MOVING BOUNDARIES
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN
August 12 - 20
HELSINKI, FINLAND
August 21 - 24
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ECOLOGY OF LIGHT IN SPACE - LECTURES
L 03 Galen Cranz
Body Conscious Design Principles
L 04 Satchin Panda
Designing Built Environment To Reignite The Wisdom Of Our Body And Mind
L 05 Kurt Hunker
Aalto, Lewerentz And The Craft Of Light
L 06 Frida Brismar Pålsson
The Rhythm Of Arousal, The Rhythm Of Light
L 06 John Axelsson
On Circadian Rhythms, Sleep, Light And Arousal In Natural Environments
L 07 Kerstin Brismar
Public Health And Today’s Common Diseases - A Link To Architecture And The Built Environment
L 08 Katharina Wulff
Tools Telling Time – Lecture 1: Sundials And Hormones: A Biologist’s Perspective
L 09 Ute Besenecker
Tools Telling Time – Lecture 2: Sundials And Hormones: A Designer’s Perspective
L 09 Johan Örn
Sigurd Lewerentz: Behind The Work
L 10 Anya Hurlbert
The Human Response To Variations In Natural Illumination
L 11 Johanna Enger
Shaping The Space Through Sight: Lighting Design as a Measure of Human Perception
L 11 Arne Lowden
Are We Really Light Deprived And What Can We Do About It?
L 12 David Dorenbaum
The Function Of The Gaze For The Structuring Of Space
INTERWEAVING OF THE SENSES IN DESIGN - LECTURES
L 13 Tonino Griffero
Atmospheres And Felt Body Resonances
L 14 Jonas Kjellander
Inclusion, Light And Children
L 15 Sarah Robinson
Ecologies Of Body, Mind And Place
L 15 Andrea Chiba
The Ecology Of The Brain In Shaping The Dynamics Of Experience
L 16 Elisa Valero Ramos
Light In Architecture: The Intangible Material.
L 17 Juhani Pallasmaa
Embodied And Empathic Imagination - Intuiting Experience And Emotion In Architecture
L 18 Tim Ingold
Evolving, Creating, Imagining: The Birth Of Architecture In A Relational World
L 18 Jenny Roe
Restorative Environments And Mental Health: An Introduction
L 19 Mark Alan Hewitt
Designing Like Alvar Aalto: A Study In Enacted Cognition
L 20 Alberto Pérez-Gómez
In Quest of Attuned Architectural Atmospheres
L 21 Jenni Reuter
Interweaving The Senses In Architecture
L 22 Kate Jeffery
Interweaving The Senses To Create A Mental Map
Galen Cranz Designer and Sociologist, Author, Professor, UC Berkeley, USA
Monday, August 12 | 12:15 PM
Body Conscious Design Principles
Most design approaches demand that bodies simply fit into what is provided without consideration for their anatomical, physiological, and sensory needs. In contrast, Body Conscious Design encourages designers to think first about what bodies need to function optimally and to design the environment accordingly. Body Conscious Design attends to the biomechanics of bodies and also the psychological and cultural feelings and beliefs that a person brings to understanding their body in relationship to their environments. Together, these somatic experiences of the body-mind-environment are the primary criteria for generating and evaluating design. This perspective requires somatic education for both designers and users, and it is part of the larger aspiration for whole person health and well-being.
Chairs were the first element of the built environment (The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design) that I analyzed as I developed my theory, method, practice, and advocacy of Body Conscious Design. Over the ensuing years, I have named the working principles that transmit the foundational teachings of this perspective. Designers, architects, and planners can look to these principles when they evaluate existing designs and create new ones, in all life’s settings: private, work, social, and public.
1. Body Conscious Design encourages bodily movement and a variety of postures (at least five in any setting).
2. Body Conscious Design accommodates variety in human shapes, sizes, and abilities and hence embraces and insists on choices.
3. Body Conscious Design includes all of the senses.
When manifested these Body Conscious Design principles can be subtle or obvious. They may confront and even defy design and social conventions. They may generate new developments in research, technology and design or take influence from historical precedents. Body Conscious Design accepts and celebrates any new aesthetic consequences of truly accommodating bodies.
Satchidananda (Satchin) Panda Neuroscience Professor Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla,
CA, USA
Monday, August 12 | 4 PM
Designing Built Environment To Reignite The Wisdom Of Our Body And Mind
Achieving our peak physical, emotional, and cognitive performance, regardless of age, gender, or health status, is a shared human aspiration. Establishing harmony between our bodies and our surroundings is pivotal for optimal performance. Our bodies and minds follow daily or circadian rhythms, encompassing periods of rest, repair, rejuvenation, and peak performance. These rhythms are fundamental to attaining and sustaining overall well-being. Disruption of these circadian rhythms, whether temporary or chronic, can lead to discomfort and decreased performance. Long-term disruption elevates the risks of both mental and chronic ailments while impeding recovery from illnesses. Therefore, comprehending the principles of circadian rhythms and the factors influencing them holds immense potential to enhance human health, and performance, and prolong a healthy lifespan.
The paradox of circadian rhythms lies in their disruption, being the cradle of modern society and wealth creation, while also compromising health. Roughly 100,000 years ago, humans became distinct by mastering the controlled use of fire, extending our active hours beyond daylight and enabling survival in harsh conditions. In the post-industrial era, the advent of electrical lighting and mechanization further accelerated round-the-clock human activities. Modern society heavily relies on rhythm-disrupting practices like late-night work, shift schedules, and extensive travel for economic growth and productivity. Despite our longer lifespan and increased wealth compared to our ancestors, we aren’t necessarily living healthier or at our optimum health due to neglecting the impact of circadian rhythms in our built environment. However, armed with our current understanding of circadian rhythms, we can now use this knowledge to reshape our environment in a way that sustains health without compromising prosperity.
In this presentation, I aim to introduce the concept of circadian rhythms and explore how various elements, such as light, temperature, noise, diet, and social interactions, influence our daily rhythms. Unlike our ancestors, who predominantly resided in a few consistent environments, our modern lifestyle involves moving through diverse structures for various activities. Therefore, redesigning our built environment to promote health necessitates considering rhythm-regulating factors in different settings, including homes, schools, workplaces, commercial spaces, healthcare facilities, retirement homes, and even space stations. I will delve into how the quality, quantity, and timing of these factors can be integrated into the design of buildings and communities to foster better health outcomes.
Kurt Hunker Chair-Professor of Architecture
President of ANFA Architect, Chief Design Officer, Davy Architects
San Diego, CA, USA
Tuesday, August 13 | 10:15 AM
Aalto, Lewerentz And The Craft Of Light
Details count. They are those elements, often very small or very complicated (or both), that complete a building—from door handles to devices for capturing rainwater to a myriad of other things. Every architect appreciates their importance to the success of a built work. We in the West even have two contradictory expressions about them: the old adage, “The devil is in the details,” which contrasts strikingly with Mies van der Rohe’s famous dictum, “God is in the details.”
We admire a “well-detailed” building because we know how hard it is to make one. And we lament the poor examples in which detailing was seemingly an afterthought. It is not unusual for the most experienced architect in the office to be entrusted with creating the details, because they demand such a high level of care and skill. An American auto manufacturer used to say, with pride, they “sweat the details.” Yes, details count.
