Daylight is vital to our health and well-being and is the only truly sustainable light source. Making more use of daylight in place of electric lighting can help reduce energy consumption. These are just two reasons why prioritising daylighting in cities is important for developers, architects, politicians and society as a whole.
Given its importance to all our lives and well-being, ensuring our homes and places of work have access to adequate daylight is a mainstream issue. Daylight must be enshrined in the regulations that shape our cities and considered in the earliest design phases of any building development. It is crucial to embrace daylighting design at the beginning of a holistic 24 hour lighting design process, where buildings are designed for daylight first and supplemented with electric lighting later. This approach can increase in the quality of interior spaces and achieve significant reductions in energy consumption from lighting.
A unique light source, daylight is variable by day, by season and by location, driven by the movement and position of our planet around the sun. Understanding this relationship allows us to create design solutions specific to the project context and climate, generating geometrical forms that are informed by the movement of the sun. This allows architecture and the built environment to be informed and shaped by daylight.
Explore this interactive showcase of selected Arup daylighting projects from across the world.