“I came to Sweden from California in Spring time, wondering why everyone on sunny days stopped in the street and turned to the sun. The following Spring when I had spent a year in Sweden and experienced several months of limited daylight, I was one of them.“
Daylight is essential for us human beings. The importance of daylight for health, well-being, sustainability and the consequences for architecture has been documented in several studies. The sun has been worshiped in many cultures both from a spiritual and aesthetic experience as well as of health and well-being. With the way we today live our lives where the most of us are spending more than 90% of our time awake indoors, we need to master the natural light in our buildings, for the sake of the people and environment. For buildings’ occupants, daylight has been shown to boost performance, improve sleep, provide a connection to the outside and increase comfort.
Daylight is not easy to control, since it appears differently depending on location and the daily, seasonal and annual dynamics of daylight. The plenitude of sunlight or the lack of the same demand that the architectural profession treat it in respect for the local conditions.
The architectural profession lead the way to explore the role of daylight in architecture and inspire new thinking by considering the role of daylight as an ever-relevant source of light, energy, wellbeing and joy.
The following architects have embraced daylight indoors in inspiring ways. Let’s have that in mind when we put a closure to this year and welcome a new inspiring 2020.
Zaha Hadid Architects project in Bejing, China, Leeza Soho’s atrium spirals upward at a 45-degree angle in order to maximize the amount of light able to reach every floor.
(Below: Leeza Soho Tower,Beihing, China / Zaha Hadid Architecture)
Norman Foster at Foster + Partners is intrigued by natural light from above, with many many projects showing just this. One client is Apple which has strived for the perfect sky in their store – a strategy to enhance naturalness and sustainability.
(Below 1. Rechstag New German Parliament/ image Rudi Meisel, Foster + Partners,
2. Apple Store Fifth Avenue, New York/ image Aron Hargreaves, Foster + Partners)
If something characterize architect Tadao Ando it is the pursuit of light.
(Below Koshino House, Japan, Image: Kazunori Fuijmoto)
SUNLIGHT DEEP INTO BUILDINGS AND FAR AWAY FROM WINDOWS
With Parans’ solution you are able to create sunlight filled spaces in every building. Thin, flexible fiber optic cables lead the sunlight far from windows and deep into the building where the sunlight from windows cannot reach. As common as it is to have windows along the facade and that way lead the natural light inside, as common it could be to lead sunlight via a Parans system deep into the building – to every room, on every floor.
