Daylight in a Circular and Sustainable Built Environment

Overview

Daylight is a critical yet often underexplored resource in the transition toward a circular and sustainable built environment. As a renewable natural resource and a fundamental connection to nature, daylight supports both building performance and human health.

This interdisciplinary project explores how daylight can act as a catalyst for regenerative practices in the built environment, ensuring that circular strategies—such as design, reuse, retrofits, repair, and component reuse—preserve resources while prioritizing occupant health and wellbeing.

By examining daylight through the lenses of social, environmental, and economic sustainability, the project investigates how circular design approaches can reduce energy demand and carbon emissions, support adaptable and long-lasting buildings, and help keep materials and components in use longer through thoughtful design and reuse.

Objectives

• Evidence Synthesis: Categorize research and case studies that show synergies between daylight and circular and sustainable design, focusing on benefits for people (health, wellbeing), place (amenity and quality of life), and planet (biodiversity, resource preservation).
• Gap Analysis: Identify current limitations in research, education, regulation, policy, and practice to outline a future agenda for daylight in sustainable cities.
• Holistic Health: Integrate expertise from the DLA community to demonstrate opportunities in building retrofit and component reuse (e.g., circular façade elements and glazing) that preserve resources while realizing the health benefits of daylight.
• Dissemination: The project aims to share findings through a dedicated DLA report and research study, with opportunities for webinars and conference contributions.

Context

In the transition toward a circular built environment, architecture must balance resource preservation, building performance, and high-quality indoor environments. This project explores how design approaches can move beyond isolated goals—such as energy efficiency or component reuse—toward holistic frameworks that treat daylight as a fundamental resource for human health and environmental performance.

From the reuse of façade elements such as windows and glazing to the integration of solar-responsive technologies, the project positions daylight as a key resource in the decarbonization of future cities. Daylight also plays an important role in broader ecological systems. As the primary energy source driving natural processes, it enables the growth of regenerative materials (from construction products to consumer goods).

By aligning with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the project seeks to ensure that as buildings and cities become more resource-efficient, they also become healthier, more vibrant spaces for human life.