Daylighting performance in UAE traditional

buildings used as museums

..............................................................................................................................................................

Khaled A. Al-Sallal*, Amira R. AbouElhamd and Maitha Bin Dalmouk

UAE University, Al-Ain, UAE
.............................................................................................................................................
Abstract
This article investigates how daylight performs in traditional UAE buildings that were turned into
museums with specific focus on museum lighting requirements and effect on artefacts. The study used
several methods such as on-site measurements, data collection and analysis, and computer simulation. It

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depended on the climate-based daylighting metric daylighting autonomy. The lighting performance was
evaluated throughout the space of a representative model of traditional museum considering the design
of the exhibit space and the light sensitivity of traditional artefacts. The results were analysed and design
recommendations were presented to improve the overall luminous environment.

Keywords: daylighting; museums; artefacts; visual comfort; UAE

*Corresponding author: Received 3 September 2017; revised 4 October 2017; editorial decision 18 October 2017; accepted 19
k.sallal@uaeu.ac.ae February 2018
................................................................................................................................................................................

1 INTRODUCTION
After the discovery of oil in the Arab Gulf region by the end of
1950s and the resulted boom of the economy, new buildings
were constructed to accommodate new needs of the emerging
modern society. This resulted in demolishing a huge number of
traditional houses and replacing them with modern buildings
that could allow efficient and flexible spaces. Later on, the rele-
vant authorities realized the importance of these traditional
buildings in reflecting the country’s identity, and consequently
enforced laws to preserve the significant ones. Such a wise deci-
sion is highly supported by research that see many values in
preserving the traditional architecture of a place considering it
as a rich source of inspiration and learning from history-long
experiences [1, 2]. Hence, many of these UAE traditional build-
ings were converted to museums and their rooms were used as
display spaces. Some of the highly sensitive holdings in these
museums are historical documents such as letters between
rulers, contracts, deeds or itineraries describing pearl industry.
Therefore, strict action is needed to ensure the conservation
and protection of these vital documents. Nevertheless, these
traditional buildings were not originally designed or built as
museums and thus concern about their performance as museums
with regards to the lighting environment is raised in this article.
The traditional house usually takes a courtyard form configur-
ation with limited size rectangular room geometry (average for
large rooms = 3 × 8 m2) and limited size windows some of which
looking upon the streets, while others looking upon the court-
yards. In a previous study, Al-Sallal and Bin Dalmouk [3] investi-
gated the daylight performance in a traditional museum in
Al-Bastakia District in Dubai. It found several problems in the
museum spaces such as the existence of direct sunlight and high
illuminance levels that could damage the artefacts and produce
uncomfortable visual environment. This article investigates these
issues in greater depth depending on survey of several case stud-
ies, data collection and on-site measurements, and the use of
more detailed and accurate simulation techniques.
2 BACKGROUND
Natural lighting is one of the most important aspects that need
to be studied thoroughly during the design of any building.
Daylighting in museums plays a very significant role in achieving
the design goals of museums. The missions of a museum are: (1)
collect and exhibit art and historic artefacts for public education
and enjoyment, (2) protect the collection from damage and (3)
do this all as efficiently as possible [4]. A museum will not be
able to serve its function without both good presentation and
effective preservation of its artefacts. Significance of daylighting
in museums is due to many reasons. It ensures a positive psy-
chological impact needed for serving its function, ensures greater

International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2018, 13, 116–121

© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press.
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doi:10.1093/ijlct/cty003 Advance Access Publication 2 March 2018 116

