Video29 min 33 sec

A cross-disciplinary conversation about daylight between Marilyne Andersen – The Daylight Award 2016 laureate for daylight research, and a former chairman and winner of Dutch Daylight, architect Lars Courage.

Research in daylight is a never ending quest for dynamic, multifaceted quality in spaces. It brings opportunities to connect to remote research fields, from neuroscience to psychophysics or computational engineering, and carries an emotional connection in every aspect.

Marilyne Andersen

The Daylight Award 2016 laureate for daylight research

BIOGRAPHY

Mailyne Anderson

Marilyne Andersen, Professor of Sustainable Construction Technologies at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and Co-Founder of OCULIGHT dynamics Sàrl. Andersen is a Full Professor of Sustainable Construction Technologies and Dean of the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering of EPFL (ENAC). She is heading the Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design (LIPID) that she launched in the Fall of 2010. Before joining EPFL as a faculty, she was an Assistant Professor then Associate Professor tenure-track in the Building Technology Group of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and the Head of the MIT Daylighting Lab that she founded in 2004. Andersen´s research focuses on building performance in the architectural context in general, and the use and optimization of daylight in buildings in particular. Specific topics she has been working on include: visual and thermal comfort; design tools in the early stages of the design process; goal-driven approaches in design; performance visualization; design implications of effects of light on circadian photoreception and health; advanced glazing and shading systems, daylight redirecting devices; video-based approaches in photometry. Laureate of The Daylight Award 2016 for Daylight Research and member of the Jury from 2018 to 2022.

Lars Courage

Lars Courage, Architect and Creative Director of Courage Architecten, and president of `Dutch Daylight´ from 2015 to 2023. Courage was unconsciously influenced by from an early age by the power of daylight and view to the outside. Throughout his development as an architect, the influence and especially the application of daylight-driven design has developed from unconsciously competent to consciously competent and in 2012 his office was the winner of the Dutch Daylight Award. The office´s designs are composed with open light support structures, large glass surfaces where comfort and energy-consciousness go hand in hand; from single family homes, collective housing, municipality center to car sales facilities. Since 2004, `Dutch Daylight´ has been actively committed to placing daylighting in the central place it deserved in architecture and the built environment. `Dutch Daylight´ not only wants to point out the high potential of daylight to architects, designers and urban planners, but also to make clients, policy makers and other parties involved aware of the importance of good quality use of daylight.

Per Arnold Andersen

Per Arnold Andersen, Architect MAA and Director of The Daylight Award. On behalf of the VELUX Foundations he has managed the award, that honors architects and researchers for their achievements, since 2015. He worked for more than twenty years as an architect and project manager in major Danish architect offices until he joined the VELUX Group from 1999 to 2021. Since 2003, he was the driver of the VELUX Group’s daylight strategies and initiatives and he has been a driving force in the making of the first European standard for daylight in buildings. Andersen worked continuously with the International VELUX Award for Students of Architecture since its start in 2004. Today, the award is the biggest international award for students working with daylight in their projects. In 2005, he initiated the VELUX Daylight Symposium, which is an established international venue for sharing knowledge and ideas across disciplines within architecture and daylight research and from 2008 to 2018 he was editorial team member of “Daylight and Architecture”, the D/A Magazine for architects. Today, Per Arnold Andersen serves as special advisor to the VELUX Group and to the VELUX Foundations.

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