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Introduction

The Open University — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:00:00 GMT

One of the most important things that supports life on the planet, and one of the fundamental things we need as humans, is natural light. It allows plants to grow, it provides warmth and it allows us to see what we are doing when going about our everyday lives. So it is no surprise that in creating new homes the amount of light that they let in is of great importance. In this free course, Seeing the light, we explore what natural light gives us in our lives and the other benefits it can bring. We are dependent for our natural light on the Sun, but the Sun also brings us heat and energy.

This course will teach you about how the Sun affects your home, both in terms of light and warmth and the energy it generates. You will learn about how it can affect your health and wellbeing, and how homes in different climates are designed differently to maximise the benefits of the Sun. You’ll start by seeing the consequences of living without enough light, before going on to think about how building shapes and orientations can affect our comfort levels in terms of warmth and light. You’ll complete some practical exercises in your own home, or a building you are familiar with, and to end the course you will review your work.

This OpenLearn course provides a sample of level 1 study in Science

Learning outcomes

The Open University — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:00:00 GMT

After studying this course you should be able to:

demonstrate knowledge and understanding of some of the basic facts about language, concepts and principles relating to the principles of design of a home
understand how to extract information from sources such as text and video
demonstrate mathematical skills appropriate to making energy calculations about solar panels.

1 Light

The Open University — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:00:00 GMT

We will begin by watching the first part of a specially commissioned Open University/Channel 4 television programme about our homes which features The Times architecture critic Tom Dyckhoff. The programme, The Secret Life of Buildings, looks at many different aspects of architecture and design in exploring our relationship with the buildings around us. It also shows a number of experiments to illustrate how buildings can affect our behaviour.

How to watch a programme

You will probably be used to watching television programmes for entertainment, but watching programmes for study requires different skills. To watch effectively you need to have a pen and paper handy to make notes. It is also recommended that you watch the programme more than once to become really familiar with the ideas and examples that are presented.

As you watch the first time, try to summarise quickly each little segment that forms the structure of the programme. What is the main point that is being made for each one?

Before you watch a second time, note down what you didn’t understand when you watched the first time. Were there any explanations that didn’t quite make sense to you? Did you forget any examples that were mentioned? Look through the questions that follow the programme and note down what you need to focus on to answer them.

As you watch a second time, you will find that, knowing broadly what is coming, you can be freer to concentrate on the details that you might have missed the first time. You can also try to clear up any misunderstandings you had from your first viewing, and note down the answers to any questions you are asked. Remember you can always press ‘pause’ to collect your thoughts and write more detailed notes before continuing.

2 The Secret Life of Buildings

The Open University — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:00:00 GMT

Activity 1 The Secret Life of Buildings

Allow about 40 minutes

Watch The Secret Life of Buildings. As you watch it, try to make notes about the key points made. Then answer the questions below.

Download this video clip.Video player: The Secret Life of Buildings >

The Secret Life of Buildings

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Transcript: The Secret Life of Buildings

Tom Dyckhoff

Your home is the most important piece of architecture you’ll ever experience. It’s where you spend most of your life. It’s where you express who you really are. It’s where you feel most yourself. This is somebody’s home. It’s also a work of art.

This is the Lost House hidden away in London’s King’s Cross and designed by the much feted British architect David Adjaye, the poster boy for sexy, up-market housing. He creates spaces that seduce by fusing a relationship between indirect light, materials and colour. This iconic house is almost totally black. Black resin floor, black walls, with no windows, but three light wells.

This is the kind of home we all drool over in the glossy magazines, but you could argue that it’s spaces like this that have driven our national obsession with what a home looks like and how expensive it is. Not what it feels like, or whether it’s good for us. Does it feel like a home, or does it feel like an artwork?

Suzanna Wallgren

Yeah, I think it feels very much like a home. I don’t mind at all to be in a piece of art.

Tom Dyckhoff

So then does the house rule your life?

Suzanna Wallgren

Yes, in a way, yeah. You cannot leave things out. They will disturb the feeling of the house.

Tom Dyckhoff

So what are the demands that the house makes on you?

Suzanna Wallgren

You have to have a certain upkeep. You have to polish the floors. You have to keep it tidy. You have to work on the concrete. It definitely requires maintenance, absolutely.

Tom Dyckhoff

A lot of windows. A lot of window cleaning must go on here.

Suzanna Wallgren

You have to keep very good friends with the window cleaner.

Tom Dyckhoff

But even with all this glass everywhere, the one you can’t help noticing is a lack of direct light and a pervading gloom. It’s very dark, though, as well. I mean, all the blackness. You never feel like you’re living in a bunker? Or a coffin?

