A unique consulting service founded by John Mardaljevic

DAYLIGHT EXPERTS

This October will mark the first anniversary of ‘Daylight Experts’ — a unique consulting service founded by John Mardaljevic.

Previously, John held the position of Professor of Building Daylight Modelling (2012 to 2021) in the School of Architecture, Building & Civil Engineering, Loughborough University (UK).

John has been at the forefront of applied daylighting research for over 25 years. After carrying out the definitive daylight validation study on the Radiance lighting simulation system (mid-1990s), he pioneered what became known as ClimateBased Daylight Modelling (CBDM) — a simulation technique now firmly established as the basis for research and industry practice worldwide.

John’s practice-based research and consultancy includes major projects such as: Daylighting the New York Times Building; Central Park Tower daylight injury evaluation (also New York); and, acting as Expert Witness in notable rights to light cases, e.g. the Chelsea Football Stadium development.

He served as the ‘UK Principal Expert on Daylight’ for the European Committee for Standardisation (20112019), and devised the formulation of the daylight performance basis of EN 17037: 2018 – Daylight in buildings. In addition to state-of-the-art simulation of daylight, John has devised novel camera-based measurement techniques to quantify daylight illumination fields for conservation purposes in heritage settings. And so the name of the company is well chosen: John’s expertise covers a very wide range of daylighting research and application.

Recent projects have included: daylight simulation benchmarks and recommendations to support the development of a brand new CBDM tool; urban irradiation modelling for thermal comfort evaluation; advising on novel methods to predict glare in challenging scenarios (helicopter landing); and, assessment of the potential for daylight injury to a unique heritage building in London.

Over the years John has developed close working relationships with a number of colleagues, and when suitable for the job in hand, John may work in partnership with one or more of those, e.g. Dr. Eleonora Brembilla (TU Delft), Dr Stephen Cannon-Brookes (CBL), etc.

John’s practice-based research and consultancy includes major projects such as a daylight injury evaluation of New York’s Central Park Tower.

CAD model used in daylight injury evaluation of New York’s Central Park Tower.

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The logo for the company contains a little bit of daylighting history — the circular graphic is probably the first ever daylight coefficient predicted using lighting simulation. It shows the inter-reflected daylight coefficients for the 145 patches of the Tregenza sky calculated at one of the sensor points in the BRE room.

Those daylight coefficients were simulated in 1995, and the BRE data (measured internal illuminance and sky luminance patterns) were used to first validate the standard Radiance prediction method, and then the CBDM implementation which became known as the 4 Component Method. Constantly enhanced/refined over the years, the 4 Component Method is unique amongst the various Radiance multi-phase CBDM approaches, and has been used as a CBDM benchmark. It is still the ‘workhorse’ for the majority of John’s lighting simulation projects.