Moreover, details are physical manifestations of the architect’s craft—that special art of putting buildings together. As such, they involve creativity and imagination. They also may highlight what the architect considers important about his or her work. Think, for example, of the careful patterning of reveals in the concrete walls of Kahn’s great Salk Institute. Detail enriches the work.
Alvar Aalto and Sigurd Lewerentz “sweat the details.” Their buildings are powerful and memorable in part because they are so well-detailed. And among the many details, some stand out in particular. These architects crafted detailed, distinctive, and highly individualistic systems for bringing light into their buildings. The lengths to which they went to engage daylight are remarkable.
Natural light and its manipulation are prominent in their work, a preoccupation in practice. When we consider these Nordic architects’ important commissions, we think of places filled with different (and often highly dramatic) qualities of light— from Villa Mairea’s soft, even illumination to the abundant daylight of Aalto’s Viipuri Library and the mysterious glow of the Petri Church sanctuary in one of Lewerentz’s late works. The extreme seasonal differentiations of light at these places, near the Arctic Circle, no doubt enrich our perceptions.
Sometimes, the daylighting systems—details, in terms of architectural design production—are so idiosyncratic, in fact, that they seem almost contrarian—as if the architect deliberately set out to challenge norms and expectations. And perhaps they did. The details demand our attention, just as the spaces they serve do.
In this illustrated presentation, particular examples will be discussed, including Aalto’s characteristic use of a grid of round skylights and Lewerentz’s stunning applications of glazing panels. Potential opportunities for neuroscientific research will be discussed as well. In the special contexts of Sweden and Finland, these details dramatize the daylighting of interiors, calling attention to natural light, helping to mold our perceptions of those important places that are atmospheres rooted in a Nordic world.
Frida Brismar Pålsson
Founder of the consultancy and studio Paradis Produktion Sweden
Tuesday, August 13 | 10 AM
The Rhythm Of Arousal, The Rhythm Of Light
Starting off with a philosophical understanding of rhythm, I elaborate the relationship between rhythm as a condition for existence and rhythm as an aesthetic quality. In the modern western tradition, rhythm has been understood as an aspect of time, whereas the pre-socratics offer a definition in which the flow of rhythm determines the shape of objects.
This view, I argue, could be valuable in an architectural theory that wishes to grasp the interconnectedness between living bodies and dead form. Following with examples of my work with dance in architectural education in the Arctic territories of Sweden, the investigation of rhythm is set in a unique climate context. Polar nights and midsummer sun disturb our ideas of sound circadian rhythm. Light and other stimuli create arousal, darkness and lack of stimuli induce rest. But it is in the optimal variation and level of arousal that we find ourselves at our best performance. And yet we are all different. In learning environments, it is therefore essential that we design for a rhythm where all children may grow, learn and flourish. I will sum up by offering a tool which has been very helpful in engaging architectural teams in creating learning spaces for diversity and variation, where each child may find her own rhythm.
Professor at Stockholm University and an associate professor at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
Tuesday, August 13 | 11:30 AM
On Circadian Rhythms, Sleep, Light And Arousal In Natural Environments
In this presentation you will learn about the importance of (day)light for brain functioning and how it sets the circadian system. I will present data from studies where we take people from their life in the modern 24-hour society (where most of us spend a lot of time indoors and expose ourselves to evening electrical light) and take them camping.
Being in daylight is not only improving our alertness and mood, it also turns evening-types into be morning-types. Thus, being inside large parts of the day makes us less alert and in a worse mood than we would be if being outside, and also causes the circadian system to drift in many people. In this lecture, you will also learn about our arousal system and that we are very different in our needs for stimuli so to not have too low or too high arousal.
To support this, we need to create dynamic habitats allowing these different needs, giving children (and grown-ups) the possibility to be in environments that support optimal arousal, cognition and mood. An important step will be to create dynamic environments where different individuals can self-regulate depending on their own needs, so they have arousal levels that supports their ability to concentrate and not be disturbed. You will also learn some basics about sleep, and that we in some aspects actually have too good bedrooms.
John Axelsson
Kerstin Brismar Professor in Endocrinology/ Diabetes Research at Dept. of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Rolf Luft Center for Research in Diabetes and Endocrinology, Karolinska Institutet Stockholm, Sweden.
Tuesday, August 13 | 12:15 PM
Public Health And Today’s Common Diseases - A Link To Architecture And The Built Environment
Non-communicable diseases have increased globally the last 30 years and are now the leading causes of death, of which 80% are premature (die younger than 70 years of age). These common diseases are cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and diabetes. Obesity and overweight are driving the increase in diabetes and hypertension, which are responsible the increased mortality in cardiovascular disease including myocardial infarction, heart failure and stroke. The increase in impaired mental health and increase in many of the common cancer forms are also the effects of overweight and obesity.
According to WHO the community has responsibility to facilitate prevention of these diseases, thus the public health. Chronic stress increases the stress hormone cortisol which causes increased blood pressure, abdominal obesity and blood glucose. High cortisol also reduces melatonin, the ”sleep” hormone, which reduces sleep and the circadian rhythm, and causes mental symptoms. Reduced sleep will decrease growth hormone secretion at night, which will impair cell repair and metabolism. Low growth hormone secretion leads to overweight and obesity. Exposure to daylight in the morning can normalize melatonin secretion and sleep. Exposure to outdoor daylight for some hours may also improve blood glucose as being physical active does. Physical activity every day has many positive effects on health such as lowering blood glucose and blood pressure, reducing the risk of obesity and improving mental health and wellbeing.
This implies that architecture and city planning could facilitate public health, if we make use of the knowledge and data available from clinical research.
Wednesday, August 14 | 10 AM
Katharina Wulff Chair-Professor of Science
Associate professor of chronobiology and sleep, Scientist, Umeå University, Sweden
Tools Telling Time – Lecture 1: Sundials And Hormones: A Biologist’s Perspective
Concepts: time, solar system, light, seasons, adaptiveness
Where is the world’s largest sundial today? With 38.33m in diameter, it is located in the Torne Valley, north of the Arctic Circle, dedicated to the Midnight Sun. The architect Mats Winsa designed the ‘sun wheel’ as a calendar with the gnomon in line with Earth’s axis pointing to the Polar star, which, according to Finish-Ugrian mythology, holds up the firmament.
We live on Earth, a planet-bound by gravity to the sun. The sundial tells solar time from the predictable near-24h rotation of Earth upon its axis. But there is a catch: Daylight hours are not uniformly distributed across time and space – instead, daylight length varies due to Earth’s axis being tilted. Daylength becomes longer and shorter, giving us pronounced seasons in the Nordic countries, not only in daylight availability but in solar energy. The evolution of life in the North is dominated by these predictable daylight changes and energy constraints, and physiological and behavioral characteristics of organisms adjust in very significant ways.
While our solar system is the number one timing system, there is a second timing system. It arises from within our body. An endogenous biological clock made up of brain tissue generates an imprecise rhythm in neuronal activity of nearly 24 hours. This clock requires a daily adjustment so that internal time coincides with solar time, and when aligned, physiology adapts in anticipation of the daily and seasonal demands arising from local habitats. The critical agent (cue, zeitgeber) required for the body clock’s adjustment is the change of solar radiation at dawn and dusk. Humans use their eyes to capture natural light levels on a daily basis, and at very low levels, the pineal gland secretes the hormone melatonin into the blood and cerebrospinal fluid. Melatonin’s orderly rise and decline from one night to the next reveals the direction of seasonal transition, which acts as a forecast for the physiology to adapt in anticipation of seasonal change.
