In this day and age, in which the newspapers carry a new story on the prevalence of cancer almost daily, we are very aware of the need to wear sunscreen, especially in summer between the hours of 11am and 3pm. We are less aware, meanwhile of the need to screen the buildings we reside in from the sun – though there is a whole range of brise soleil specially adapted to this purpose. And, while buildings are evidently not at risk from cancer, they should be causes of concern: careful upkeep of our buildings exteriors can help keep the insides running well. Energy efficiency, for example, can be greatly enhanced by controlling external factors such as heat and light. A building that uses glass louvres will normally require less internal heating and use of non-renewable fuel. And buildings with external louvres can act simultaneously as blinds and as air vents for the intake and discharge of cool or hot air. The latter, in hot climes or seasonal temperature highs, will perform much the same function as an air conditioning system – only at a much lower long term cost.

External louvres come in many shapes and sizes and can even be custom-designed and fitted to suit particular buildings. This is because their fabricators are sympathetic towards the hugely divergent styles of architecture around these days, but are also knowledgeable of their common demands when it comes to temperature regulation. To give an idea of what external louvres look like, it might help to imagine a heavy slatted blind or a set of narrowly overlapping sails. Given their installation outside, these sun-shading devices are always weather resistant with minimal maintenance required after their installation. This might be welcome news if the façade of your building presently looks shabby or is in constant need of repainting due to weather-related cracks and peels; external louvres will protect whatever lies underneath them, behaving much like defensive shields.

Glass louvres are more modernist in appearance: think of the Louvre of the Parisian art gallery and you’ll have a good idea of their style. Clearly, some more conservative home and building freeholders will not want these sorts of structures in their midst. But, given suitable space such as a courtyard or green space, these louvres can absolutely come into their own. Brise soleil perhaps tread a middle ground: more conspicuous than external louvres they are useful in the creation of walkways between buildings, jutting out like awnings from the wall.

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Anyone who has worked in an ill-ventilated building in hot weather or in the midst of radiators running on overdrive will know how agonising such an experience of heat can be. Headaches become a recurring theme, backs and foreheads drip with sweat and levels of productivity run at all-time lows. Working in cold buildings can be equally uncomfortable of course: fingers can be heard cracking at their keyboards and many cups of tea or coffee must be provided simply to keep the office workers functioning. The latter nippy conditions are often not even the fault of low quality insulation or an inefficient heating system; quite conversely, the chill factor in the workplace often results from expensive air-conditioning systems going into overdrive and leaving employees feeling thirsty and irritable. Happily, both overheating and underheating can be prevented quite easily with the latest innovations in brise soleil, glass louvres and external louvres.

Indeed, the answers to the above issues are not so tricky to find. Among glass louvres, external louvres and brise soleil, the latter are preventative innovations, for example, that conquer the cause of overheating at its source: using a special cut of glass that has all the markings of an object of high design, the brise soleil is effectively an advanced reworking of the parasol or awning that helps prevent glare by stopping direct sunshine from entering a given building. An extra bonus that compliments the brise is its capacity to make a building more private, thus conjuring an air of intrigue around an enterprise at the same time as allowing employees to concentrate.

glass louvres and external louvres are possibly even more warranting of praise than the brise soleil, however, for they comply with and even surpass the kind of environmental policies put forward by green parties globally. Altogether then, the above developments in building improvement technology will allow company bosses to conduct their businesses more responsibly. Directors who opt for heat-controlling investments will be recognised as those who make their employees, as well as the consciences of their clients, an absolute priority. Finally, the fact remains that buying into these structural additions will actually modernize the aspect of any given office block or shop; we have only to think of the Eden project in Cornwall or Paris’s Louvre itself to realise that a business buying into shading and heating devices will be following in the footsteps of architectural success.

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As awareness of environmentally sound architecture increases and government regulations surrounding the energy impact of buildings become increasingly tight, many architectural features such as the brise soleil and external louvres have become commonplace, even if many people are unaware of their function. Many may assume that the aluminium curtains, glass louvres and sails which are increasingly an element of modern buildings, are just a design feature whereas their impact is far more than just decorative.

Given the popularity of programmes such as Grand Designs, the concept of passive solar heating and the use of more efficient insulation to reduce heating costs is now pretty familiar. However, the opposite effect, passive cooling, is rarely considered, even though it is a technique which was used by the Ancient Egyptians! Less thought is also given, outside design circles at least, to maximising the use of natural light in new buildings, thus reducing electrical costs. Solutions that work with the sun to provide maximum natural lighting without glare and overheating are also still a pretty avant garde concept.

However, the weird metal protrusions that stick out of many new buildings these days looking disarmingly like an over-sized set of IKEA kitchen shelves can help with both cooling and lighting concerns and many other more discreet design features, for example glass louvres, are also providing more than just a decorative function.

The term ‘brise soleil’ which, roughly translated from the French means ‘sun break’, refers in architectural speak to any permanent external structure which helps to stop the sun shining directly into a building. Some avant-garde architects have even built such a function into the main fabric of the building, such as Le Corbusier who created distinctive simply patterned concrete walls. More usually, a structure made of a different material is used, such as steel or aluminium louvres. These can be angled to allow a building with an expansive glass façade to be protected from overheating during the summer when the sun is at a higher angle while maximising the intake of light and warmth from the sun during the winter months when the light comes in  from a much lower angle.

The best firms are able to create detailed analyses of either existing buildings or the plans for new projects. These map out the angle of the sun during different periods of the year and make proposals based on these calculations for appropriate sun-shading. Maple Sunscreening, for example, is a company which regularly advises architects and engineers on how to use features such as brise soleils and glass louvres to meet standards for CO2 emissions and combines advice on internal sun-screening with suggestions for outdoor screening such as external louvres to create an overall scheme which maximises long term reductions in the final building’s energy costs.

Please visit http://www.maplesunscreening.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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