Diplomprosjekt
Høst 2024
Institutt for arkitektur
How to make a building in urban context more responsive to sunlight and encourage a lifestyle that adapts to the daily and seasonal rhythms of Sun?
In urban settings, architecture is highly reliant on artificial lightning, creating environments where people are overexposed to it. This overexposure disrupts circadian rhythms, contributing to both mental and physical health issues.
This project explores how sunlight can shape architecture and make it more adapted to the natural solar cycle and mitigating the negative effects of artificial lightning. An urban rooftop dwelling in Oslo serves as the test site for these investigations.
Investigations were made using technical tools and physical modeling to distribute light according to volume uses.
Light exists because of darkness, and darkness because of light. The dark corridor serves as the central and unifying element of the project. Moving from a darker space to a brighter one makes the latter feel even more luminous.
This dark space, through which residents pass to change rooms, acts as a visual reset, enhancing the clarity of perception in the next room. The corridor has almost no doors, allowing the ever-changing lighting of the adjacent bright rooms to directly influence and transform the corridor’s illumination, serving as a natural guide.
In this empty and dark space, changes in light become more vivid and striking, offering residents opportunities for small, unexpected discoveries.
Creating specific light zones determined by function, with varying light conditions, as opposed to a general average lighting condition, brings the desired daylight qualities to the space. This approach fosters a closer relationship with daylight and the sun’s cycles. The goal to use natural light as efficiently as possible, influences the architectural appearance.
In this project, ‘sunlight’ refers to all light originating from the Sun, including direct sunlight, skylight, reflected light, and moonlight.
In modern life, it is naturally impossible to eliminate artificial lighting from all aspects of daily existence. However, when work, shopping, dining and everything else are accessible beyond the home, residential spaces have the potential to become a temple of daylight—places where individuals can restore their mental and physical well-being.
By reducing reliance on artificial lighting and shifting toward naturally light-based conditions, architectural design has the potential to become a tool promoting lifestyles according to the Sun.
Anastasia Volkova / exvolume@gmail.com / +47 905 86 007
This project explores how sunlight can shape architecture and make it more adapted to the natural solar cycle and mitigating the negative effects of artificial lightning. An urban rooftop dwelling in Oslo serves as the test site for these investigations.
Investigations were made using technical tools and physical modeling to distribute light according to volume uses.
Light exists because of darkness, and darkness because of light. The dark corridor serves as the central and unifying element of the project. Moving from a darker space to a brighter one makes the latter feel even more luminous.
This dark space, through which residents pass to change rooms, acts as a visual reset, enhancing the clarity of perception in the next room. The corridor has almost no doors, allowing the ever-changing lighting of the adjacent bright rooms to directly influence and transform the corridor’s illumination, serving as a natural guide.
In this empty and dark space, changes in light become more vivid and striking, offering residents opportunities for small, unexpected discoveries.
Creating specific light zones determined by function, with varying light conditions, as opposed to a general average lighting condition, brings the desired daylight qualities to the space. This approach fosters a closer relationship with daylight and the sun’s cycles. The goal to use natural light as efficiently as possible, influences the architectural appearance.
In this project, ‘sunlight’ refers to all light originating from the Sun, including direct sunlight, skylight, reflected light, and moonlight.
In modern life, it is naturally impossible to eliminate artificial lighting from all aspects of daily existence. However, when work, shopping, dining and everything else are accessible beyond the home, residential spaces have the potential to become a temple of daylight—places where individuals can restore their mental and physical well-being.
By reducing reliance on artificial lighting and shifting toward naturally light-based conditions, architectural design has the potential to become a tool promoting lifestyles according to the Sun.
Anastasia Volkova / exvolume@gmail.com / +47 905 86 007
