What is The Daylight Award Community?
The Daylight Award Community is a professional network of researchers, architects, educators and students who are bringing new knowledge, innovation and applications of daylight, leading to an increased benefit and appreciation of its importance for people and the environment
The Daylight Award strives to be more than an award. Therefore we are reaching out to a wider community of younger researchers and architects with the purpose of showcasing what they are working with right now – by asking the questions: What are your personal reflections when we are talking daylight? And what inspires and drives you?
featured TESTIMONIAL
GERALDINE
QUEK
Ph.D. Candidate/Doctoral Assistant · EPFL
(École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne)
Daylight as well as artificial light is shared by everyone across the globe, yet as light changes rather quietly without a notice or a sound, we often forget to appreciate its unique qualities. My fascination with fleeting moments of light and their connection to space led me to my interest in design, and now I question how the design world contributes to the data and science of light and space.
— Yunni Cho
SELECTED DAYLIGHT TESTIMONIALS
The community around daylight is built through the tremendous work done by researchers, architects, educators and students. Here we shed light on some of them.
EXPLORE
The following reflections are shared by people in our daylight community.
What does daylight mean to you?
DAYLIGHT REFLECTIONS
“Daylight as well as artificial light is shared by everyone across the globe, yet as light changes rather quietly without a notice or a sound, we often forget to appreciate its unique qualities. My fascination with fleeting moments of light and their connection to space led me to my interest in design, and now I question how the design world contributes to the data and science of light and space.”
— Yunni Cho
“To design comfortable daylit spaces in the digital age, we have to improve our knowledge on the threshold between comfort and discomfort and use evidence-based workflows. In my Ph.D. research, I aim to extend the applicability of prediction metrics for discomfort glare from daylight through targeted user studies.”
— Geraldine Quek
“Living in Scandinavia, daylight for me is the sensation of wakening up after a dark winter hibernation. We see people clearing their calendars as soon as the first spring sun is out. So it means mood, energy and motivation for me to get my daily “daylight shower”
— Mathias Sønderskov Schaltz
“Daylight means a lot for me, it brings happy moods, warm feelings and positive energy, it makes buildings and cities vivid for people, it brings colours to all the things we perceived, it is a fundamental element for aesthetic and health. It is also a key field of my research area, related to architecture research and healthy indoor climate.”
— Changying Xiang
“Daylight means quality and well-being to me. Daylight is an essential element in architectural design, just like the choice of finishing materials and the type of opening. An architectural project that does not consider daylighting at an early stage will always remain incomplete. The qualitative aspects are difficult to teach because they involve multidisciplinary and cultural aspects.”
— Federica Giuliani
“Daylight fills me with joy and gratitude because of the consistency, variation, and beauty the sun, the sky and the reflected light nurture and reveal the environment with – knowing that it’s a huge resource, which not only rejoices me – but everybody, who wants to enjoy it and make use of it. On the other hand, daylight can also be harsh creating glare and heat, it is a natural force which requires consideration when creating buildings and interiors.”
— Katja Bülow
“Daylight is the only non-negotiable quality of a space: It brings life, happiness, clarity, and good health. Whereas all other features are improvable, a space that does not have light is doomed.”
— Florencia Collo
“Daylight inspires me daily. Every morning, daylight streaming into my room is the greatest and most refreshing moment of the day. It gives me a sense of renewal and possibilities. I love to see the changes in daylight throughout the day.”
— Won Hee
“Daylight is an essential element in environmental design. It has a significant role in enhancing users’ perception of a space and saving building energy. Understanding the daylight performance in the built environment is a compulsory task for architectural designers and engineers.”
— Jiayu Pan
“I have a hybrid background in architecture and environmental design, and for me, daylight is important for various reasons: It may not only visually modify a space by creating contrast or reflections, but it can also make your work environment more pleasant, as well as give comfort and provide safety. What is even more important, it has the power to make you feel well by entraining your biological”
— Victoria Soto Magan
“To me, daylight means health, feel-good, hygiene, and freshness. 99% of human history, we have lived outside the cities and have been exposed to daylight. By 2050, this will dramatically change, and up to 70% of the population will live in denser cities where access to daylight becomes a rare possibility. ”
— Mandana Sarey Khanie
“Daylight then for me has a sociological dimension whose interpretations should be examined differentially amongst social groups and contexts. Through understanding daylight from users’ perspectives, daylight’s practicality and sensory qualities come to the fore.”
— Maiss Razem
“For me (and I am sure for many others!), daylight is a source of joy and life. This delightful aspect of light, especially as it interacts with architecture and with nature, is what I am trying to capture in my scientific work.”
— Kynthia Chamilothori
“We have a craving for daylight in so many aspects of our lives that daylight means to me simply what I want, what everybody wants.”
— Niko Gentile
“For me, daylighting is the starting element to work with when developing a new architectural object. The landscape around one building, surroundings in the form of newly erected buildings, or new finishes on the facades, are all changeable elements, and the only element always there in its original condition is the characteristic daylight, defined by the solar microclimate. ”
— Biljana Obradovic
“For me, daylight is an exceptionally crucial element of our human lives that contributes to health, happiness – and wellbeing.”
— Jogilė Cibulskytė
“Daylight is life. It is essential for our health, biological functions and phycological feelings.”
— Paola Jara
“For me, daylight is a shaper. In an unmaterial sense, it defines cultures, behaviors and habits. At the same time, tangibly, it shapes buildings and spaces and plays an essential role in our spatial/sensory experience.”
— Natalia Giraldo Vasquez
“The daylight is essential in our lives, to place us in time and space and not only shape our experience of the buildings but also impact our emotional states.”
— Sara Molarinho
“In the north, where I come from, daylight is absent during the winter, so we celebrate its return in the spring. There is no greater thing than the first rays of sunlight in the early days of March.”
— Mimi Ravn
The Daylight Award Posters
The Daylight Award posters bring community reflections on
what daylight means to them. Download, print, save or give -
they will light up the day.