In this lecture, we focus on delineating the biogeographic topography and different tools and evolutionary adaptations specific to the Nordic region with its constraints by the durations of time that are illuminated by daylight, moonlight and/or twilight and thermal limits. This part is followed by lecture 2 - Sundials and Hormones: A Designer’s Perspective on how this knowledge can be utilized in various forms and ways to enrich the design process from an early planning stage.
Ute Besenecker Co-Host
Architectural Lighting Design Researcher
Assoc. Professor, Head of Lighting Design Division KTH, Sweden
Wednesday, August 14 | 11:30 AM
Tools Telling Time – Lecture 2: Sundials And Hormones: A Designer’s Perspective
Concepts: time, dark/light shades, seasons, adaptiveness
In this talk, we build on concepts from lecture 1 - Sundials and Hormones: A Biologist’s Perspective - that introduced our planetary dark-light rhythms and their relationship to our body-internal, hormone-triggered timing system with specific consideration of the Nordic region and its large seasonal variation in illumination by daylight, moonlight and/or twilight.
Sundials are fascinating instruments that visualize solar changes over time; they require a local-specific design, placement, and alignment to work and to be experienced. Enabled by man-made lighting technologies, today, built structures tend to follow concepts more independent of the geographical location and the associated local-specific light/dark cycles.
What light/dark adjustments are we striving for to align our internal time and physiology to the daily and seasonal demands arising from local habitats? How can emerging knowledge from biology be utilized in various forms and ways to enrich the design process from an early planning stage aimed at supporting the various inhabitants of the specific built environment?
We support our daily visual needs using light/dark scenarios. Now, the first toolboxes have been developed to provide researchers and designers with techniques for comparing and evaluating an environment’s potential to trigger a light-related physiological response.
This lecture will explore and discuss selected interpretations and examples of spatial design concepts, considering visual and biological aspects, particularly, the use of varying shades of light and dark emitted from the sun and electric sources.
Wednesday, August 14 | 14 PM
Johan Orn Architectural Historian and Writer Lecturer at KTH School of Architecture
Sigurd Lewerentz: Behind The Work
Sigurd Lewerentz is known for his demanding nature and insistence of perfection. It is easy to believe that he always knew what he wanted: that he was an artist with a straightforward route to his goal. But that was not the case. The path from the first sketch to the final drawing was almost always long and winding. The smallest detail was tested in countless, apparently similar, sketches. An artist friend and admirer described Lewerentz’s constant changes as “artistic uncertainty”. Details were often questioned and reworked directly on the construction site. It even happened that he enforced changes after construction was completed and the ribbon-cutting ceremony was held.
The presentation will give insight into Lewerentz’s artistic process through an in-depth analysis of St. Knut and St. Gertrude chapels at Eastern Cemetery, Malmö (1943). The sketches and drawings, produced during a period of more than ten years, testify to the tremendous dedication he devoted to every aspect of the chapels – always with the human experience at the core.
Anya Hurlbert Professor of Visual Neuroscience and Dean of Advancement, Newcastle University, UK
Thursday, August 15 | 10 AM
The Human Response To Variations In Natural Illumination
Natural illumination varies over space and time, from moment to moment as the weather changes, from dawn to dusk in the course of a day, and across seasons and habitats.
Over millennia, natural illumination and its variations have shaped the workings of the human brain, influencing visual perception and entraining biological rhythms. Understanding how humans respond to these complex changes in natural illumination, both visual and non-visually, is important both for understanding the structure and function of the brain and for controlling and designing artificial environments. In this session, we will examine different methods, datasets and findings that feed into that understanding.
Accurate measurements of the spectral, spatial and temporal variations in natural illumination provide the foundation; one example we will discuss is the Delft-Newcastle dataset of light-field measurements. These measurements, taken on individual days under different weather conditions, show that variations in daylight exhibit a characteristic tripartite pattern: with illumination chromaticity (“colour”) changing fastest in the early morning and late evening at the lowest light levels, and remaining relatively stable during the day, as the light level rises and falls smoothly. From these measurements, we have also extracted the directional and diffuse components of natural illumination, which differ in both their spectral and temporal properties and in their activation of light receptors in the eye. Using a different method in a laboratory “lightroom”, we have simulated such changes in natural illumination and measured the human ability to perceive these, as well as the ability to maintain a constant color perception of objects under these changes. The former shows that most natural illumination changes are too slow to be directly detected; the latter shows that object color constancy is best under illumination changes directed towards rather than away from neutral chromaticities. In other studies, we and others have measured changes in non-visual behaviour under changing illumination, finding that, for example, the effects of varying spectra on mood and alertness depend on the time of day as well as illumination chromaticity.
One speculative conclusion from these findings is that the human visual brain dampens sensitivity to the largest natural changes in illumination in order to maintain object colour constancy. Non-visual mechanisms appear tuned to chromaticity changes at dawn and dusk, and hence are critical for syncing the circadian clock with environmental conditions. The latter might also feed longterm memory of illumination conditions as well as subjective experiences of the illumination atmosphere. The results suggest ways to modulate artificial lighting environments to preserve visual perception while maximising impact on the non-visual system.
Johanna Enger
Host Lighting Designer Researcher, Senior Lecturer Konstfack, Sweden
Arne Lowden
Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Thursday, August 15 | 11:30 AM
Shaping The Space Through Sight: Lighting Design As A Measure Of Human Perception
The design of light is a fundamental aspect shaping our spatial experiences. This lecture delves into the intricate relationship between human vision and the qualities of natural light, encompassing its spectrum, dynamics, and temporal variations. By examining the interplay of direct sunlight, diffuse overcast light, and the interplay of highlights and shadows, we uncover how it relates to spatial perception, highlighting the pivotal role of light, color, and contrast; we elucidate how their strategic deployment molds the visual quality and ambiance of a space, and how these qualities could be interpreted with electrical light. Through a synthesis of scientific insights and design practices, this lecture offers a holistic perspective and illuminates the bridge between theoretical understanding and practical application.
Sunday, August 18 | 10 AM
Are We Really Light Deprived And What Can We Do About It?
Many of us perceive a place in summer in the shadow of a tree as the ideal place to linger. But we are surrounded by boundaries that are not always easily removed, especially if we believe that an ideal light environment should be offered, on a daily basis to avoid negative health effects and to maintain mental focus at work and study. Topics for the presentation are highlighted in bold below.
We hear that living at a Nordic latitude poses health threats due to a lack of daylight during the dark season of fall and winter. And a slow genetic adaptation process to adapt is in progress. Meanwhile, a solution could be to plan living environments with the help of architectural design to catch the scarcity of daylight, one example being the development of outdoor offices. During this period, an addition of human-centric lighting seemed possible, but some improvement could be welcome, one example being light corners. Snow glow seems to give us some help!
The society also has to give attention to biological needs and non-visual effects of light and provide relevant care and solutions to people who suffer from health threats. This also means that building recommendations that provide a high daylight factor have to be endorsed at work and in living residence environments. It is today common to treat problems with medication in Western societies. Light therapy is still regarded as a non-evidence-based medical treatment by many professionals. Awareness will also increase the demand by individuals to provide good quality lighting conditions.
