by Christina Augustesen

How can we design buildings that stimulate our senses, follow our human needs and allow us to live in balance with nature? Buildings, which combine the use of daylight and artificial light and use the “double dynamic” potential of controlling daylight and artificial light, might stimulate our senses and human needs, as well as enhance the feeling of living in balance with nature.

Christina Augustesen presenting “Architecture for the Senses” at the 6th VELUX Daylight Symposium in London.

The Sense […]

by Peter Andres

Evolution has conditioned human beings to flourish in daylight. This is borne out by many involuntary functions we are unable to influence, such as the automatic adjustment of our eyes to brightness, distance and colour, our circadian rhythm of day and night, and, not least, the production of vitamin D through exposure of our skin to sunlight, an essential process for the regulation of bone growth and calcium levels in blood. Furthermore, the uplifting spirit that we all […]

by Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson’s art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. Eliasson strives to make the concerns of art relevant to society at large. Art, for him, is a crucial means for turning thinking into doing in the world. Eliasson’s diverse works – in sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installations – have been exhibited widely throughout the world. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the […]

by Paulo Scarazzato

In recent years, the interest in daylighting has experienced an unquestionable growth, not only among architects but also among the general public. At the same time, many people are also pursuing a healthier lifestyle, caring more about their bodies and their nourishment. If this weren’t true, how else could we explain the success of fitness centres and natural foods? In my opinion, this is a direct consequence of the saturation of the model that I call “artificial life”, […]

by Christoph Reinhart, MIT

The question of successfully providing daylight to people has two distinct sets of solutions: We can try to get more people outside or more daylight inside of buildings. Ideally, we follow both approaches synchronously. In order to do so requires integrated urban design approaches that holistically address questions of creating comfortable outdoor spaces, providing sufficient amenities to accomplish high walkability levels (people have to do something outside) and finally accomplishing sufficient access to daylight within buildings. Such […]

by David Nelson, Foster + Partners

In this lecture David Nelson, Head of Design at Foster+Partners, demonstrates the versatile opportunities in designing with daylight through the impressive global design portfolio of his firm. Other examples from China to the US and Europe showed that daylight as a key to sustainable buildings – is a global movement.

David Nelson shares design responsibility for all Foster + Partners’ projects as joint Head of Design. He joined Foster Associates in 1976, working on a number of […]

by Anna Pellegrino, Politecnico di Torino

Daylighting has always been an essential and irreplaceable resource in the field of architecture. It can be considered a resource from a design perspective, since it contributes significantly to the character and appearance of indoor spaces in buildings, due to such features as quantity, distribution and direction, through effects of light and shadow, and as a result of its variability in space and time.

It is a resource from an economic perspective, since daylight availability and the […]