Almost everyone prefers beautifully balanced daylight in buildings, especially when it comes from windows that also provide great views. Yet for many reasons, much of our current built environment simply doesn’t provide these views and daylight. What can you do, especially if you don’t have anything to say about the building siting, massing, skin, and fenestration in the first place?
It’s certainly very hard to change structures after they’re built. To use a medical analogy, we often treat the symptoms of an "ailing" building with technology — replicating sunlight with electric light and developing ever more complex lighting systems — rather than the underlying cause, which is lack of daylight and views. Traditionally daylighting design has not been the purview of the lighting designer, but this is changing, as innovative firms take a more holistic approach to lighting and daylighting design that includes close integration with architecture and other building systems.
At LightSPEC West in Los Angeles on September 21, Teal Brogden and Venna Resurreccion of HLB Lighting present a talk entitled "Experiencing the Daylight Dynamic." HLB is one of the few lighting firms in the U.S. with a deep and robust practice in daylighting design, and the team has developed an exemplary practice in integrating daylight with electric light. Brogden and Resurreccion will focus on the design process and the many health and wellness benefits of daylight and views through a series of exemplary case studies. They will describe ways in which regenerative lighting design uses daylight first before considering electric light, and how the two can be balanced. Using data on the impact of views and daylight, the lighting designers will demonstrate real estate value, productivity and other metrics from studies of schools and daylight, and health outcomes from hospital rooms with access to views and daylight. They will also evaluate specific qualities and forms of architecture that provide optimal views and daylight and how these can be put to best use for electric light as well.
“Daylight is a necessity for the physiological and mental wellbeing of occupants, and electric lighting alone cannot fully replace it."—Venna Resurreccion, HLB Lighting
This talk will also reveal the possibilities for lighting designers to evolve their professional practices by capturing important daylight and window treatment scope and collaborating directly with architects, engineers, and building owners. This is an important new area for many lighting designers, and will present challenges as it’s outside the traditional scope of designers and specifiers who typically concern themselves with with electric light and controls alone.
Regardless of their applicable experience with daylight-driven design, attendees can greatly improve their understanding of design with electric light. Light is a dance with architecture, regardless of its source. And daylight is perhaps the best place to start.
I encourage you to experience what’s sure to be an excellent talk at LIghtSPEC West!
Get to know our expert
In addition to his role as program director for LightSPEC West conferences, CLIFTON STANLEY LEMON is a contributor to LEDs Magazine and CEO of Clifton Lemon Associates, a consultancy providing strategy, marketing, and education services to the lighting and energy industries.
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