Effect of Daylight Glare on Passive Design in Government Office Building

In July 2009, the government of Malaysia has launched Green Technology Policy, which has outline steps to achieve sustainable development and environmentally friendly and under the 10th Malaysian Plan (RMK-10), the government of Malaysia has stipulated that all government offices building to be incorporated with sustainable design features. However, the questions on the design still ponders and requires a research on whether the implementation of the design on the government office building has met the occupant visual comfort or does the adoption of passive design strategies, such as building orientation, windows size and control window system has taken all the consideration on the penetration of daylight into the building without compromising to the outside view. Study will be performed on a number of government office buildings that were built in particular year on the daylight glare using daysim simulation based on the passive design strategy to obtain an explicit comparison of the effect of glare inside the officer. Qualitative survey with 67 respondents from five different government office buildings has been conducted on the occupant’s perception toward visual glare due from daylight penetrated from window in selected working space to verify the data analysis done earlier for a consistent result between the glare effect inside the working room and occupant’s perception inside that room. Finding from the survey shown that 61.2% of the respondents agreed that there is a glare from the windows of the office and 52.2% respondent agreed that internal shading device such as window blinds reduce the discomfort glare from the windows. The research will be useful as basic recommendation and it can take into account of the indoor comfort especially for the occupant visual comfort in designing a government office building.