This post was inspired by a story recently told to me from a friend who is working with architects in the renovation of a school building. When asked to provide daylighting in classrooms that otherwise had no windows, the architect suggested solar tubes, otherwise known as SDD’s for Solar Delivery Devices. Good idea!

However, these classrooms where on the first floor of a 2-story building, and only one SDD was proposed for each classroom. This would not work out very well.

Rather than spend rather a lot of money going this route, there are excellent ways of providing simulated daylight in interior spaces. Since the diffusers from the solar tubes look a lot like light fixtures anyway, one might even take the simulated ones for real.

Here are two photos of other architect’s projects where SDD’s were well utilized.