Suzanna Wallgren

No, I’ve heard many things, but not that. For some reason, I never felt that this is stark or very cold feel to it. It may not be for everyone. It probably is not for everyone, but for me it is, yeah, it’s very, very peaceful.

Tom Dyckhoff

This is a beautiful house, meticulously thought through. But I’d argue it’s a prime example of an architect as artist, making a house that rules you, instead of making a house that fulfils your needs.

Most of us don’t live in a work of art. We buy places like this. You thought the Lost House was dark? Unbelievably many windows in new housing are just over half a metre squared, about the size of a pizza box. Why so small? Simple. To save money. Small windows in new homes are a real concern for Professor Foster who, for more than 25 years, has studied how a low lux or light level can effect our internal body clock.

Prof Russell Foster

Outside light is incredibly bright. Even in a cloudy day in London, you’ve probably got 20,000, 30,000 lux. The equivalent in your home would be 200 to 300 lux. In fact, people have argued that we live our lives in dim-dark caves.

Tom Dyckhoff

This is where I live. A flat built in the 1950s. And the thing I love most of all about it, the big windows. But I’m curious to see what a lack of light does to me. So Professor Foster has devised an experiment, boarding up my windows for a week to the level of a house with the smallest national average window size.

Prof Russell Foster

So what we’re going to do is reduce the light probably to something like 50 or 100 lux. Still many people are living under those sort of relatively low light levels. And then see how you cope with that reduced light exposure after about a week.

Tom Dyckhoff

It sounds very depressing. Oh, my god, what have I let myself in for? I bought this flat for the light, and I’m going to be without it for a whole week. It feels like being in prison, and the door has just slammed shut. So this light meter will detect how much is coming in here before we put the boards up. OK, that was about 200 from this position in this room. Now it’s reading about 50.

I’ve got all these different tests to do. Urine sample, that I've got to keep in the fridge and in the freezer. Fridge full of urine – that’s very nice. Blood test, got my glucose monitor. This is my sleepiness scale. It shows you how sleepy I’m feeling throughout the day.

And then these ones. These are mood ratings. Do I feel calm? Do I feel sad? Horrified? Happy? Angry? Do I feel extremely angry? I feel a bit angry at the moment. I have to be honest. The whole flat feels a bit like it’s been plunged into depression.

I feel like I’m living in a cave. Or like in a Goth’s bedroom or something. I really want to get out now. I really feel like I want to escape. But you know the most worrying thing for me? The most worrying thing of all at the moment? It’s these, look, my plants. I’m not even allowed to leave my home for a week.

Day four, very glum and very tired. There’s this sort of gloom over the whole flat. It does smell like a gentleman’s toilet. I can’t really wait for it to end now, I think. It’s horrible. I hate it. Make it stop. Not long to go now. I feel really, really glum.

Isn’t that amazing? To reacquaint yourself with the Sun after a week. I feel like I’m going on holiday, like I’m off to Saint-Tropez after a spell in the Arctic North where there’s no light. Thank goodness that’s over with. But I wonder, what was all that darkness actually doing to my body?

Prof Russell Foster

So your tension and anxiety went up significantly.

Tom Dyckhoff

Wow.

Prof Russell Foster

Your depression and dejection went up really quite a lot, but look at this. Your vigour collapsed enormously.

Tom Dyckhoff

I know I felt glum, and a bit blue, and a bit grumpy and so on, but to actually see the swings.

Prof Russell Foster

Now let’s look at the glucose levels. And I have to say, I’m a little concerned. A glucose level above six is regarded as high. And what you see is that under the dim light conditions, your morning glucose has moved from 5.7 to 6.8.

Tom Dyckhoff

So I’m sort of borderline diabetic? That’s not good after a week, is it?

Prof Russell Foster

Certainly, if that was sustained, then you’d need to bring that down below six.

Tom Dyckhoff

Shocking, isn’t it?

Prof Russell Foster

It’s quite marked actually. What was really interesting, and that urine collection was worth doing, because these data are really fascinating. If you were perfectly entrained, the body clock was exactly locked on, the period of the peaks would be exactly 24 hours, but they’re not. In fact, we’ve got a period of 24.2, which is a little bit longer, which fits with the idea that the body clock is beginning to drift. Those peaks are getting a little bit later and later.

Tom Dyckhoff

Now what is the consequence of that?

Prof Russell Foster

Well, what you’re getting is a tendency for internal desynchronisation. The master clock in the brain is at a slightly different point to the clocks in the liver, to the ones in the gut.

Tom Dyckhoff

So if I was to carry on living like this, like many people do in new homes, what would be the result?

Prof Russell Foster

You’re more likely to be depressed.

Tom Dyckhoff

Blimey.