David Dorenbaum Professor, Adult Psychiatry and Health Systems
Univiversity of Toronto, Canada
Sunday, August 18 | 11:30 AM
The Function Of The Gaze For The Structuring Of Space
On Wednesday night, as they did every Wednesday, the parents went to the movies. The boys, lords and masters of the house, closed the doors and windows and broke the glowing bulb in one of the living room lamps. A jet of golden light as cool as water began to pour out of the broken bulb, and they let it run to a depth of almost three feet. Then they turned off the electricity, took out the rowboat, and navigated at will among the islands in the house.
This fabulous adventure was the result of a frivolous remark I made while taking part in a seminar on the poetry of household objects. Totó asked me why the light went on with just the touch of a switch, and I did not have the courage to think about it twice. “Light is like water,” I answered, “You turn the tap and out it comes.”
Light is like water. Gabriel García Márquez
Light is a difficult medium to explain. As theatre lighting designer extraordinaire Jennifer Tipton put it, “light doesn’t exist until it hits something, so the something that it hits is always perceived first, more strongly and more clearly than the light that is revealing it.” The scenery in a stage production marks the boundary of the space, but light fills the volume of that space, giving the performers a landscape in which to exist. According to Tipton, preparing to light a piece, “creating a luminous plot,” is like creating a new language: the language of that particular production of the performance. “This language must be able to express with nuance the multiple levels and contexts of the production. It must be able to allude to the social, political, personal and psychological layers that also come to exist within the world of production; as the world where the production and the audience meet, without being literal or mundane.” There is a lot to be learnt from the paradigm of the stage set, it reflects the actual theatralization of our life.
Theatre has long been recognized as a space of embodiment, presence and reciprocity. Like the psychoanalyst’s office, the theatre is a potential space of signification. In other words, it has the ability to help us understand, to see within ourselves, and to capture the light of the world in which we live. It is in terms of transitions from one psychic scene to another—repetition, remembering, and elaboration—that psychic processes are conceived; this is a primary function of psychic life: to create representations which allow states of “figurability” to illuminate and give expression to what, until then, had remained obscure, in order to be integrated within our representational networks. On the other hand, our play with the mirror image of theatre exposes our sense of loss and disjunction in relation to the ways in which we exist—it succeeds in disorganizing our field of perception, showing us something other than what we want to see. For these reasons, the procedure of theatricality itself deserves our consideration, particularly the technical process of lighting a scene and working with shadows.
Ellen Ruge - Lighting Designer. Ellen Ruge is born in Oslo and based in Stockholm. She is lighting opera, theatre, and dance productions and commissioned art works for public buildings.
She is educated photographer in Stockholm and has been working as a freelancing lighting designer since the mid-1980`s. She has worked all over the world and has collaborated on a great number of stage productions with many of the best well-known theatre and opera houses. With her exceptional sensitivity for how light embodies different moods and capture emotions, she creates magical places on international theatre and opera stages as well as in public spaces.
In the ordinary sense, to gaze is not simply seeing or pure perception. Rather, in one way or another, gazing is the act of being engaged in one’s own vision, by will, interest, desire. Seeing something and adequately grasping what is seen with the gaze are two different things. For the psychoanalyst, unlike the eye doctor, seeing is not seeing a thing, but an image. In a similar way to what happens with a painting, in which light is present even if it is not seen—the painting confirms this transformation of vision into gaze. The gaze as object is a proposition that French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan put forward, a brilliant discovery. But where is the gaze located? Lacan tells us that it is in the field of the Other, the place from which I am seen.
To account for the development of our visual system, we are obliged to consider the gaze of the Other—there has to be a certain “being seen” by the subject for it to work. However, the quest for recognition, the desire for the Other to mirror us as we would see ourselves, is grounded in an impossibility. In the dialectic between the eye and the gaze, from the first glance we see that there is no coincidence between the two, but fundamentally an illusion—you never look at me where I see you, and conversely, what I look at is never quite what I want to see. Our gaze is our most unique trait; it refers us to our own fascination of this world which looks at us from everywhere. To gaze is to enjoy seeing and what you see. It is the procurement of space carried out by the gaze. For this event I will be joined in conversation by the lighting designer Ellen Ruge.
Tonino Griffero
Full professor of Aesthetics
University of Rome
“Tor Vergata”, Italy
Monday, August 19 | 10 AM
Atmospheres And Felt Body Resonances
Provided a quick survey of the “career” of the “atmosphere” concept, especially of the neo-phenomenological paradigm (externalisation of the affective) and its application in all scientific fields not based on functional-measurable parameters, the talk provides a concise overview of pathic and atmospherological aesthetics, both of its ontological inflationism (including even so-called quasi-things) and the range of atmospheric feelings one experiences in everyday life (prototypical, derived-relational, spurious ones).
Then, it explores atmospheres’ quasi-objective power and authority against every reductionist (introjectionist and associationist) explanation, but also the experience of objectively recognizing them without personally being felt-bodily grasped (which proves their quasi-objectivity again). After a brief excursus on the possible “encounters” between percipients and atmospheres (they can surrender to them, embrace their radiating effect, oppose this effect or simply escape from it, feel the opposite of what they suggest, or lastly experience a mix of acceptance and resistance), the talk also advances a “provisional atmospheric ethics” based on a fourfold “atmospheric competence”: the skill of generating atmospheres (within limits), of differentiating between toxic and benign ones (by a parameter of “weak” normativity), of experiencing as many and different atmospheres as possible and especially of fostering those atmospheres where an early pathic immersion may be followed by a re-emersion phase.
It is of great importance for pathic aesthetics to also examine the atmospheric perception and the way it effectively “tonalizes” our environmental situation, according to the neo-phenomenology idea of corporeal and pre-reflexive communication. Accordingly, the atmosphere is a widespread feeling whose sounding board is our felt (not physical) body (Leib). This makes the atmospheric perception the first affective-synesthetic impression of the environmental expressive qualities (or affordances) and the felt body their resonance place through its specific dynamic (pre-dimensional voluminousness, narrowness/vastness, contraction/ expansion, encorporation/excorporation, felt-bodily islands, etc.) but without drawing on the five senses and the perceptual body schema.
If this felt-body-phenomenology makes a lived self-consciousness possible, it also offers a promising suggestion on how to build a new sensibility in architecture. On how to conceive architectural and urban design and its formal affordances as affordances-gestures, dwelling as a powerful way of cultivating atmospheres in a safe place, however, without giving carte blanche to constructionist theories, but reaffirming that of an architectural atmosphere (as of any other) one cannot intentionally plan the precise outcome but only the occasional condition of possibility.
Jonas Kjellander Senior Architect, Lighting Designer, Educator Sweco Architects - Sweden
Monday, August 19 | 11:30 AM
Inclusion, Light And Children
This talk was initially titled “Social Sustainability, Space and the Human.” However, to select more precise terminology, I have renamed it “Inclusion, Light and Children.” Why so?
Inclusion: because it most likely represents the main challenge to a socially sustainable society and, in fact, to a worthy democratic future.
Light: because it represents the primary design tool considering the inherent connection to vision, the dominating sense in perception of space.
Children: because this is the crucial target group. Childhood exclusion today will emerge tomorrow as a threat to the community.
