Daylight Awareness Week 2025

Talk by Alberto Nuñez Bendinelli, University Regensburg, Germany
INSPIRATION STAGE: Hidden Connections of Nature

How we can overcome microbial resistance in plant and human health?

The use of synthetic pesticides has come at a high environmental cost due to bioaccumulation problems, non-target toxicity, and pest resistance. For these reasons, effective crop protection products are being depleted from the agricultural market at an alarming rate. Disinfection using light is possible with some compounds called sensitisers. Using light, we can create reactive oxidative species that kill microorganisms. This approach overcomes microbial resistance, a serious concern in both agriculture and human health. This presentation will focus on the basic scientific principles of using sunlight to prevent and treat infections in plants and agricultural fields. I will also discuss some of the most promising recent advances in this field.

Entry is free.
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Talk by Jan-Frieder Harmsen,  RWTH Aachen University and Maastricht University
INSPIRATION STAGE: What Shapes our Health

Discover how daylight shapes sleep, energy, and health — and why brighter days and darker nights matter.

In this talk, we explore how everyday light — especially daylight — shapes our health in powerful yet often invisible ways. At the center is the circadian clock, an internal system that tells our bodies when to sleep, eat, move, and repair. This clock is strongly influenced by light, particularly the natural contrast between bright days and dark nights. Modern life, however, keeps us indoors under artificial lighting that often lacks these cues. This mismatch can disturb sleep, reduce alertness, impair metabolism, and raise risks for diseases like diabetes or depression. In our research, we test how improving light exposure — more daylight during the day, less artificial light at night — can restore biological rhythms and improve health. By rethinking how we design homes, workplaces, and hospitals, we can use light as a simple, non-invasive tool to support wellbeing and prevent disease.

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With insights from IALD, WELL, DLA, and leading researchers, this webinar explores daylight-like conditions indoors and their impact on health, design, and circadian well-being. Join the discussion and gain perspectives from science, practice, and international thought leaders.

With an increasing evidence base that properties of daylight can positively affect people’s health and well-being, time has come to address the challenge of daylight-like conditions indoors. At present, many people spend time in spaces lit with electric lighting – at work places and in classrooms. How to design the built environment with appropriate light exposure in mind is the topic of a recent white paper by the the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD).

During this webinar their findings will be presented and commented and contextualized by researchers and practitioners selected by the Daylight Academy, the International WELL Building Institute and the Society of Light, Rhythms and Circadian Health.

Organised in collaboration with the Good Light Group, the Society for Light, Rhythms, and Circadian Health (SLRCH), the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD), and Luger Research.

This webinar is free to join.
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On 22 September 2025 – the equinox, when day and night are nearly equal all around the globe – more than 50 people collected light exposure data from dateline to dateline, with participants from across the globe, including Ghana, Costa Rica, Australia, Turkey, Norway, Germany, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and many more.

Join us as we explore this unique global dataset: discover how light exposure differs across regions and uncover the factors that shape it.

In this panel discussion, contributors will share their experiences and provide insights into how they encounter and engage with daylight in their daily lives.

Event initiated and organised by Manuel Spitschan.

This webinar is free to join.
Registration and further information

It has long been known that the quality of lighting in workplaces has a significant impact on the safety and health of employees. In recent years, however, there has been a growing body of knowledge about the effects of illuminance, the spectrum of light sources, and light distribution on the human body. Daylight has a particular influence on alertness and concentration and is the most important source for synchronizing the internal clock with the natural day/night cycle.

Therefore, according to German workplace regulations, workspaces must receive sufficient daylight if possible. How much daylight provision this means and how to reduce negative impact of less daylight availability is set out in the technical rule ASR A3.4. The Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) focuses on research in order to improve workplace conditions in legal requirements and recommendations.

The presentations of the webinar will address both the research on (day)lighting effects on employees and the requirements for daylight availability in accordance with the workplace regulations in a practical and understandable way.

The webinar will be held in German language and is free to join.
Registration and further information

What role does daylight play in raising healthy, thriving children?
This online panel explores the importance of natural light for children’s development – from supporting healthy sleep cycles and boosting well-being to preventing myopia. Experts from chronobiology, eye research, and outdoor learning will share insights from science and practice, including how schools and families can rethink daily routines and learning environments to bring children closer to daylight – and why that matters more than ever.

Because raising awareness starts early, we will also hear about a lovely new comic book, Lumi’s Delight, which introduces children to the science of daylight in a playful, engaging way. One of its creators will be on the panel to share why it is never too soon to start learning about daylight.

Speakers:

• Anna M. Biller, Chronobiology, Technical University of Munich, Germany
• Rolf Jucker, Advocate of Outdoor Learning, SILVIVA Foundation, Switzerland
• Eoin Kerin, Myopia in Children, Technological University Dublin, Ireland

 

This webinar is free to join.
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This contribution aims to discuss the challenges of daylighting in exhibitive contexts through the case-study of the iconic Gallery of the Kings, in the Egyptian Museum in Turin. This hall was significantly renovated to celebrate the Bicentenary of the Museum in November 2024, showcasing the new, specifically developed project by OMA Studio. The core feature of the design involves the re-opening of the existing windows, allowing the artifacts to be lit by daylight in a bright environment, after they have been displayed in a gloomy, evocative atmosphere since Dante Ferretti’s intervention in 2006. The research methodology and findings investigate the 2006 and 2024 layouts, comparing the properties of the materials, the new lighting fixtures, and the presence of daylight in the latter configuration. A combined approach has been adopted, encompassing both on-site measurement campaigns and digital models to simulate the illuminance levels in the room, also in the perspective of guaranteeing the preventive conservation of the artifacts. The results of this work have been presented as a MSc thesis in Architecture for Sustainability, at Politecnico di Torino.

This lecture is free to join.
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Our documentary “The Daylight Revolution – A Scientific Journey” has been selected by the Films for Future Festival for its 2025 edition.

The film takes you on a journey across the globe, unveiling the hidden powers of daylight. Watch pioneering scientists, architects, and researchers reveal how our understanding of natural light is transforming the way we live across areas such as sustainable energy and modern medicine. From cutting-edge solar energy projects in Europe, to research stations in the Guatemalan forest, discover how different cultures are harnessing nature’s most abundant resource across a wide range of revolutionary methods.

A Daylight Academy documentary film directed by Sandy Evangelista and Alban Kakulya.

The screening will take place on Thursday, 6 November (20:00) at Impact Hub in Viadukt, Zurich, and will be followed by a discussion with two protagonists from the film: Christian Cajochen and Jean-Louis Scartezzini.

See trailer
Tickets and further information (coming soon)

Prof. Christian Cajochen (Head of the Centre for Chronobiology at the University of Basel in Switzerland) talks about the impact of daylight on our health, with a special focus on sleep.

This resulted from a collaboration with Jan-Frieder Harmsen and his podcast CHRONO:MEDICINE (previsouly named 247MUSCLE).
The episode is divided into two parts:

Listen to part 1 (also available on Spotify, and Apple Podcast)
Listen to part 2 (also available on Spotify, and Apple Podcast)

Delve into the mysteries of circadian rhythms, sleep and daylight with Prof. em. Anna Wirz-Justice (Centre for Chronobiology, University of Basel in Switzerland), a pioneer in the field of chronobiology, in this special Halloween episode of the Light O’Clock podcast.

The episode was created in partnership with Light O’Clock, a regular podcast produced by the Translational Sensory & Circadian Neuroscience Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. The episode is hosted by Carolina Guidolin.

Listen to the episode (also available on Spotify and Apple Podcast)

“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…”

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“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…”

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“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…”

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