By offering the International VELUX Award we hope to inspire architect students around the world to work with daylight not just as an external factor of architecture, but as a central issue - a crucial, primary aspect of design.
The importance of daylight to architecture and to people’s quality of life is a keystone in the foundation of VELUX. “Bringing light to life” is our philosophy in everything we do, linking natural resources with human needs.
www.thedaylightsite.com
“Architecture has always served as a kind of clock that organizes life into temporal patterns. It offers a place to sleep, to eat, to work and to relax. Just as the rhythm of the sun has organized life, so has architecture provided the material framework for it to take place. This has all been so self-evident that hardly any theory has been devoted to the subject. Sunrise, sunset, get up and go to bed again; that’s about all there is to say about it…But now a new trend is emerging – something which is hard to pin down, but clearly irrevocable. Light is not what it used to be”, wrote architect Ole Bouman, chief editor of Archis Magazine, in the Award Yearbook that was published in connection with the International VELUX Award 2004.
To find out about the changes that Ole Bouman refers to and much more inspiration and discussion on the role of daylight in architecture you may visit www.thedaylightsite.com. The site provides a forum that shares relevant materials, tools, and information on daylight in architecture and related topics. Among other things you will find suggestions for literature, links to websites as well as research papers and articles. You will also find the presentations from the VELUX Daylight Symposiums 2005 and 2007 where daylight quality in buildings and tools for daylighting design were in focus.
The site is run by VELUX with the purpose of facilitating knowledge sharing in the field of daylight and architecture. We hope that the site will contribute to your research and ideas in connection with your project for the International VELUX Award 2008.