As designers we have the capacity as well as the responsibility to exert considerable impact on these matters. If we deepen our understanding of inclusion as a form of attachment, we realize that this may refer to a person or group as well as to a physical setting or place. The perception of surrounding human relations is essentially different from that of the surrounding physical environment. However, they affect one another. The attachment to specific persons in a specific place will affect the attachment to the current space itself and vice versa. Such assumptions indicate a vital role of design for inclusion. A task in which light is the outstanding tool and the application to environments of the youngest citizens is the most effective approach. To become more instrumental when dealing with these issues in design practice, we should also call for more cooperative research between the fields of psychology, social psychology and anthropology.
At the core of mankind’s development, we find the key to inclusion expressed in one single term: communication. By observing the communication development during the first consecutive years of an infant-toddler-child, we also discern the corresponding 100,000-year development of communication in humanity, from vision-based messages to phonetic language to writing and increasing levels of abstraction.
In terms of inclusion, the importance of mastering a language cannot be overestimated. Yet, there are consistent signs of deteriorating language skills in the young generation. The virtual world is contributing to a reading crisis, while places and occasions offering the best circumstances for meeting meaningful conversations in real life are strikingly scarce. It´s remarkable and astonishing that we have failed to design spaces optimized in terms of ergonomics, acoustics and lighting for this most important social activity.
While the talk refers to theories and evidence-based research in neuroscience, the focus will be on concrete examples of physical design from the architect´s practice.
Sarah Robinson Arch. Professor, Author Aalborg University, Denmark NAAD, Venice,
Italy
Tuesday, August 20 | 10 AM
Ecologies of Body, Mind And Place
We have learned about the undeniable connection between body and mind, but that same interdependent relation is also present between body, mind and world. Yet, our thorough interwovenness within our surroundings is sorely under-recognized, and this impoverishment is at the very heart of the ecological crisis. This talk suggests some practical ways that designers and architects might become more ecologically aware through affirming sensuous forms of experience, rediscovering the open, resonant body and the importance of physical presence—to cultivate an ethic of care that crosses boundaries between the animate and inanimate, nature and culture, body and world.
Andrea Chiba Cognitive Science Professor, Researcher, UC San
Diego, USA
Tuesday, August 20 | 11 AM
The Ecology Of The Brain In Shaping The Dynamics Of Experience
Our bodies and brains exist in a nested system of place, culture, the world, and the extended universe, subject to ever-changing dynamics. Inevitably, feelings arise from bodily states elicited by our physical synchronization in places, layered with social and cultural exchanges and meaningful artifacts, creating the continuity of our personal journey that is inevitably structured in time and space. The transition between our internal and external worlds can be clearly demarcated by our actions that can take the form of movement outside our bodies, extend as thoughts internally, and bridge to create our personal histories. Spaces can interact with our systems to create resonance, rhythms, and feelings that are seamless with our cognition, actions, and realized experience. When in balance, the dynamical intersections of our interoceptive and exteroceptive capacities allow “state flexibility” or the ability to fluidly change our perceptual state to meet the ongoing dynamics of the world. Appreciating our built world as part of this ecosystem is fundamental to thriving.
Elisa Valero Ramos
Architect, Professor of Architectural Projects
Superior Technical School of Architecture
Granada, Spain
In México Elisa Valero Ramos engaged in her first work with the restoration of Félix Candela’s work, ‘Los Manantiales’ in 1996, since then she has been working in a small studio in Granada, near the Alhambra. Her constructed work has been awarded in Italy, France, Switzerland and Spain and widely published in books and magazines. She has been a visiting professor in more than twenty-five schools in Europe and America and the author of a dozen books, including “The theory of the diamond and the architectural project” (published in Spain, Italy and France) and “Light in Architecture, the Intangible Material” (with three editions in Spain and one in the United Kingdom). In 2012 she obtained the chair of architectural projects at the University of Granada, where she directs a research group aimed at developing low-cost, lowenergy construction systems. Convinced of the urgent need to respect nature, she explores new paths for architecture that have earned her the Swiss Architectural Award in 2018 and the Andalusia Architecture Prize in the innovation and construction category in 2022.
Tuesday, August 20 | 12:30 PM
Light In Architecture: The Intangible Material
David Dorenbaum in conversation with architect Elisa Valero Ramos, author of Light In Architecture: The Intangible Material. Trans. Helena Scott. Newcastle upon Tyne: RIBA Publishing, 2015
“Whether you consider modern architecture or the works of the Masters down the ages, there is always a key message to be found: through light, architecture is humanized.” Elisa Valero Ramos
The architect can be a victim to light — perhaps in the belief that a flood of light was good in itself. On the contrary, Valero advocates its judicious distribution. ‘Architecture’, she reminds her readers, ‘could even be described as the creation of appropriate shade.’ She warns restorers that light is, of all materials, the only one that never ages — he dance and shimmer of it is essential - Joseph Rykwert, from the Foreword.
Professor Emeritus, Architect, Author
Aalto University, Finland
Wednesday, August 21 | 1:30 PM
Embodied And Empathic Imagination - Intuiting Experience And Emotion In Architecture
Contemporary architecture and design are frequently accused of restrictive and exclusive esthetics, emotional coldness, and a general distance to life. “Why is it that architecture and architects, unlike film and filmmakers, are so little interested in people during the design process? Why are they so theoretical, so distant from life in general?”, the Dutch film scholar Jan Vrijman asks. This criticism suggests that instead of tuning our buildings with the true realities and mental values in life, we have adopted external, intellectualized and formalist aspirations. Indeed, architecture and design seek formal perfection, and this aspiration tends to get into conflict with the spontaneity and imperfection of existentially real life. No doubt, Modernism at large - its theory and education, as well as practice - have focused more on concepts, spaces, forms and aesthetic criteria than the interaction of the designed entity and real life.
I wish to support architectural thinking that incorporates life in all its practical and mental implications. The reductive and formalist attitude denies the essential spontaneity and “messiness” of life and tends to turn life itself into a constrained and predictable behavior. Since the influential books of Sigfried Giedion and Bruno Zevi, during the formative years of modern architectural thinking, architects have been constantly using the notion of “space”. However, space is an abstract concept of physics, not an experiential reality or quality; we experience always specific places instead of abstract and conceptual spaces, and architects should aim their thinking to experiential places instead of spaces.
Architectural theories, as well as education, focus on form, geometry and material construction, but the experiential, mental and emotive meanings of architecture are constituted in its experience. As the poet John Keats wrote: “Nothing is real, until it has been experienced”. In my view, the most human of our capacities is imagination; we would not even have ethical judgment without our capacity to imagine the consequences of our alternative choices. Artistic and design work is work that takes place in and through imaginative identification, and consequently, imagination should be purposefully taught and trained in education. Today, the uncritical use of computers in education, as well as in the early phases of architectural design, tend to dull or eliminate our natural and biologically evolved mental capacities, especially our embodied imagination and emotive skills.
Juhani Pallasmaa
Tim Ingold
Anthropologist, Author, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology
The University of Aberdeen, UK
Jenny Roe
Professor in Design & Health, University of Virginia USA
Honorary Professor, Heriot Watt University UK
Wednesday, August 21 | 2:30 PM
Evolving, Creating, Imagining: The Birth Of Architecture In A Relational World
Two currents of thinking underlie Juhani Pallasmaa’s approach to embodied and empathic imagination. One comes from evolutionary biology and cognitive science; the other from environmental and architectural phenomenology. But these currents run at cross purposes. Attempts to reconcile the two through the appeal to concepts of embodiment, extension and empathy are unconvincing. To resolve the contradiction, what is required is nothing less than a new biology, relational and developmental rather than evolutionary in the Darwinian sense, along with an approach to creativity and imagination that takes us beyond the dichotomy between mental imagery and physical execution. What would be the implications of such an approach for an architecture that lives and breathes?