satisfaction through the artwork gratitude, enhances the architec-
tural experience, and helps to reduce the energy consumption
and annual electric lighting load (thus, lowering the emission of
CO2 and mitigating the greenhouse effect) [5–9]. However, day-
lighting is not easy to control and poor daylight design could
result in deteriorating the exhibited artefacts (that are usually
rare and precious) and impairing visual comfort of visitors.
Moreover, light has the highest ultraviolet (UV) radiations and
thus can cause non-reversible damage to the artefacts [10, 11].
Light as a radiant energy can cause both photochemical dam-
age (fading, yellowing, darkening of colours, loss of strength, fray-
ing of fabrics and even dramatic colour changes of some
pigments) and photomechanical damage (structural damage; sur-
face cracking, lifting of surface layers and loss of colour) [6, 12].
The extent of this damage depends on the sensitivity of the exhib-
ited material, the intensity of light and the time of display. High
illuminance levels, and long exposure time can accelerate the
damage of the exhibited item [13–15]. Therefore, if daylight is to
be allowed to penetrate into a museum, careful attention must be
given to allow just the required amount of light into the space
[16, 17]. One crucial way to minimize artefacts’ damage caused
by light is using proper light sources following Illuminating
Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) guidelines.
Annual light exposure is a metric that reports the cumulative
amount of visible light incident on a point of interest, measured
in Lux-hours/year [18]. To control light exposure on sensitive
artefacts when designing art galleries and museums, this metric
is used with another metric that gives the maximum illumin-
ance level that may fall on the point at any given time (i.e. max.
Lux). According to IESNA Lighting Handbook and the conser-
vation centre for art and historic artefacts, the maximum illu-
minance limits within a display room and the recommended
light exposure limits for exhibits in terms of Lux-hours per year
should remain within the limits outlined in Table 1 [19, 20].
Daylight is variable over time. The illuminance in a space varies
at different times of the day and year and depends on the sky
conditions. Daylight analysis in museum space using the aver-
age illuminance over a period of time provides only limited
value [18]. Climate-based metrics such as daylight autonomy
(DA) can present a more accurate and complete picture on day-
light performance over time. The standard definition of DA is
the percentage of a defined period during which interior illu-
minance exceeds a target illumination level [19]. In this study,
it is used to assess the number of hours (or percentage of time)
when a particular light level is exceeded; which is useful in the
case of illuminance on an artefact in a museum.
Table 1. Recommended illuminance limit and total exposure limits in
terms of illuminance hours per year, adopted from IESNA Lighting
Handbook [19, 20].
Type of material Max illuminance (Lux) Exposure time (Lux-hr)/year
Highly sensitivity to light 50 50 000
Low sensitivity to light 200 100 000
No sensitivity to light 1000 300 000
Daylighting performance in UAE traditional buildings used as museums
3 METHODS
The study applied several methods that included survey of archi-
tectural drawings and photographic images, retrieval of design
information, statistical analysis of design data, on-site measure-
ments, survey and analysis of traditional artefacts, and computer
simulation. At the outset, site visits were conducted to several
traditional UAE museums. Figure 1 shows one of them, the
famous H.H. Sheikh Saeed House Traditional Museum in
Dubai. In this stage the typical displays in these museums were
classified according to their sensitivity to light and their possible
locations and heights were considered. This helped to evaluate
the total acceptable illuminance exposure limits based on each
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classification type. On-site measurements were also conducted
to find the reflectance of the interior and exterior surfaces. Data
for the architectural design such as dimensions and geometry of
the display spaces were collected and analysed based on surveys
of building images and architectural drawings including floor-
plans, sections, elevations and construction details. This analysis
helped to derive the average values of descriptive design para-
meters that helped to create a generic model (a representative
prototype for UAE traditional museums). Significant design
information for the display rooms, the courtyard, and the ver-
anda in these traditional museums are presented in Tables 2–4.
The design parameters considered in generating the representa-
tive prototype were determined based on common form config-
uration in UAE museums, room geometry and size, windows
size, number, orientation and window-to-wall ratio (WWR)
derived from the real cases. These are as follows:
(a) Building form configuration: courtyard building.
(b) Exhibit space geometry: rectangle 8 × 3 m2.
(c) Window size: 60 × 90 cm2.
(d) Number of windows: 4.
(e) Orientation: NW, SE.
(f) WWR: 7%.
Figure 1. Different views of H.H. Sheikh Saeed House Traditional Museum,
Dubai.
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K.A. Al-Sallal et al.

