Biomimicry as an Approach for Achieving Visual Comfort in Elderly Care Facilities

Abstract

The elderly population increase had caused a worldwide demographic change, shedding light on elderly care institutions typology such as nursing homes, hospice, home care, and retirement homes. And, as the elderly spend most of their time indoors, visual comfort is of utmost importance to ensure an age-friendly environment. Daylighting can play a very important role in sustainable strategies for interior design. It has the potential of bringing environmental, economic, and health benefits in addition to aesthetic possibilities. In the elderly care facilities, daylighting use is a highly recommended to create adequate conditions for moving from darker interior to brighter exterior, achieving efficient and comfortable visual aspects and reducing glare. The thesis aims to explore biomimetic concepts as a tool to apply daylighting strategies in the elderly care facilities and investigates the visual comfort and light perception of the elderly, especially in transitional spaces between the interior and the exterior. It identifies needed daylighting strategies to achieve visual comfort aspects in elderly care facilities. The thesis also examines biomimicry as a concept to design overhangs as the daylighting strategy identified and looks into the resulted daylighting strategy in Cairo, Egypt clear sky with a desert climate. The thesis consists of three parts and ends with conclusions and recommendations for future research. The first part consists of chapter1, addressing the importance of elderly design factors and identifying visual comfort factors for the elderly. Then Chapter 2, covering the second part, recognizing the aspects of elderly care facilities' visual comfort and daylighting strategies needed in transition spaces from indoor to outdoor. The third part consists of chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 investigates biomimicry as a tool to enhance visual comfort and daylighting strategies while Chapter 4 calculates the effects of biomimicry-inspired overhang options on visual comfort.