Corona-Blog
Why such a blog? Well, we think that spreading knowledge about the health benefits of daylight can positively impact public health and is perhaps particularly crucial now that we are facing a viral threat which forces us to spend even more time indoors. Our ‘Corona-Blog’ is not intended to contradict official recommendations, call into question the logical containment measures adopted in many countries, or provide miracle solutions. It aims to open a space for reflection and exchange where daylight experts can share their vision on the varied roles daylight could play to help us remain healthy and functional during this challenging period. For more information about the blog and the topics to be explored, read the post Why a ‘Corona-Blog’?.
Interested in contributing to this blog? Please contact us at office@daylight.academy.
31 October 2024
Celebrating Dark Nights
We are lucky that our planet rotates. During the day, the sun’s intense radiation warms the earth and brightens our beautiful blue atmosphere. At night, in the sun’s dark shadow, the earth cools, sending its heat back out into infinite space. Because of its 24-hour rotation, no one face of the planet gets burned by unrelenting radiation, or is forever deprived of the sun’s life-giving energy. However, the extreme physical contrast between these two conditions—very bright days, and very ...
31 October 2024
A Night and Day Difference
Skylines around the world—from Denver to Delhi—are rapidly rising and densifying to accommodate growing urban populations. The efforts are well-intentioned; making cities compact can reduce energy use. Yet it can also introduce other environmental and public health problems, such as a diminished distinction between night and day.
31 October 2024
A word for darkness
I wish to speak a word for darkness, for that natural quality on which so much depends, the matching half to natural daylight, both so valuable for life. It makes sense to consider natural darkness on Halloween, a celebration that plays with our fears, because it’s our fear of the dark that often separates us from the value of natural night. Just as we take for granted the benefits of daylight, so we live in ignorance of the dark. But this can change.
25 April 2024
Daylight should be a priority for urban planning
Daylight is essential for ecosystems and for the physical and mental well-being of people. Despite this, many cities have followed a strategy of densification as a way of preventing urban sprawl and reducing energy consumption – but at the cost of daylight for both people and nature. This is not sustainable urban planning: instead, we need to treat daylight in cities as a limited resource that needs to be planned and managed carefully, much like water or energy.
1 February 2024
How does the human biological clock respond to the colours of twilight?
Dusk and dawn are key times for biology, providing a signal to organisms that it is the end or beginning of the day. As the sun rises and sets, the spectrum of light in the environment undergoes distinct changes. Not only does the overall intensity of light decrease – there are striking changes in the colour of light changing from blue to yellow or vice versa. Human eyes are set up to detect these changes. A recently published study has now taken a close look whether calibrated changes along ...
4 January 2024
Practicing Daylight: a transdisciplinary, artistic research project
Practicing daylight Practicing daylight is a hands-on series of experiential workshops dedicated to a sustained dialogue between artistic and scientific ways of seeing, analyzing and sensing. It invites to a time and place of conversation, meeting and relations, without disciplinary boundaries and beyond conventional epistemic systems. Our focus on the “and” and not on the “therefore…”, with emphasis on “contact” and not “contract”, is driven by ...
15 November 2023
Measuring and mapping the daylit world
Daylight is vital for humans, as it illuminates the world and helps us navigate, read, and appreciate visual art. Light influences us profoundly beyond vision, namely by synchronizing our circadian clock and ensuring that we run on “environment time”. Specialized light-sensing receptors in the eye capture photons and turn them into signals to tell the brain whether it is day or night.
14 November 2023
The Daylight Revolution: redefining Architecture Through Lighting
Alberto Campos Baeza, the renowned Spanish architect, once wrote that light, like gravity, is an unavoidable aspect of architecture [1]. According to him, every architect, as he does with the tape measure, spirit-level and plumb line, should carry a compass, and a photometer. The compass is necessary to measure the quality of the light by knowing the position of the sun, and the photometer to measure the quantity of light. Both instruments can be found in a lighting studio or a research ...
14 November 2023
Trønderlåna
“Trønderlåna has been the most common type of main building on farms in central Norway.”
14 November 2023
The Cathedral – a heavenly measuring instrument
“With us it is Easter every day, except that Easter is celebrated once a year.” Martin Luther
29 June 2023