As a recognized expert on lighting and daylighting design, Brianna Coston leads daylighting design for IDeAs Consulting. She has done lighting and daylighting design for over a dozen deep green projects including several with LEED Platinum Certification. She has also led the lighting and daylighting designs for several AIA award winning projects, five projects targeting Net Zero Energy/Net Zero Carbon and one building targeting Well Building Certification. Brianna is devoted to human driven design with a focus on how occupants interact with their space.
Brianna holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Building Technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In addition to understanding the interaction of lighting and daylighting, Brianna’s expertise extends to the key software needed to integrate daylighting into her lighting designs. She is an expert user of Radiance, the state-of-the-art software for daylighting design where she is able to conduct simulations of different glass types to develop High Dynamic Range (HDR) photorealistic images to help architects visualize the effect of glass selection on the aesthetics of a building. She can also use the program to model complex window geometries or louver configurations including sophisticated material such as anisotropic, light-scattering surfaces that are common in many shading and daylighting devices.
This allows us to work with the rest of the design team to analyze innovative solar controls and optimize the interaction of lighting and daylighting to maximize daylight autonomy, improve visual performance, minimize the overall energy and predict glare levels for at any hour of the day and day of the year. In addition to using Radiance she is also adept at using DIVA, Rhino, AGi32, and Elum Tools – the lighting add on for Revit created by Lighting Analysts (the authors of AGi32). In 2017 Brianna presented on Integrated Design Workflows at the Radiance Conference and DIVA Workshop and she has also taught classes on Elum Tools to architects, engineers and lighting designers at the PG&E Pacific Energy Center.