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This paper deals with energy efficient glass in office buildings in Amman city. The objectives of this paper are to understand the role of efficient glass in reducing lighting, heating, and cooling demands and the amount savings to achieve. In addition to suggest main guidelines to follow when designing glazed office buildings for architects and stakeholders, the evaluation of thermal and daylighting performances for a glazed building in Amman was performed by Ecotect and some equations. The reductions in lighting, heating, and cooling loads and energy cost were evaluated through a comparative simulation among three glass types considering four optical and thermal variables: U-value, visual light transmission (VLT), solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC), and solar coefficient (SC). Results show that the basic factors to enhance buildings energy behavior are: building location and the availability of solar radiation at the selected location. In addition to the building orientation and glass optical and thermal properties, the energy efficiency of buildings increases when the building orientation is between 125° and 235°, and the installed glass has U-value less than 1.5 Wm2/k, VLT between 20% and 50% and SHGC and SC less than 0.2. The implementation of these properties reduced the building electricity cost for lighting, heating, and cooling by 45%-53%.

This work deals with daylighting for indoor quality atmospheres, considering building skins and side-views. We also tested the vision perception provided by highly glazed façades. Several Spanish restaurantswere analyzed, and twowere assessed andmeasured under outsidemidday high luminance. The selected pictures can be identified as restaurants via MIT Scene Recognition software and are used to demonstrate working, stressful, and socializing atmospheres. Light and vision detailed analysis was performed defining three workplanes-"table", "person", and "outside"-from the viewpoint of the user. The obtained DGP (daylight glare probability) for the first case (facing southeast) shows a higher glare probability than the second (facing north). In both restaurants, there is notable spatial contrast and high information content. If, in the overall perception, the adaptation from the intermediate workplane is considered, the DGP is lower than if only one workplane is considered. The conducted indicative survey shows that there is a high light contrast, and there are some undesirable visual elements. The studied fully glazed façades tend to provide fraught atmospheres. These would be useful for some stimulating activities; however, for calm restaurants that offer tasting menus with quality food, it seems that the studied fully glazed façades may not be suitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]