Thursday, August 22 | 10 AM
Restorative Environments And Mental Health: An Introduction
Environments can be defined as “restorative” when they promote the right conditions for good mental health and well-being, including stress reduction and recovery from mental fatigue (e.g., directed attention). Specific “restorative” qualities that shape our psychological experience of the built environment include how coherent, legible, mysterious, and complex that environment is. This lecture will restorative will cover:
• the design attributes that characterize restorative environments;
• the multiplicity of health and well-being benefits they deliver;
• the multiplicity of tools for capturing a restorative experience;
• the differences in how people experience restorative environments.
Dr. Roe will draw on theory and empirical evidence from her book “Restorative Cities: urban design for mental health” (Roe and McCay, 2021) and a new book in preparation, “Restorative Architecture: the science of design for mental health and wellbeing” (Roe, 2027).
Arch. Historian
New Hampshire, USA
Thursday, August 22 | 2:30 PM
Designing Like Alvar Aalto : A Study In Enacted Cognition
In my recent book, Draw In Order To See, I offer a theory of design thinking that is based on Gibsonian affordances and “enacted cognition.” This talk uses the work of Alvar Aalto to explore that topic.
Though many early critics saw Alvar Aalto as an “intuitive” and “irrational”designer in comparison to his contemporaries, he was in fact very deliberate in his habits throughout his mature career. His biographer, Goran Schildt, pointed to early experiences under the “white table” in his father’s surveying office, as key to understanding these habits. This presentation will consider three essential components of that design practice:
1. The influence of landscape, nature, and especially contours in the way he conceived his buildings, both rural and urban;
2. The Beaux Arts technique of esquisse-rendu, learned at the Helsinki Institute of Technology under Armas Lindgren, as key to his basic drawing habits;
3. The counterpoint between plan and section in all his mature buildings—a tendency to work simultaneously in both modes while sketching and developing a design.
Each of these conceptual modalities was critical to Aalto’s design methods, and he quickly instilled them in his key assistants, especially in the years following the Second World War, as his practice began to flourish. We will look at such seminal works as the Seinajoki Civic Center, Helsinki Kulturitalo, Church of the Three Crosses, and Saynatsalo Town Hall in our discussion. The lecture will conclude with a dialogue about student drawing experiences, and how they may correspond or diverge from those of Aalto
Mark Alan Hewitt
Alberto Pérez-Gómez
Arch. History Professor McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Thursday, August 22 | 6:15 PM
In Quest of Attuned Architectural Atmospheres: Contributions of Enactive Cognitive Theory and Neurophenomenology
In my most recent book, Attunement, Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science, I explain the centrality of the concept of atmosphere for architectural meaning and its historical roots. I demonstrate the relevance of our growing concern with attuned places, at odds with the dominant concept of architecture as a geometric, aesthetic object. I show the association of Stimmung, the unique German term implying both atmosphere and mood, with the traditional aims of architectural meaning since Vitruvius, encompassed by terms such as harmony and temperance, explaining how architecture had traditionally sought psychosomatic health, framing lived experience with order and stability congruent with local cultural values.
Stimmung became a central concern for artistic expression in view of the adverse cultural conditions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and was engaged by practices of resistance against the dominant formalistic and technological assumptions of mainstream modern planning and building production. In order to fully grasp the possibilities of Stimmung and its implementation nowadays, creating life-enhancing atmospheres responsive to human action and to place in the fullest sense (as both natural and cultural context), a proper understanding of consciousness and perception beyond Cartesian misunderstandings is crucial. To this aim, insights drawn from neurophenomenology and so-called third-generation cognitive science prove indispensable. My lecture will discuss in detail these insights, drawing from recent works on phenomenology, neurophenomenology and enactive cognitive science.
Jenni Reuter
Architect, Associate Professor in Architectural Principles and Theory
Aalto University, Finland
Friday, August 23 | 9:30 AM
Interweaving The Senses In Architecture
Throughout my career as an architect, I have been able to combine teaching and practice. It has been a way of justifying my thinking, both for the design work and within academia. As a practicing architect, I work alone with smaller projects in Finland, such as one-family houses and exhibition designs. Together with my colleagues Saija Hollmén and Helena Sandman, we work mostly with projects in low resource settings in different African countries. There is a fruitful dialogue between collaborative work and working alone. My goal is to create architecture that feels effortless and genuine and will age with dignity. Our senses give the first intuitive approach to the spaces around us. To me, it is a grounded inspiring landscape where to find the right solutions. As a continuity of construction wisdom. Seeking for the sustainable, long lasting, simple solutions, gentle to the senses may be a silent activism and questioning common norms.
In a time of mass production, the role of handicrafts has changed. There is a certain longing for materiality and making things with your hands. This was emphasized during the pandemic when people had time to slow down. I grew up in an old house on a farm in the countryside, and I think that even though I nowadays live in and enjoy the city, my early architectural references are vernacular. I have a strong bodily relation to materials, colors and atmospheres.
My lecture will express the multisensory experience in five of my own projects:
• Straw Bale Cabins, Parainen, Finland
• KWIECO, Moshi, Tanzania (Hollmén Reuter Sandman Architects)
• Villa Sjöviken, Kemiö island, Finland
• Huvila, Turku Archipelago, Finland
• The Snow Show, Rovaniemi, Finland (Hollmén Reuter Sandman Architects)
Kate Jeffery Head of School of Psychology and Neuroscience, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Friday, August 23 | 11 AM
Interweaving The Senses To Create A Mental Map
Our sense of space depends on a mix of perceptions of the world immediately around us combined with an expectation of what ought to be around us, given what we know. This is a complicated problem for our brains to solve, and failure to solve it results in disorientation, which can evoke negative emotions from unease to frank anxiety. As neurobiologists, we have spent the last several decades studying the neural circuits in the brain to try and understand how the senses combine to enable this orientation, which we often call mental or cognitive mapping. This lecture will describe these experiments, which have been conducted in both human and nonhuman animals using various different methodologies. It will particularly show how vision combined with movement signals is particularly important for orientation. These movement signals depend heavily on inertial sensors in the inner ear, which can be thought of as a sixth sense and one that is often overlooked when we think about the senses. The lecture will show how these signals are thought to combine and then offer speculations as to how this new understanding of sensory integration (interweaving) might inform architectural design.
STOCKHOLM,
TABLE OF CONTENTS
WORKSHOPS
W 03
W 04
TEAM 01 Galen Cranz, Sarah Robinson, Carina Rose, Veronika Mayerboeck
Workshop: Embodied Space
TEAM 02 Kurt Hunker, John Axelsson
Light In Space In Nature
W 05 TEAM 03 Katharina Wulff, Ute Besenecker, Ines Bartl, Veera Saastamoinen
W 06
Tools Telling Time – Sundials and Hormones: Design Explorations
TEAM 04 Arne Lowden, Anya Hurlbert, Johanna Enger, Hamid Eizadi
The Tides Of Natural Light - Exploring The Human Experience Of Light And Colour
W 07-08 TEAM 05 Mark Alan Hewitt, Jonas Kjellander
Perceiving And Manipulating Natural Light
W 09-11 TEAM 06 Rodrigo Muro, Tonino Griffero, Clarissa Machado, Maria Madland
An Emotional Response To Atmospheric Lighting
WORKSHOP: EMBODIED SPACE
Tuesday, August 13 | 4:00 PM
Thursday, August 15 | 4:00 PM
Sunday, August 18 | 5:15 PM
Monday, August 19 | Presentations
The process of creating architecture is inherently distanced and representative. Unlike other artists and craftspeople whose materials and mediums directly temper and constrain the possibilities of their work, architects never actually touch their materials to feel their resistance or vulnerability in the process of making. In this way, materials can inform the work only indirectly. And when we draw, we look down at a page or stare at a screen, the visual sense dominates and the frontal view excludes immersive volumes of space and the rhythms of time. Our principal media, space, form, movement are not actual—but possibilities of our imaginations.