Table 2. Design information of the display spaces in the traditional Usually these traditional displays are exhibited to public on
museum for three case studies. horizontal, vertical or sloped surfaces; this depends on the type
Case study Depth (m) Length (m) Height (m) of display, its value and the design of the space. The current
paper focuses on the horizontal surface exhibitions.
Case 1 2 6 3 The tool used for computer simulation is the Daysim-based
Case 2 3 8 4
lighting simulation program, Diva for Rhino, which is capable
Case 3 3 9 4
Average 3 8 4 of performing hour-by-hour lighting calculations for an entire
year based on climate-based daylight metrics (CBDM). Daysim
uses the widely used program ‘Radiance’ as the lighting simula-
Table 3. Design information of the courtyard in the traditional museum tion engine. The accuracy of the adopted method has been
for three case studies. established in a previous stage of this study; and discussed in
Al-Sallal and Bin Dalmouk [3]. It was based on a comparison
Case study Depth (m) Length (m) Height (m)
between the simulated results versus the actual measurements

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Case 1 8 8 8 by calculating the expected errors; which was found as ±4%.
Case 2 16 24 9 DA is used as a main metric for evaluating the daylighting
Case 3 10 20 8
Average 12 18 8
in the display spaces based on the local weather data and the
clear sky model. When running the simulation cases for each
type of artefacts, the illuminance threshold level was entered in
each run depending on the material sensitivity. For example,
Table 4. Design information of the veranda in the traditional museum
for three case studies.
the entered threshold level for highly sensitive artefacts was
50 Lux. The program then calculated the percentage of the
Case study Depth (m) Length (m) Height (m) number of hours per year when the illuminance is exceeding
Case 1 2 14 4 this safety level. The general lighting performance was simu-
Case 2 3 12 4 lated based on virtual sensors that were distributed equally in
Case 3 3 15 4 the space. Also, the lighting performance across the room is
Average 3 14 4 simulated along an axis that was chosen at the centre (i.e. from
the external wall that have the windows to the opposite one).

Typical displays exhibited in the UAE traditional museums’ can

be seen in Figure 2. They were classified based on their sensitiv-
ity to light as follows:
• Highly sensitivity to light
(a) Invaluable documents and manuscripts such as letters, treat-
ies, agreements, decrees and maps that have literally shaped
the history of the country.
(b) Old currency notes, stamps and postal stationery.
(c) Traditional clothing and textiles.
• Low sensitivity to light
(d) Human skeletons and bones from several excavations
recovered from graves that date back to the third millen-
nium BC.
(e) Female jewellery, some of which are prehistoric consisting
mostly of bead necklaces agate, bronze and soft stone.
• No-sensitivity to light
(f) Some of the earliest coinage, silver ornaments and costume
accessories.
(g) Traditional weapons including rifles and guns; in addition
to bronze daggers and arrow heads that date back to the
first, second or third millennium BC.
(h) Ceramic and basalt pottery, some of which are prehistoric
consisting mostly of vessels and plates.
(i) Old currency coins.
(j) Tombs made of stone.
(k) Utensils made of bronze and stone.
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
General lighting evaluation: the DA was calculated when WWR =
7% in the Southeast (SE) orientation for the three types of arte-
facts: (1) high-sensitive to light, (2) low-sensitive to light and (3)
no-sensitive to light materials. This helped to understand the gen-
eral lighting behaviour for all types of exhibits.
The grid simulated results for the percentage of DA of the
three types of artefacts are shown from Figures 3–7. Generally,
the lower the DA the better performance of the room design
for preserving the artefact. The percentage of hours exceeding
the illuminance threshold level at any location should be mini-
mized, as this will reflect a safer environment for the artefacts.
The results showed that the DA for the no-sensitive (to light)
materials are lower than that for the low-sensitive materials,
and the latter is lower than that for the high-sensitive materials.
This resulted from the illuminance threshold level that was set
for each of the three classifications of the studied artefacts:
(a) High-sensitive artefacts = 50 Lux.
(b) Low-sensitive artefacts = 200 Lux.
(c) No-sensitive artefacts = 1000 Lux.
Highly sensitive to light artefacts: Figure 3 presents the contour
distribution of the DA for the high-sensitive artefacts inside the
display room. It is clear from this figure that for the studied

118 International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2018, 13, 116–121


Figure 2. Some typical displays in the traditional UAE museums.
Figure 3. Daylighting autonomy (DA) distribution for the high-sensitive (to
light) artefact.
Daylighting performance in UAE traditional buildings used as museums
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arrangement, very high DA levels are recorded for this type of
artefacts in the entire room. It is also noticeable from Figure 4,
which illustrates the DA along the centre axis, that its values
are very high (around 97% of the total operation hours receive
illuminance levels that are equal to or more than the threshold
level of 50 Lux). Additionally, the trend of this curve along the
room depth is almost stable with a bit lesser value (better per-
formance) near the windows. Therefore, this type of artefacts
would require major design solution to ensure their protection.
Placing them in a separate room (reserved as a special room for
high-sensitive artefacts) that has no windows at all and is
arranged with electric lighting system providing very low Lux
levels is highly recommended.
Low sensitive to light artefact: Figure 5 presents the contour
distribution of the DA for the low-sensitive artefacts inside the
International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2018, 13, 116–121 119
K.A. Al-Sallal et al.

