Daylighting: Natural Light in Architecture

Host Street, Bristol

Architect and lighting design Jeremy Johnson-Marshall

Client Kinneir Dufort Design Ltd.

The majority of the Case Studies are examples
of new buildings, where the daylighting
strategy has been one of the important
determinants of the design. In the case of Host
Street, this was an existing nineteenth century
listed industrial building, where ‘new use’
demanded additional floor space in the roof
which had seen no daylight.
In the nineteenth century cane sugar had
been processed on the plantations and sent to
England as crude molasses, where it was
refined. Host Street is a typical industrial
building erected for this purpose, adjoining
the docks in the centre of the city. It has cast
iron columns supporting heavy timber floors,
and had been converted into offices, studios

and prototyping workshops for a firm of

industrial designers.

The top floor however was limited by a

1.7 m headroom below heavy roof truses, and

to gain the extra space required it was

decided to remove the existing roof and to

raise it, allowing the addition of an extra

floor. This created the opportunity, indeed

the necessity, to consider the entry of natural

light to the newly created floor areas.

The method adopted can be be seen in the

accompanying plans and sections. The new

roof matched the old at the front, but a glazed

gable was included at the rear, allowing

daylight to penetrate to the new floor areas.

The proposals permitted better daylight to

the new areas than that available to those

below. Due to the listed nature of the

buildings, these dramatic changes were the

subject of long discussions, but the final results

have achieved a working commercial building

retaining its open industrial spaces.

A series of photographs taken on

completion of the project clearly illustrate the

quality of the spaces, and the success of the

daylighting strategy adopted. Without the

careful consideration of the natural lighting

adopted this project would have been

untenable.

98 Daylighting: Natural Light in Architecture

Original roof section. This shows the 1.7 m headroom

Jeremy Johnson-Marshall