Trends in outdoor and indoor lighting design research

What is NExT? A new conceptual model for comfort, satisfaction, health, and well-being in buildings

Sergio Altomonte, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium

Abstract: Buildings are designed to respond to functional and regulatory needs, providing comfortable conditions to occupants, offering satisfactory environmental settings, minimising health risks, and enhancing individual and collective quality of life. Although there are synergies between these goals, no comprehensive framework has yet been formulated to characterize human comfort, satisfaction, health, and well-being in buildings as distinct, yet highly interrelated, constructs. Embracing the notion that environmental stimuli may synergistically or antagonistically combine, at various spatio-temporal resolutions, to influence building- and occupant-related outcomes, this talk proposes a new conceptual model, called NExT, that can sustain the whole of human experiences in buildings, addressing the variety of their uses and occupancy while meeting regulated targets of energy efficiency.

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Partnerships of safe and sustainable darkness

Henrika Pihlajaniemi, University of Oulu, Finland

Abstract: Today's technologies provide many opportunities for measuring and regulating lighting, but it is also important to increase understanding of how people experience and value different lighting conditions in urban space. Then the amount of light can be reduced and still maintain a positive and safe experience of the environment. The presentation showcases two European Regional Development Fund projects where the University of Oulu has collaborated with the City of Oulu to research and develop ways to create good and safe experiences of darkness in various urban environments, supporting the well-being of people and nature. In the projects, evaluated models of co-design, implementation and partnerships of urban lighting and urban darkness are created. The projects study methods to evaluate plans and dark-time urban environments from the perspectives of environmental quality, users’ experiences, and sustainability. The multidisciplinary composition of the research group brings perspectives and methods from architecture, lighting design, art, humanities, as well as industrial engineering and management into the implementation of the research.

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Bios

Dr Sergio Altomonte is Full Professor of Architectural Physics at the Université catholique de Louvain ​​​​​​​(Louvain-la-neuve, Belgium), where he is the Head of the Louvain Research Institute for Landscape, Architecture, Built environment and Director of the research group Architecture et Climat. Dr Altomonte obtained in 1998 his Master in Architecture at the University of Rome La Sapienza (Italy). In 2021, he received his postgratuade Master in Architecture and Sustainable Development at the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland), and in 2004 he was awarded his PhD in Environmental Design and Engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza. He has been a fully-registered Architect since 1999. He has held full-time academic positions at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Nottingham (2007-17, UK), the School of Architecture and Building, Deakin University (2004-07, Melbourne, Australia), and at the School of Architecture "L. Quaroni" University of Rome La Sapienza (Italy, 1998-2004). He has had visiting professor and research positions at the Center for the Built Environment (CBE), University of California, Berkeley (2012-16, USA) and the Royal Danish Academy (2013-15, Copenhagen, Denmark). His research expertise and publications focus on indoor environmental quality, human psychophysics, daylight and lighting, adaptive comfort, health well-being, integrated control strategies, and sustainable architectural design. He is the author of more than 130 research outputs.

Architect (M.Sc.), D.Sc.(Tech), lighting designer Henrika Pihlajaniemi lectures and teaches Architectural and Urban Lighting in the Oulu School of Architecture (OSA), University of Oulu. At the moment, she works in the position of Associate Professor in Sustainable Architecture, leading research projects related to lighting. Her research has included themes of adaptive and intelligent lighting, lighting-related well-being, lighting education, and to the use of light to develop cities. The most recent research projects are Safe and Sustainable Darkness and Partnerships of Sustainable Darkness. Additionally, she works as a lighting design consultant in her architectural office (M3 Architects). Her completed lighting design projects include lighting master plans, urban parks, public buildings, dwellings, light art, and luminaires. She and M3 Architects have received numerous prizes in national and international architectural and urban design competitions.