Affiliation
Institute of Architecture
The primary concern of the research group is to re-establish and further develop an understanding of how spatial proportions, geometry, structural systems, and the placement of openings for light – in relation to a specific context and geographical location – shape the quantity and quality of daylight within interiors. Over the past century, an increasing reliance on electric lighting, combined with technological developments in glazing and solar shading, has largely replaced this fundamental spatial understanding. The result is often a practice in which daylight is managed through compensatory technical solutions, rather than through geometry and proportion.
The research group is based on the premise that increasing urban density, stricter requirements for energy efficiency, and reduced façade areas make it ever more important to work more consciously and critically with the relationship between openings for light, structures, materials, and space, seen in connection with the specific context. The group examines how daylight and construction can be integrated as active and guiding premises in the early stages of architectural production, and how this may contribute to improved spatial quality, health, and well-being.
The group will place particular emphasis on architecture in northern latitudes, where low sun angles, prolonged overcast skies, and significant seasonal variations impose specific demands on space, proportion, geometry, and openings for light.
The group is conceived as an interdisciplinary arena in which architects and engineers collaborate, with particular emphasis on the interaction between quantitative and qualitative approaches as a methodological tool. There is clear potential for further development of building physics perspectives within the research group, integrated into architectural investigations of space, construction, and daylight.