An Inquiry into Relation between Natural Lighting and Daylight in the Architecture of Dome Houses in Historic and Contemporary Iranian Mosques

Bearing in mind the importance of daylight in creating a spiritual mood in places of worship, an inquiry into the rich architecture of Iranian mosques, in terms of how they exploit daylight, can result in planning and design guidelines for contemporary architecture. In order to investigate the relation between skylights and the mosque’s lighting conditions, the present research compares daylight qualities (distribution, direction and angle, glare, radiance) and quantities (diffusion, luminance) of five dome houses of Isfahan’s Safavid and Qajar mosques—Imam, Sheikh Lotf-ollah, Hakim, Seyed, Rahim Khan—with those of two contemporary Tehran mosques—Ghoba and Sahrak-e Gharb’s Great Mosque. This is initially done through quantitative measures of lighting levels and daylight distribution patterns during a year, followed by a study of the relation between light distribution patterns and the space below (dome house and the qibla direction) as qualitative measures. The adopted method is descriptive-analytic, based on field data and documents, with help from light measurement devices which collected field data thrice a day and generalised to a year-long period through Radiance software. Using criteria from lighting standards literature lighting levels, distribution, direction, angle and its resulting visual quality were analysed in both plan and viewers’ levels. The results show that the use of daylight in studied cases can initially be studied quantitatively in terms of provision of minimum requirements for rituals and study. This can then be followed with quantitative studies, which is to do with the spiritual quality of the space, and includes shadows and lights in interiors highlighting special points such as the altar or Quranic calligraphies. The findings of this research include those about the relation between skylight positioning, their dimensions and proportions, their attachments such as shadings and the like with the quality of light from the quantitative data, and those about the relation between worship activities and daylighting, highlighting certain points in order to create a spiritual quality.