At the same time, decades of work in the cognitive sciences tell us that all of thought, feeling, and imagination are situated and embodied. And our experiences of architecture and the built world take place on a largely non-conscious level. So, paradoxically, the process of creating architecture increasingly distances us from our bodies, but our bodies are the very source of wisdom and knowledge that we need to draw upon and cultivate. This workshop intends to ground us in our bodies as source and wellspring of knowledge, imagination and spatial expertise. Through experiments in somatic practice, improvisation, dance, and autobiographical research, we hope to explore deeper layers of embodied knowing that can directly inform our creative practices.
SESSION 1: replicates a study of how different states of consciousness (cortical and subcortical) produce different types of drawings. You will experience being taken to your frontal lobes, before making two drawings and then taken to your sub-cortex (your kidneys), after which you will make two more drawings. As a group we will describe and analyze the two sets of drawings and discuss the meaning of what you have experienced. Which mental state is most useful for what kinds of tasks?
SESSION 2: aims to guide participants towards the deep inner sensation of the body along tissues, nerves, organs, and bones to slowly expand our attunement from the horizontal to the vertical inner body—encounters between the somatic and the architectural serve to gently deconstruct the layers of our spatial autobiographies.
In SESSION 3, having unfolded an inner world of impressions, you will explore reflective practices such as drawing, taxonomies, and verbal reflection help to translate, mediate, and express insights throughout various media. Journaling, drawing and conversation will accompany movement as we experiment with expressing the insights and perceptual shifts arising from our body’s intelligence. We will seek deeper narratives that come from openness and listening rather than a trained mind and habitual body and release you into impulses and choices that facilitate spatial imagination and creative skill. Finally, we invite you to organically implement the gained embodied insights into open design tasks.
No prior movement training is required, all mobility levels are welcome. We suggest clothing that is comfortable to move in and we will invite you to be barefoot.
Galen Cranz
Sarah Robinson
Veronika Mayerboek
Carina Rose
WORKSHOP: LIGHT IN SPACE IN NATURE
Tuesday, August 13 | 4:00 PM
Thursday, August 15 | 4:00 PM
Sunday, August 18 | 5:15 PM
Monday, August 19 | Presentations
This workshop will give participants an opportunity to explore ideas about light in space in the context of the architectural design process. Your instructors will bring both architectural and scientific thinking to the task.
This workshop will involve a modest design project with a simple program. Parameters will include the requirement that the space(s) must be daylit, it will be in use year-round, and the structure must be situated in a “natural” environment. We will build upon the lectures, discussions and field trips scheduled for Nordic X as the workshop progresses over the two-week time frame.
SESSION 1 serendipitously follows your team leaders’ lectures on Tuesday, August 13. As a group, we will discuss participants’ backgrounds, design methodologies, and goals and “debrief” the talks from earlier in the day. The project program and parameters will be discussed as well, and the group will form itself into teams of 2-4 participants each. Additionally, we will consider things within the context of the Woodland Cemetery tour the following day, in which we will experience sublime examples of light in space in nature.
SESSION 2 occurs the day after, on Thursday, August 15th. The emphasis will be on brain science and how translational considerations may impact the development of design projects. We will look at various techniques for expressing design work, particularly in terms of representing changeable aspects of daylight. There will be ample time for teams to work together. Two intervening days separate this workshop from #3, which gives participants expanded opportunities to explore natural environments in and around Stockholm and experience the effects of daylight at this northern latitude. The field trip to the Stockholm Archipelago will be discussed for its potential to inform the work.
Sunday, August 18th’s SESSION 3 is the last before projects are presented. Here, Kurt will lead the workshop and ideas culled from a week’s worth of lectures, panels, and tours will be reviewed for their potential in the design process. We will discuss the idea of “atmosphere” as it may relate to the work. As before, there will be plenty of time for teams to collaborate on their individual designs. Lastly, the group will consider how to present its findings in the presentations planned for the next day.
Participants should bring cameras (cellphone versions should be fine) and sketching/notetaking materials, including sketchbooks. Your team leaders will not dictate the media; bring tools that work for you.
Kurt Hunker
John Axelsson
WORKSHOP: TOOLS TELLING TIME – SUNDIALS AND HORMONES: DESIGN EXPLORATIONS
Tuesday, August 13 | 4:00 PM
Thursday, August 15 | 4:00 PM
Sunday, August 18 | 5:15 PM
Monday, August 19 | Presentations
This workshop will immerse participants into the natural light environment at higher latitudes. Light as a temporal source determines the rhythms of life on our planet in plants and animals on a daily, seasonal and annual basis. Providing biologically functional light is, therefore, a crucial need for building enclosures, and the choices of openings, transitions, and materials (including vegetation) at the threshold of inside and outside influence it’s supply. The workshop aims to offer a convincing rationale for utilising neurophysiological knowledge in various ways at an early planning stage in the architectural lighting design process. Participants will have the opportunity to experience light exposure to experiment with tools to anticipate light availability and to discuss and explore questions of embracing site-specific features and how to cater to individual needs of different types of sensitivity for different occupancy.
The instructors form an interdisciplinary team of three: Katharina Wulff, PhD, a neuroscientist with a focus on biological timing, Ute Besenecker, PhD, architectural and urban lighting design researcher, and lighting designer Ines Bartl. The team shares an interest in how basic biological needs translate into practice, and they will help discuss and test various strategies for applying recent research findings to the architectural design process.
The Workshop will start with experiential exercises related to the shades and levels of light and dark, morphing into a small group project designing a sleep-in shelter in a Nordic context to be used year-round. In addition to exploring Nordic light-dark conditions and discussing their impacts on design, the participants will also reflect on transferring their designs into their geographic home contexts.
SESSION 1: all participants will introduce themselves by pinning everybody’s residential geographic locations on a map, with respective annual and daily light-dark experiences. This will be followed by immersive exercises related to the shades of light and dark, and an introductory demonstration of some tools available to evaluate light for visual and physiological impact. The session will end with the forming of working groups and the introduction of the design task to be followed up two days later in the second workshop session.
Between sessions 1 and 2, Katharina and Ute will give lectures that provide additional content relevant to the workshop. The site visits are opportunities for the workshop participants to observe and document the light conditions, their transitions in nature and man-made openings from indoors to outdoors.
SESSION 2: it will provide an opportunity to discuss the content of the lectures from the prior day in relation to the temporal snapshots from the site visit. The main activity will be to test and explore ideas of integrating light-related physiological and behavioural health aspects into choosing an imaginary site and designing a shelter to live-in all-year round under the physical forces of Nordic environments. Materials and equipment to invent small models and to produce sketches will be provided.
