Automatic Shades Inspire Office Frustration

The Seattle building Brent Rogers designed for his architecture firm, NBBJ, has won awards for its natural light, flexible workspace, and sustainability. Yet when Rogers moved in, he soon grew frustrated by a key element of the green design: the automated window blinds, which went up and down with little apparent reason. “At times it seemed random,” recalls Rogers. “And at times it was random.”

Maximizing daylight can cut a building’s lighting bill by as much as 40 percent, sustainability consulting firm Atelier Ten estimates. While window blinds are important in accomplishing those savings, it’s fiendishly difficult to get automatic shades to work correctly. That’s because light is difficult to model, and the systems are often tied to heating, cooling, and light fixtures. Allowing workers to change one element can throw off all the others, says Atelier Ten director Mark Loeffler. The search is on for ways “to keep buildings looking like cool glass boxes in the sky but still controlling daylight,” Loeffler says.