To overcome this issue a typology of architecture has been selected; the library.

Because of its particular function libraries have a very peculiar relation with the daylight. They require both a functional light and aestethic light. Functional light have to be both very high to allow the readers to read and very dim to protect the books that are stored in the library. Aesthetic light must celebrate the function of “storage of culture” and at the same time “exposer of culture”, that library contains in its definition.

The way of approaching the daylight in libraries has known numerous design solution throughout the years. The architectural panorama is vast, and hence the selection of cases study takes count to represent all the mains configurations. This imply libraries that seeks the light from the top, libraries that seeks the light from the sides, and the mix of this one. The cases study are situated in different locations at different latitudes. This choice allow to understand which is the influence of latitude in the daylighting desing.

Talking about daylight means firstly talking about feelings, humans perceptions and human health. Therefore the first part of this thesis will be dedicated to these issues. In which way the daylight is connected with the concept of comfort and how this creates requirements, that a well studied lighting design must take in consideration.

Secondly the concept of climate will be taken in review in order to better understand what will constitute the main tool of this thesis.

In fact, the daylighting analyses that will support the architectural design analyes will be based on a set contemporary powerful tools that bring information both in terms of quantity of daylight and both in terms of quality .The most innovative tool is the climate-based-approach. This predict in a statistical approach the daylighting behavirour of an architecture throughout an year. This type of approach will be passed in review and will be compared to the other approaches that allow to understand the quantity of light in a space.

The quantitative analyses will be matched to the qualitative analyses of the solar path in order to have a complete view of the problem of daylight.

One time collected all of these datas, the libraries will be analysed singularly in a first moment and compared altogether in a second moment.

This approach will allow to understand the relation between every analysed architectural configurations and the daylighting behaviours of that specific design.

In which manner the daylight can be used in libraries to emphazised its functions and which are the paths that a conscious daylight design could follow.