100
Daylighting Autonomy 80
(DA) %
60

40

20

0
0.187 0.565 0.937 1.312 1.687 2.062 2.437 2.812
Depth from windows location (m)

Figure 4. Daylighting autonomy (DA) levels on the central axis for the high-
sensitive artefact.

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Figure 7. Daylighting autonomy (DA) distribution for the no-sensitive to
light artefact.

100

Daylighting Autonomy
80

(DA) (%)
60

40

20

0
0.187 0.565 0.937 1.312 1.687 2.062 2.437 2.812
Depth fom windoe location (m)

Figure 8. Daylighting autonomy (DA) levels on the central for the no-
Figure 5. Daylighting autonomy (DA) distribution for the low-sensitive
sensitive (to light) artefact.
artefact.

UAE, it showed a potential to improve visual comfort by redu-

100 cing glare and brightness contrast between surfaces of the back
Daylighting Autonomy

80 and front space of the studied room. The produced effect

depended on the tilt angle of the light shelf and the time of the
(DA) (%)

60
40
20
0
0.187 0.565 0.937 1.312 1.687 2.062 2.437 2.812
Depth from window location (m)
Figure 6. Daylighting autonomy (DA) levels on the central axis for the low-
sensitive artefact.
display room. The DA ranges from 10% as minimum to 95% as
maximum with an average of 54%. Figure 6 shows that the DA
profile starts with around 28% near the outward wall (the one
with windows) and it sharply increases till it peaked at the first
third of the room with 74% DA at 0.937 m depth. After that,
this profile continues with a gradual decrease till it reaches 60%
DA at 1.687 m depth, then the trend of the curve becomes
stable with the lowest DA of 54% at the full depth of the room.
It is recommended for this type of artefact to use some sort of
an intelligent system that helps to provide solar shading and
uniform daylighting throughout the display room. In a previous
study by Al-Sallal [21], when a reflective light shelf was added
to north window of an educational building in Al-Ain city of
year. Another recommendation that could enhance the overall
illuminance environment is to use local shade trees as recom-
mended by Al-Sallal and Abu-Obeid [22].
No sensitivity to light materials: the threshold illuminance
level for this artefact type is 1000 Lux according to Table 1. As
expected, the DA levels is very low for this type as only few
hours of the year exceeded this high illuminance threshold level
as illustrated in Figure 7. The results along the room centre axis
shown in Figure 8 support this observation. It is also clear from
this figure that the trend of the DA curve is stable with values
<7% and average of 4%. Therefore, this type of artefacts shows
the safest performance inside the display room.
5 CONCLUSION
The study applied different methods. The survey of architec-
tural drawings and images assisted in extracting the needed
design information for lighting performance analysis of these
traditional museums. These design data analysis were used to
create a representative prototype to evaluate the daylighting for
different types of artefacts. Also, on-site measurements were
conducted to classify the exhibited artefacts based on their light

120 International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies 2018, 13, 116–121


sensitivity (high-sensitive, low-sensitive and no-sensitive). The
DA was simulated to investigate the impact of the resulted
luminous environment on each type of artefact. The most
important findings can be outlined as follows:
• The high-sensitive artefacts to light showed high levels of
daylighting autonomy (>97%) with a stable trend. This indi-
cates a severe danger that requires a major solution to ensure
high protection of the artefacts. Therefore, it is recom-
mended to use separate rooms that have no windows and
equipped with low-illuminance electric lighting system.
• The low-sensitive artefacts are generally safer than the high-
sensitive ones with an average 54% DA. A recommended
measure to improve their safety is to add an intelligent shad-
ing system on the façade that helps to control the direct sun
and provide uniform daylight distribution.
• The no-sensitive artefact shows the least DA levels compared
to the other ones. This indicates that this type is the safest
based on design parameters found in the traditional UAE
museums.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by funds from the Office of the
Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies at
UAE University under Fund Number 31N234.
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