Research on Daylight and Visual Comfort in Buildings and Cities

Dear Colleagues,

Daylighting is acknowledged as a strategic topic in the frame of achieving sustainable buildings, as it plays a major role in the comfort and health of the occupants and energy savings. Daylighting and solar gains are strongly interconnected: indoor environmental quality is directly affected by the amount of solar radiation admitted into a space. This can cause glare and overheating problems, but have a beneficial role in the heat energy balance in winter. As for health and well-being aspects, research has shown that daylight, with its variability in terms of intensity and spectrum, is crucial in stimulating the human circadian system, therefore influencing ‘human factors’ such as sleep quality, sleepiness and vitality, alertness and productivity.

The challenge for building practitioners is to find an optimum between daylight provision and view, glare control, overheating protection and health and well-being-related aspects while promoting energy-saving targets. Such approaches need to include both indoor and outdoor conditions.

In this frame, this Special Issue ‘Research on Daylight and Visual Comfort in Buildings and Cities’ welcomes research papers (including theoretical, simulation, subjective and experimental studies) that are related to (but not limited to) the following topics:

• Daylighting in buildings;
• Daylight usage in urban and dense environments;
• Visual comfort in the built environment (daylighting and/or artificial lighting);
• (Day)lighting and its impact on comfort, health and/or well-being;
• (Day)lighting and energy use;
• Innovative façade and glazing developments and their impact on daylight usage.

Dr. Jan Wienold
Dr. Valerio Roberto Maria Lo Verso
Prof. Dr. Laura Bellia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.