Tag: light | ArchDaily

How a New Generation of Architects Is Designing with Natural Light

Eduardo Souza — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 06:45:00 +0000

Long before it becomes a matter of performance, comfort, or energy efficiency, natural light is a way of giving presence to architecture. It reveals the texture of a wall, the depth of an opening, and the silent passage of time within a space. In works as distinct as those of Tadao Ando and Alvar Aalto, daylight appears as an essential material of design: in some cases, guiding the eye toward contemplation; in others, making spaces feel more human, welcoming, and connected to everyday life.

Contemplative Drama: How Gaudí Shaped Light and Color at Sagrada Família

Thomas Schielke — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

It is afternoon in the summer, and the nave of the Sagrada Família is saturated with warm colors. Shafts of amber and crimson sweep across the stone floor, shift as a cloud passes over Barcelona, then deepen again. Around you, visitors slow without quite realizing it. Some raise their phones — not to capture the architecture, but to step into the light itself, positioning themselves in a pool of orange or gold as if the colours were something you could wear.

Atelier Bow-Wow and Climate Scientists Honored with 2026 Daylight Award on UNESCO International Day of Light

Antonia Piñeiro — Wed, 20 May 2026 05:30:00 +0000

On UNESCO's International Day of Light, celebrated annually on May 16, the Daylight Award announced its 2026 laureates. Established to support research into the scientific understanding of daylight and its significance for health, well-being, ecosystems, and architectural design, the award recognizes achievements in two categories: Daylight in Architecture and Daylight Research. This year, Japanese architects Momoyo Kaijima and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow were honored for demonstrating how daylight can shape shared spaces and everyday life, while marine biologists Brittany N. Zepernick, Steven W. Wilhelm, and R. Michael McKay of the United States and Canada were recognized for their research on aquatic microorganisms and their implications for planetary health and biodiversity.

Tropical Modernism Beyond Aesthetics: The Politics of Shade and Air

Ananya Nayak — Mon, 04 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

The image is familiar, a façade layered with brise-soleil, light softened into a patterned shadow, interiors kept cool without machines. It appears as intelligence made visible, architecture that understands the sun. This image is rarely examined closely. The same devices that temper heat also organize access, distribute comfort, and depend on particular forms of labor. What looks like a climatic response is also a decision about who gets relief from heat, and how. Tropical modernism, often reduced to a visual language of shade and porosity, emerges instead as a set of situated practices where climate, labor, and power are negotiated differently across contexts.

The Alchemy of Mass: Peter Zumthor and the Perception of Lightness

Valentina Díaz — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Architecture begins as an encounter with gravity. It is the ancient act of placing weight upon the earth, of persuading matter to stand, hold, and shelter. Within this fundamental condition of heaviness, however, lies a quieter possibility: density itself can generate a sense of lightness—a perceptual condition in which the body, fully convinced of matter's weight, begins to experience space as suspension.

Light, Lighter, Lightest: ArchDaily’s April Editorial Focus

Romullo Baratto — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 06:30:00 +0000

Architecture has long been drawn upward. In Air and Dreams, Gaston Bachelard writes about an imagination shaped by movement; by the urge to rise, to drift, to escape the pull of the ground. Air, for him, invites imagination to distort, to invent, to go beyond what is given rather than simply reproduce it. In that sense, lightness is not only a physical condition, but a feeling: a desire to transcend the weight of the earth and move toward something less tangible. This impulse can be traced across architecture's enduring attempts to lift itself, from pilotis and long spans to suspended systems and tensile membranes. To build lightly, then, is not only a technical ambition, but also a cultural one – a way of reaching toward the sky.

Designing the Sensory City: Architecture, Light Pollution, and Urban Noise

Ananya Nayak — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

For most of human history, night arrived as a planetary certainty. Darkness spread across landscapes, and the sky revealed thousands of stars. Today, that sky is disappearing. Artificial light spills upward from cities, scattering through the atmosphere and turning night into a permanent haze. Research mapping global sky brightness shows that more than 80 percent of humanity now lives under light-polluted skies, and the Milky Way has vanished from view for over a third of the world's population. The disappearance of dark skies is usually discussed within astronomy, but the sources of that change are deeply embedded in the built environment. Buildings emit light, reflect it through glass façades, and extend illumination far beyond their walls. In the technosphere, the vast system of infrastructures and materials humans have constructed, architecture now shapes both physical space and the sensory conditions surrounding it.

“Users Are the Experts on Themselves”: How People Shape the Spaces They Use

Kiana Buchberger — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 07:45:00 +0000

Does design guide usage, or does usage guide design? Students struggle to maintain focus, employees flinch under harsh lighting, and occupants withdraw from rigid spaces, often in response to environmental conditions that only become visible once a space is occupied. Light falling across a room, the resonance of sound, the texture of surfaces, or the rhythm of circulation can support focus, calm, or inspire creativity, but each can also inadvertently heighten stress and distraction. Architects and designers are exploring and questioning: how are design decisions informed, and whose knowledge is considered essential in shaping space?

Architecture in Rhythm with Time: Designing Through Solar, Lunar, and Biological Cycles

Daniela Andino — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 04:00:00 +0000

As the solstice marks the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, it also draws attention to something architecture has long negotiated but often overlooked: time. Beyond form or function, buildings and spaces are continuously shaped by cycles of light and darkness, seasonal shifts, and environmental rhythms that affect how they are inhabited.

