DAYLIGHT SYMPOSIUM 2015
Videos and interviews
The 6th VELUX Daylight Symposium
Video from the event


Paul Bogard
James Madison University, USA

Paul Bogard is an author of The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light (Little, Brown, 2013) and editor of Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark (U of Nevada Press, 2008). A native Minnesotan, Paul has lived and taught in Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Reno, northern Wisconsin, and Winston-Salem. A graduate of Carleton College, the University of New Mexico, and the University of Nevada-Reno (PhD in Literature and Environment), Paul is now an assistant professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he teaches creative writing and environmental literature. Find him at paul-bogard.com.


Deborah Burnett
Benya Burnett, USA

Deborah Burnett is an internationally recognized registered interior designer, color authority, licensed general contractor, keynote presenter and former National TV personality. She is a leading authority in the practice of Epigenetic Design targeting the connection between human health and built environmental light. A past national spokesperson for Sylvania Lighting, she serves as a national spokesperson for the American Society of Interior Designers. An accomplished journalist, her interviews and articles appear in US newspapers and popular magazines including the Washington Times, Health, AARP, and Readers Digest. Her evidence based light & health articles appear internationally in Professional Lighting Design, Mondo Arc, Architectural SSL, Disano, Lume, and Bridge for Design. Most recently, Burnett was retained as the lead author for developing a built environmental WELLNESS STANDARD designed to promote occupant nighttime sleep and reduced daytime fatigue through epigenetic design interventions.


Lonn Combs
Easton + Combs, USA

Lonn Combs is an architect and co-founder of EASTON+COMBS, an award winning architectural practice with emerging international recognition in design excellence and building innovation through the convergence of material practice, integrated technological and environmental methods. Combs is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, receiving the prestigious ‘Rome Prize’ for Architecture in 2012. Lonn Combs is also Assistant Professor of Architecture and the Director of the Master of Architecture program at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. As Director, Combs leads the development of digital design, emerging fabrication, environmental analysis, and new materials within the curriculum, while also coordinating research based design studios with a commitment to architecture as a project of interdisciplinary knowledge and social engagement.


David Nelson
Foster and Partners, UK

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 important early projects including the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and the Hammersmith Centre. In 1979 he joined the team working on the design of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, eventually sharing design responsibility for the project. He was made a Director of Foster Associates in 1984. He returned to London in 1986 and became the director responsible for a wide range of projects, including the American Air Museum at Duxford, Century Tower in Tokyo and projects in Asia, Europe, Australia and the USA.

Since becoming a Partner in 1991, he has worked on many projects including the Reichstag, New German Parliament in Berlin. Recent projects include the Petronas University of Technology in Malaysia, Stanford University Laboratories in California, the McLaren Technology Centre and Production Centre in Woking, the new Supreme Court in Singapore, the Florence High-speed Railway Station, an office tower and mixed-use development in Sydney, Australia, Central Market and Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and the Apple Campus in California. David Nelson was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the RIBA in 2002.


Christoph Reinhart
MIT, USA

Christoph Reinhart is a building scientist and architectural educator working in the field of daylighting, sustainable building design and environmental modeling. At MIT he is leading the Sustainable Design Lab, an inter-disciplinary group with a grounding in architecture that develops design workflows, planning tools and metrics to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings and neighborhoods. Design tools originating from the group – such as DIVA, DAYSIM and umi – are used in practice and education in over 90 countries.


Koen Steemers
Cambridge University, UK

Koen Steemers is an architectural and built environment academic with an international profile, Professor Steemers was recently named in BD’s inaugural list of the “50 most influential people in UK sustainability”, including others such as James Lovelock and Jonathan Porrit. He studied Architecture at the University of Bath and subsequently joined Energy Conscious Design (now ECD Partnership, London), a pioneering architectural practice. His PhD work at the University of Cambridge developed new insights in to the links between urban design and environmental performance which generated a series of funded research projects and drew the attention of academics and practitioners. He was invited to act as consultant, notably to the Richard Rogers Partnership on numerous projects, and became a Director of Cambridge Architectural Research Limited in 1991. Koen was appointed Head of Department in 2008 after five years as Director of the Martin Centre and Head of Research for the Department.

Koen is currently leading a team of a dozen researchers undertaking studies into visual perception, occupant behaviour and environmental performance of architectural and urban space. He coordinates a Masters degree, regularly supervises ca. ten PhD students and has produced over 170 publications, including 10 books. Koen is a registered architect and Director of CH+W Design; environmental design consultant (Director of CAR Ltd); consultant to UN-HABITAT; past President of PLEA (Passive and Low Energy Architecture international association); Guest Professor at Chongqing University, China and Kyung Hee University, Korea.