this table.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for this detailed review. We hope it has helped us to prepare a better paper. Please find our responses in the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I would like to congratulate the authors to their manuscript. Work like this is urgently needed and I was actually surprised that according to you work “…comprehensive studies on actual daylight levels in existing buildings are rare and even rarer when it comes to a new design process”.
minor revisions:
Introduction:
Reference 2 appears before Reference 1
“and it was only in the late 90s that new analyses proved the daylight’s indispensability in working and residential areas. It concerns …. health issues” > there are several references missing to the statement regarding health. Furthermore, the two references relate to Vitamin D that is synthesized by UV. UV usually does not enter buildings. There is much more than Vitamin D (e.g. chronobiology). I suggest to look at two publications:
- Daylight: What makes the difference? M Knoop, O Stefani, B Bueno, B Matusiak, R Hobday, A Wirz-Justice, K Martiny, T Kantermann, MPJ Aarts, N Zemmouri, S Appelt, and B Norton,Lighting Research & Technology 2019 52:3, 423-442
- The Role of Daylight for Humans: Gaps in Current Knowledge, M Münch, A Wirz-Justice, S Brown, T Kantermann, K Martiny, O Stefani, C Vetter, K Wright, K Wulff, D Skene, Clocks & Sleep, 2020, 2, 61-85.
they provide a good overview.
Formatting of the refences is different throughout the manuscript:
e.g. “[11] [12]” “[6], [7]” or “[19, 20]” or “[21–22]” I would suggest to be consistent with referencing style: “…30 years [42], [43]” or “….illuminance [ 44, 45].” “[49], [50], [51]“ > [49-51].
“Artificial lighting accounts for 14% of the electrical consumption 83 in the European Union and 19% worldwide.” > Reference missing.
„The use of well-designed natural lighting, controlled by technologies or systems guaranteeing accessibility inside buildings, and energy consumption for lighting and air conditioning systems can be reduced [18].“ > Grammar
„There are no uniform standards for daylight illumination.“ > What about EN 17036 that you refer to later? Maybe you could consider to reformulate this sentence to “no worldwide uniform standards”
“Illuminating Engineering Society (IUS)” > IES
„Usually, designers (architects) do not consider daylighting solutions during conceptualization. In more advanced stages, they rely on electrical engineers to deal with the appropriate level of illumination. Daylight issues are secondary, and their capacity to be used as one of the leading design parameters is lost.“ > This is really interesting and should really change. Very good statement! It would gain importance if there was data underlying it. Is there anything that you could refer to?
Table1: EN-12464 does not say that 500 lx for general office work has to come from daylight as far as I know. From the table it looks like it should be provided by daylight only, whereas in the norm it is not specified (as far as I know). Could you comment on that?
Formatting:
Fig. 5.a > Fig. 5a
Figure 5.b > Figure 5b
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for this detailed review. We hope it has helped us to prepare a better paper. Please find our responses in the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The presented contribution Dense and proximate development – Daylight in the downtown area of a compact city is very interesting, valuable, attractive for the reader. It is written in a very good style, professionally at a high level. It is extensive, written on 23 pages, contains 20 pictures, 4 tables, draws from 65 literary sources. It is quite suitably structured 1. Introduction; 2. Methods and research approach; 3. Results of the case study; 4. Discussion and conclusions; References;
The basic idea of this research is to design the volume of the building in accordance with the necessary requirements and expectations of users using the strategy of access to daylight into the interior as the main parameter considered. The presented solution is an architectural view dedicated to the use of the DF daylight factor in office spaces located in dense urban development. The final solution of daylight was checked for glare. This document is dedicated to the latest and most advanced results in the field. Despite the above, I have only a few remarks that are more formal in nature.
Lines 118-119 provide the definition of the DF factor. This definition could be expressed by an equation.
The introduction as well as the references to the literature are well done, the same applies to the methodology, while in Chapter 2 it would be appropriate to express the method not verbally but graphically as a "solution flow chart".
Although the optimization algorithm is shown in Figure 11, it is only for balconies. Optionally, optimization iterations of the ceiling shape in Figure 15. Optimizations of the side wall and central vestibule panels in Figure 16; or the optimized central and wall panels of Figure 17. The optimization of facade panels is shown in Figure 20;
Line 181 .... low “U” efficiency of the building’s (W / m2k) .... low U-factor of the building structures .... U is the property of the structures (cladding, wall, roof, floor ...) or the average value of U for the whole building.
Lines 214 to 217 - Tables 1,2, are unnecessary, it is a rewriting of standard values.
Lines 219 to 229 - This is the explanation in points 1.2.3.4.5.6; replace it with (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi);
The literature is supplemented by research in large halls in industry, which can be compared to large offices many times without division by partitions, e.g. when using combined windows in the façade https://doi.org/10.3390/su10030655 or skylights in the roof https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.106976; or others.
You always write the same physical units. Once it is not a superscript (see table 3) once you write with a superscript (see table 4) e.g. for U value, but not only there.
Although Chapter 3 is very widespread, there is a Chapter 4 Discussion and Conclusions where many things are repeated. There should no longer be references to the literature, who deals with what, but more to discuss who has achieved what in this area and what results he has achieved and compare them with the presented case study.
Separate discussion and conclusions. Keep the conclusions as a separate chapter and introduce the general parts of the conclusions. Leave the achieved results in the conclusions, highlight what the new authors have achieved. Explain what the novelty of this research is.
Chapter 3 results give title "results and discussion" to the results. There is a lot of controversy discussion, optimization design. In the conclusions, one's own contribution must be emphasized. The research is interesting; it brings a lot of results.
There is a lot of work behind it. I evaluate it positively. I recommend publishing after the necessary corrections.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for this detailed review. We hope it has helped us to prepare a better paper. Please find our responses in the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the extensive input of the requested changes. Especially the revision of the discussion area have greatly improved your paper.
I still noticed that the lines of your tables are of different thickness and the lateral lines are partially present.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
I have corrected the table lines. The lateral lines will not show in the print mode - this is just for support when writing.
Once more I would like to thank you for this review, it really supported this final version.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you very much for the correction of the submitted manuscript. The changes are explained in the coverletter for reviewer 3. The authors edited the paper responsibly.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for this positive answer. Your remarks were a great support to the final version of this paper.
