What prompted VELUX to instigate the Award and what do they hope to offer to architect student communities worldwide? We talked to CMO Michael K. Rasmussen about his expectations to the Award 2008.
Why did VELUX instigate the International VELUX Award?
Our company has the vision of bringing daylight, fresh air and quality of life into buildings. An important aspect of fulfilling this vision is to challenge and develop the current perceptions and practices regarding daylight and architecture. And who can do this better than students of architecture? They are free to think out of the box and unfold their creativity without limitations. We want to stimulate students of architecture from all over the world to realize their potential for innovative thinking and to provide them with an opportunity to be part of an international event. This is the third edition of The International VELUX Award and the Award has grown tremendously both in number of entries and recognition from the architect communities all over the world.
What does VELUX hope to achieve by the Award?
As daylight engineers the Award provides us an opportunity to place daylight centre-stage for thousands of young minds worldwide to contemplate and explore from their individual perspectives. I hope to see student projects that support our long-term goal to raise the awareness of the importance of daylight in architecture. The International VELUX Award is a very important element in our strategy to be “the home of daylight” so to speak, where other initiatives are the web portal “thedaylightsite.com” that we sponsor and our magazine “Daylight & Architecture”, which we publish three times a year.
CMO Michael K. Rasmussen, VELUX
On a more tangible level it is my experience that the student projects give us first-hand insight into an amazing pool of creative ideas that interpret daylight and architecture in its widest sense, providing interesting inspiration for our long-term strategies for business development.
What do the students achieve by participating in the Award?
Taking part in the previous Awards in 2004 and 2006 I have witnessed what I would call an explosion of energy expressed in the projects and in the interaction between the students. It has been fascinating to experience the fantastic drive of the students as well as their creative and playful approaches taking full advantage of the possibilities available to them – as architects, as people in a global world and via new technologies and media.
More specifically, as a student participating in the Award you get the opportunity to apply free, experimental thinking on a topic chosen by yourself related to daylight and architecture. You get the opportunity to investigate this topic together with fellow students and your teachers. Your project will be evaluated by an international jury with renowned architects and building professionals and exposed to the general public on the IVA website and in connection with the UIA world congress in June 2008 in Italy. In the end the winners will be invited to the Award event, which is planned to take place in Europe during November 2008 where they will meet the other winning students, the jury and other representatives from the international building community.
What do you hope to see in the entries for the International VELUX Award 2008?
Right now climate changes and their implications for the planet and for people are a top priority on the global, political agenda. Buildings are in fact major energy consumers, and solutions for reducing energy use and CO2 are urgently called for leaving us at VELUX with a special responsibility as part the building industry. The headline for us in this quest for new solutions is “sustainable living”, which means that we are looking for solutions that take into account sunlight as a source of energy and lighting – influencing health and well-being of people – at the same time reducing the energy consumption of buildings. To reflect this concern we have included a new perspective in the Award brief encouraging projects that focus on the importance of sunlight and daylight for sustainable architecture that takes into account the rhythms and balances of nature.
Apart from this we hope to see creative and innovative explorations of daylight in architecture from even more students from all over the world. It is fascinating to be part of a truly global mind storm regarding daylight and architecture – for the students as well as for all the other people involved in the Award.