Health and wellbeing

Aim

To ensure daylighting, artificial lighting and occupant controls are considered at the design stage to ensure best practice in visual performance and comfort for building occupants.

Our contribution

Glass has a major impact on visual comfort, most notably by having a direct role on three aspects: glare control, daylighting and view out.

Glare control is the visual sensation caused by excessive and uncontrolled brightness. To avoid this, we have developed CLIMAPLUS/CLIMATOP SCREENS (double and triple-glazed units) that integrate an electrically-operated venetian blind within the cavity. This way, depending on the position of the blind and the orientation of the slat, occupants can regulate the sun entering the room to avoid excess glare while ensuring that daylight floods into the living space.  

Glazing has the most significant impact on daylighting criteria as its main characteristic is its transparency. To define the appropriate glazing from a daylighting perspective, we need to select:

• A high light transmission of the glazing (%) that corresponds to the percentage of visible light striking the glazing that will pass through;
• An appropriate selectivity meaning that the glazing can admit as much daylight as possible while preventing transmission of as much solar heat as possible; and
• On a maximized surface, larger panes for instance or a lighter structure.

At Saint-Gobain, we offer a wide range of products that can suit local conditions (outdoor and building conditions) and customers’ expectations. We have also developed some services, such as the Calumen Live digital tool, to define the most appropriate glazing for a project based on required performances.

Below you will find some examples of high-performing glazing for facades and their performances:

Regarding view out, our main focus is on glass transparency and size of the glazed surface. Since 2018, we can provide the largest glass panes in the world (more information here) with maximum overlength dimensions of up to 18 x 3.21 meters. In addition, several recent innovations reduce the burden on structure by enhancing laminated glass strength (STADIP BUILDER) or having lighter fixing systems (SPIDER SYSTEMS SGG POINT). Dirty glazing can also be limited thanks to BIOCLEAN (easy to clean glass) and external water condensation with VIEWCLEAR (anti-condensation glass).

These solutions offer new perspectives to build transparent structures, wide glass frontages or large format facades, opening up the landscape to a whole new view in order to maximize visual comfort.

Finally, in offices, electric internal lighting is used for more than 60% of working hours on average. Using greater window/glazed surfaces would provide an illuminance (lux) level appropriate to the tasks undertaken, requiring users to turn off light during the daytime and to benefit from natural light.