An incorporation of contemporary daylight assessment methods into architecture and urban planning of residential areas in Poland

This paper presents the preliminary results of the ongoing research focusing on daylight design methods for the urban planning of residential areas in Poland. The purpose of this research is to find out if modern daylight performance metrics and design methods can be beneficial to the process of urban residential planning. The paper presents a review of daylight guidelines derived from historic, Polish building regulations. A summary of current recommendations and practice as well as a review of chosen daylight performance metrics: Useful Daylight Illuminance - UDI, Daylight Autonomy - DA, Annual Sunlight Exposure - ASE as well as, Spatial Daylight Autonomy - sDA and Daylight Glare Probability - DGP. The new daylight recommendations prepared by CEN Technical Committee 196/W11 are also discussed. Based on this background, the results of the pilot study taken in 2014 and 2016 demonstrate a huge need for update /modernization of existing Polish daylight guidelines and approaches. The paper is an excerpt from a PhD research thesis, which focuses on daylight design methods that could be applied to Polish building regulations.