NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL LIGHTING IN ARCHITECTURE: ITALIAN CASE STUDIES

The paper presents three Italian case studies with EU financial support focusing on visual comfort, daylight factor, daylight distribution, iintegration of artificial light; these are themes that focus on conscious and sustainable projects of architecture, giving answers to questions related to the possibility to design with light in architecture. The research gives the opportunity to design, to simulate and monitor daylighting in buildings and to reach interesting results minimizing artificial light for energy saving. Case studies: 1. daylighting in New Meyer Children Hospital in Florence; the study has been done during the project of the building with simulation of the effect of installation of sun pipes. 2. daylight distribution in rooms with/without roof windows, in a simple model located in Rome; the case study is related to a residential family house with unutilised buffer zone that is converted in a room with vertical and roof windows. 3. daylight distribution in a historical building (1836): the Museo Bardini, Florence; the Museum was restructured with special attention to daylight, in order to avoid destructive effects on the organic materials that constitute the work of art Each of them is presented with adopted methodology, aims and results.