RICHARD HOBDAY

The idea that buildings which admit sunlight are in some way healthier than those that exclude it is a very ancient one. As the old Italian proverb points out 'Dove no va il sole, va il medico' or 'Where the sun does not go, the doctor does' . This saying may well have been coined during the early days of Imperial Rome, when solar architecture, sun-worship, and sunlight therapy went hand in hand. The Romans put great faith in the healing powers of their sun-gods and dedicated temples to them. They were also firm believers in preventive medicine, and relied on sanitation, good water supplies, hygiene, exercise and sunbathing to keep themselves healthy. Also, from about the first century AD, they were designing their villas and public-baths to capture the sun's rays, and so reduce their heating costs. To the Romans, passive solar design would have been entirely compatible with their ideas about medicine, and their religious beliefs.

However, with the Fall of Rome, and then the Dark Ages, the principles of solar architecture were largely ignored, or forgotten. The advantages of getting solar radiation into buildings to prevent disease were not appreciated for more than a thousand years. Indeed, it was not until the latter part of the 19th century that sunlight again came to be regarded as important to health, thanks to a series of scientific discoveries.

The first, and most significant breakthrough was made in 1877, when two English scientists found that light, and especially sunlight, has a bactericidal effect - even when it has passed through glass. Their work prompted other scientists to investigate the effects of exposing bacteria to the sun's rays, and it was not long before sunlight was being hailed as 'Nature's Disinfectant', and an important weapon in the fight against infectious disease.

It has recently been discovered that clinically depressed patients recover more quickly in sunlit wards than dark wards. In another recent study, deaths were found to be more frequent amongst heart attack patients who were put in the sunless north-facing rooms of a cardiac intensive care unit than those fortunate enough to be in sunny rooms.

Admitting sunlight into hospital wards seems justified in that it improves the morale and recovery of patients; but there may be an even more fundamental reason for doing so. An increasing number of bacteria becoming resistant to drugs, and there are dire warnings that we are on the threshold of a post-antibiotic era. If this proves to be the case, and the diseases of the past cannot be controlled by antibiotics, there will have to be changes in medical practice, and ward design. In these circumstances there will be a far greater incentive to produce sunlit buildings than is the case at present.

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