March/April 2020
Young Lighter
TRAIN OF THOUGHT Young Lighter 2019 Anna Wawrzyniak outlines her winning proposal for a Light Booster metro car e are an indoor generation, in many cases spending up to 90 per cent of the day in artificially lit spaces. This results in low levels of exposure to natural light, even though the fact that significant exposure to daylight is crucial to entrain the human’s inner clock, or circadian rhythm, which regulates the sleep-wake cycle and most internal body functions. As we now know, a non-visual receptor (intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, or ipRGC) found in the retinas of mammals records the phases of light and darkness, forwarding the information directly to the biological master clock (the suprachiasmatic nuclei, or SCN) rather than to the visual cortex. Through experiments such as those conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Behavioural Physiology from the 1960s to 1980s, it has been established that without
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exposure to daylight the circadian rhythm drifts from 24 hours to an average 24.18 hours, manifested by eleven minutes’ longer sleep every day. To avoid this steady shift humans need external entrainment to synchronise with the 24-hour rotation of the earth. Employees who have no exposure to daylight in the morning or during the lunch break, and whose workplace may be equipped with a static lighting system as opposed to some form of ‘human-centric lighting’ (HCL), may only have the chance to experience ‘circadian lighting’ in the time they spend commuting. The mega trend of urbanisation has led to the growth of cities. This expansion has in turn seen an increased duration in the time spent commuting, with an average 2060 minutes spent daily on public transport in European cities. By introducing HCL to public transport, particularly in the daylight-
Dec 21st 18:00
Hamburg, Germany
Anna Wawrzyniak studied interior architecture at the University of Arts and Design Halle (2012-2017) and graduated with a master’s degree in architectural lighting design 2019 at the Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm. As well as winning the SLL’s Young Lighter 2019, she was awarded the Luxi Lighting Design Prize for Best Lighting Design Concept, newcomer category, for her idea of a Light Booster metro car. She is currently working at the architectural lighting design consultancy Peter Andres Lichtplanung, Hamburg
excluded area of underground metro carriages, this time could be used to provide the commuting workforce with ‘circadian lighting’ while on the way to the workplace.
Mar/Sep 21st 6:00
18:00
Daylight present (Daytime) Daylight absent (Nighttime)
Hamburg, Germany
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Jun 21st 6:00
18:00
Hamburg, Germany
6:00
Commute in public transportation – circadian light can be proposed Artificial office lighting – not sufficient to boost circadian rhythm
Scheme showing daylight exposure
Twitter: @sll100
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