Prof Russell Foster

You are increasing your chances of immune suppression, metabolic abnormalities such as diabetes two. And, of course, all that is associated with increased levels of susceptibility to disease.

Tom Dyckhoff

That’s quite incredible, isn’t it. That’s quite an incredible reaction, response.

Prof Russell Foster

We are an extraordinary species, and perhaps just profoundly arrogant. We think we’re independent of so much. We can do what we like, when we like. And something as trivial as the amount of light we see each day is not considered as important.

Tom Dyckhoff

And yet it is. It’s fundamental.

Prof Russell Foster

It’s critical.

Tom Dyckhoff

I’m astonished by what a lack of light can do to us. Luckily for the house builders, most of us can get out for a top-up of natural light. But for those who can’t, and for all of us in winter, staying at home in a house with small windows can certainly damage your health. And it gets worse. It’s not just light they skimp on. This country is building some of the smallest homes in Western Europe, and it’s having a devastating effect.

End transcript: The Secret Life of Buildings

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a.What is the unit for measuring light?
b.What are the light levels:
- i.outside in an urban centre?
- ii.in the average British home?
c.In the programme, the presenter, Tom Dyckhoff, is tested to see how he reacts to decreased light levels. What was the light level in Dyckhoff’s home when the window sizes were reduced?
d.What different tests are carried out on Dyckhoff and what two main things do you think they are measuring?
e.What are the effects on Dyckhoff from living with reduced light levels for a week?
f.What might these effects lead to if the experimental conditions continued?
g.How could these effects be reduced for people living in conditions of low light?

Discussion

a.The unit for measuring light is the lux.
b.The programme states that:
- i.the amount of light outside in London is between 20 000 and 30 000 lux
- ii.inside the average home it is between 200 and 300 lux.
c.In the programme, it was shown that the light levels in Dyckhoff’s home were reduced to about 50 lux when the windows were boarded up.
d.Dyckhoff has tests on his urine and blood to determine, among other things, his glucose levels. He also completes a couple of questionnaires: one to determine how tired he feels and the other to determine his mood.
The blood and urine tests measure directly how the body is responding chemically, while the questionnaires test how Dyckhoff is feeling during the experiment. Usually the two things are related, but that is not necessarily the case. So, the blood and urine tests are measuring what we call objective things (for example, things that we can accurately put a number to) and the questionnaires are measuring what we call subjective things (for example, things that we feel).
e.After the one-week experiment, Dyckhoff’s glucose levels have gone up, his feelings of tension, anxiety and depression have all increased, his activity and vigour have decreased, and his ‘body clock’ has begun to drift, in what the tester calls ‘internal desynchronisation’. Of course, this cannot definitely be due to the decreased light levels alone – Dyckhoff was also not allowed to leave his flat for the week long experiment. So as well as being subjected to low light levels, he was also probably not getting the same amount of exercise and social interaction as normal – which is likely to have also contributed to his increases in anxiety, depression, etc. and his metabolic changes.
f.If the experimental conditions were to continue, Dyckhoff might be more likely to develop diabetes, suppression of the immune system, increased susceptibility to disease and depression.
g.One way to reduce the effects would be to spend more time outside in the open, where light levels are highest. A good walk is a cure for a lot of things!

Measuring light

The Open University — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:00:00 GMT

Activity 2 Measuring light

Allow about 15 minutes

Do you think the light levels in your home are above or below average? If you have a smart phone you can download a free light meter app, such as ‘whitegoods’. Then, to calculate an average value you could take readings at midday, and in the centre of every room in your home. Add these readings together and divide by the total number of rooms to reveal a good estimate of the average levels of light in your home.

Figure 1 A smartphone displays the ‘whitegoods’ light meter app

RSS feed for Seeing the light

Introduction

Learning outcomes

1 Light

How to watch a programme

2 The Secret Life of Buildings

Activity 1 The Secret Life of Buildings

Transcript: The Secret Life of Buildings

Discussion

Measuring light

Activity 2 Measuring light

Discussion

3 Here comes the Sun

Temperature and comfort

Activity 3 Temperature, warmth and coolness

Discussion

Heating a home

Activity 4 Heat from the Sun

Discussion

Activity 5 Other sources of heat

Discussion

4 What is your orientation?

Activity 6 Sunlight and orientation

Discussion

Building shapes and climate

Homes in different climates

Activity 7 Climate and house design

Discussion

Activity 8 Which home for which climate?

Discussion

5 The solar century

Activity 9 Which roof is better for solar panels?

Discussion

Activity 10 Katie’s house

Question 1

Discussion

Question 2

Discussion

Study note: information from figures

Activity 11 Information from figures

Discussion

Your home’s orientation

Activity 12 Your home’s orientation

Discussion

Conclusion

References

Acknowledgements