The Evolving Practice of Designing Light in Scandinavian Environments

Olivia Poston — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Scandinavia is shaped by environmental conditions that test both human endurance and architectural ingenuity, with long winters defined by limited daylight, low sun angles, deep snowfall, and cold winds that transform everyday movement, gathering, and habitation into deliberate acts. In this context, architecture is never neutral, and hospitality is never incidental. Buildings that welcome visitors across cities, forests, and coastlines must respond directly to darkness and cold, not by denying them, but by creating interior worlds that offer orientation, warmth, and psychological relief. The act of welcoming in Scandinavia is therefore inseparable from the climate, grounded in the understanding that shelter, light, and human presence are fundamental resources in Arctic environments.

In the Blink of an Eye: 60 Light Installations Illuminate a Citywide Gallery for Noor Riyadh 2025

Kiana Buchberger — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 06:45:00 +0000

Noor Riyadh 2025 brought large-scale light installations to public sites across the Saudi Arabian capital, temporarily transforming transit hubs, historic districts, and significant landmarks into illuminated urban environments. From November 20 to December 6, 2025, Riyadh became a citywide gallery of light, motion, and shifting perception. The festival's fifth edition featured 60 artworks by 59 artists from 24 countries, including more than 35 new commissions, responding to the theme "In the Blink of an Eye." Through light as both medium and concept, the installations reinterpreted the capital's rapidly evolving architectural landscape and reflected how perception shifts in spaces shaped by heritage and ambitious urban development.

Exploring the New Technical Zone and Immersive Light Installations at LiGHT 25

Rene Submissions — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 01:30:00 +0000

Dedicated to high-end lighting specification, the UK's trade show LiGHT 25 will return to the Business Design Center in Islington, London, on November 19–20, 2025. Following LiGHT 24, which attracted more than 5,500 visitors, this year's edition will feature an expanded program of innovation, education, and networking opportunities. Key highlights for 2025 include the introduction of the Technical Zone, the return of the Associations Lounge, and a new large-scale immersive light art installation.

Houses in Argentina: Green Roofs That Blend Architecture and Landscape

Agustina Iñiguez — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Seeking to create a fluid dialogue between architecture and its surrounding landscape, the study of topography embodies an awareness and exploration of the use of materials, self-sufficient strategies, low-maintenance solutions, and landscape designs that integrate into the natural environment and minimize the environmental impact of projects. Beyond recording variations in elevation, sun orientation, prevailing winds, or drainage slopes of the terrain, several architects in Argentina demonstrate a strong interest in developing architectural solutions capable of adapting to natural geographies and restoring the bond between nature and the human being.

Elements of a Complete Architecture: The Furniture of Louis I. Kahn

Maria-Cristina Florian — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 04:00:00 +0000

In the history of modern architecture, Louis I. Kahn is regarded as the undisputed master of monumentality in the United States. At the height of his career, Kahn managed to create a unique type of architecture, often awe-inspiring, but avoiding overdone grandiosity, expressing its constructive system, yet avoiding structural exhibitionism, steeped in history but developed with a new language and system of forms. His interest in light as a functional element and the specific qualities of materials extended beyond his buildings, in all the objects he created to populate them following their intrinsic spirit. To celebrate this legacy, Form Portfolios has now launched "Monumental Modernism," the first collection of lighting, objects, and furniture modeled after those discovered in Louis I. Kahn's buildings.

Architecture and Light Between Documentation and Emotion: In Conversation with the Photographer Thomas Mayer

Thomas Schielke — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 04:00:00 +0000

For over five decades, Swiss photographer Thomas Mayer has developed a serene, emotional, and documentary language for architecture. His lens captures the random and memorable moments of our built environment - reflections in the rain, long blue hours in Nordic summers, and the quiet darkness of sacred spaces. Recognized by ArchDaily as one of the top architectural photographers, Mayer carries an abundant fascination for light and space.

AD Classics: Olivetti Showroom / Carlo Scarpa

Jonathan Yeung — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Tucked discreetly beneath the colonnade of Saint Mark's Square in Venice, Carlo Scarpa's Olivetti Showroom exerts a quiet yet unmistakable presence. Though often overshadowed by the grandeur of nearby landmarks—St. Mark's Basilica, the Clocktower, the Loggetta, and the Procuratie Vecchie—it attracts a particular kind of visitor: those who seek out one of Scarpa's architectural gems hidden in plain sight. Modest in scale but rich in detail, the showroom is meticulously maintained by FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano), the National Trust for Italy.

Egypt’s Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 Examines the Balance Between Conservation and Development

Nour Fakharany — Fri, 09 May 2025 05:00:00 +0000

At the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Egypt presents Let's Grasp the Mirage, its national pavilion offering an interactive exploration of sustainability through the symbolic lens of the Egyptian oasis. Curated by Salah Zikri, Ebrahim Zakaria, and Emad Fikry, and commissioned by the Ministry of Culture Egypt and Accademia d'Egitto, the project reflects on the delicate balance between conservation and development, aligning with the Biennale's 2025 theme "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective."

How To Determine How Many LED Lumens You’ll Need To Properly Light Your Space

David Hakimi — Thu, 08 May 2025 02:30:00 +0000

What is enough light? The question is difficult enough but when faced with having to calculate how much LED lighting you need to create a well-lit space, it can become a bit more complicated.