SESSION 3: This is the last session before the projects are presented. The first part of the session is dedicated to discussing ‘cyclic motion’ and exploring within the group how the models would (need to) change when transported to the locations of the participants’ home areas. The second half of the workshop will be dedicated for the groups to present to each other and to curate and turn the connections learned during the workshop into a final deliverable for the overall presentation of the workshop’s findings the next day.
While not necessary, participants should feel free to bring their own favorite working tools.
Katharina Wulff
Ute Besenecker
Ines Bartl
Veera Saastamoinen
WORKSHOP: THE TIDES OF NATURAL LIGHT - EXPLORING THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE OF LIGHT AND COLOUR
Tuesday, August 13 | 4:00 PM
Thursday, August 15 | 4:00 PM
Sunday, August 18 | 5:15 PM
Monday, August 19 | Presentations
Understanding the natural shifts of light and colour is essential for scientific and medical fields, as well as for improving quality of life by integrating light qualities into everyday design. By exploring these dynamics, we gain deeper insights into their profound impact on our biological and emotional states.
Throughout the workshop, participants will blend scientific methods and measurements with practical lighting design explorations of natural light, and how to mimic it with electric light. Through reflection, discussions, and hands-on practice, they will learn to bridge and implement various perspectives, from analytical to experiential and creative.
Arriving in Stockholm in August, participants will encounter unique daylight conditions, including long-lasting sunsets and early sunrises typical of the Scandinavian summer. To monitor the effects of these conditions, participants will fill out daily self-evaluation forms tracking their sleep patterns and mood. On the first day, each participant will receive a wearable light meter (a watch) to record their light exposure throughout the week. The data collected will be analyzed and discussed with workshop leaders during the third session (Sunday).
In parallel with scientific investigations, participants, divided into 5-6 groups, will work on creating light installations that mimic daylight. Each group will select a specific geographic location and a day of the year, then use various lighting fixtures to recreate three light scenarios: two times of the day, plus either an overcast or nighttime scenario.
In this task, the experience of light and colour is central. The spatial structure and architectural elements will remain abstract, focusing on angles, distributions, shadows, and spectral colours that closely resemble real daylight. Since most light is perceived through reflection, the experience will be integrated with the properties of reflective surfaces, such as colour and texture. Additionally, scenarios will be explored and evaluated with different colour settings, using coloured papers, for instance.
All scenarios will be evaluated using different methods. Advanced light meters will measure light levels and spectra, while the perceived light quality will be assessed using forms that address light levels, contrast, colour, mood, and atmosphere.
As the final part of the creative task, each group will choose one scenario and, based on data from measurements and evaluations, decide on a suitable activity or function for that scenario. This bottom-up design process aims to challenge conventions, standards, and assumptions about lighting, promoting a human-centered and holistic approach.
The workshop will conclude with a discussion integrating the scientific track with practical and creative work, exploring how to create light environments that meet both biological and emotional needs.
For the presentations, groups of participants will be responsible for presenting different aspects of the workshop outcomes.
Arne Lowden
Johanna Enger
Anya Hurlbert
Hamid Eizadi
WORKSHOP: PERCEIVING AND MANIPULATING NATURAL LIGHT
Tuesday, August 13 | 4:00 PM
Thursday, August 15 | 4:00 PM
Sunday, August 18 | 5:15 PM
Monday, August 19 | Presentations
This workshop will focus on human understanding of natural light and the potentialities of architects’ manipulation of it. It will also deal with how artificial light mixes with light from the environment.
The first session will be devoted to drawing light on surfaces and understanding how it affects our emotions. We will do a short creativity exercise to build team cohesiveness. Hewitt will present a short lecture on drawing and visual perception. We will then discuss how the visual system processes light and how drawing can help us comprehend its effects.
The second session will feature short lectures on how light is perceived and manipulated as it reflects off surfaces or travels through substances. Students will then begin to draw and model those effects in the studio. Kjellander will show a project designed with input from Konstfack faculty that used lightbox models, explaining the limitations of using conventional word indexes to describe emotional reactions to light.
The final session will be devoted to creating lightbox models and testing both its effectiveness as a light reflector and its effects on our emotions. The group will prepare a video documenting the three sessions and discussing the process of designing, perceiving and feeling light as a medium.
Though some materials may be provided each student should come with sketchbooks and drawing media so that we may begin our investigations with hand drawing. Faculty will provide guidance on how to best represent light in the initial drawings and how the visual system receives signals from photons in the environment. By better understanding the limitations of the haptic and visual systems, we can become more effective designers.
When studying the inherent potentials as well as the limitations of the visual, auditory, and haptic systems, we can become more effective designers by understanding proprioception and the influence of the physical environment on achievement, learning, memory, mood, emotions and behavior.
SESSION 1
Location: Starting in room A1, then spreading around on the premises or interior public spaces in the vicinity. Reassembling in room A1.
Material: Students are encouraged to bring their own sketchbooks and drawing tools, such as soft-lead pencils or charcoal. Konstfack may also supply drawing tools, pads, and paper.
Activities: While this session involves drawing, no previous drawing skills are required. In fact, being a trained artist could prove to be an obstacle rather than an asset.
The first exercise will be a short, fun drawing-relay to loosen up and get acquainted. Subsequently, Mark Hewitt will present a short lecture on “Drawing to See.”
Mark Alan Hewitt
Jonas Kjellander
WORKSHOP: PERCEIVING AND MANIPULATING NATURAL LIGHT
Mark
Alan Hewitt & Jonas Kjellander
In the second exercise, students will draw “light on interior surfaces.” These may be an entire room, a section of a space, or a detail. The focus will be on shades and cast shadows rather than outlines. Attention will be paid to light rather than function or representation. Drawings may be from anywhere on the premises or nearby interior spaces such as a café, a metro station, or a hairdresser. Drawings should preferably be produced on-site, while camera snapshots may also be used as a basis or for later completion. Camera images may be in black & white to single out the light experience, but students are encouraged to pay attention also to color rendering and light temperature.
Finally, students should submit digital photos of the drawings and the actual settings by email or USB drive to Mark or Jonas
SESSION 2
Location: Room A1
Material: Projector and screen. Bring notebooks and pencils or laptops.
Activities: This session will be devoted to analyses and discussions on the light experiences from the drawings and the corresponding physical settings. It will also feature one or two short intermediate lectures by Jonas Kjellander.
Discussions will emancipate from the submitted photos with the objective of analyzing and verbalizing the light experience in terms of mood and emotions while disregarding the specific function or activity of the space or the detail. We will attempt to point out the specific light characteristics in the different settings and describe their impact. A list of keywords will be linked to the respective light scene.
SESSION 3
Location: A1 and outside (if weather permits)
Material: Foamboard, utility knives, glue, sticky tape, fiber optic lights, mini LED lamps (all supplied).
Activities: This last session will be devoted to creating 2-3 lightbox models based on selected examples from session 2. We will enhance and develop hands-on some of the lighting characteristics identified in session 2 using both natural light (cutouts) and artificial miniature lighting sources.
Finally, we will analyze the disembodied lighting scenes moving back to concrete situations and functions. Will a specific light scene excite and promote a specific function or activity? In the light box, we can illustrate this with symbolic furnishings or artefacts. The measurements of the light boxes will be that of approximately a large size room (6x10x3 meters) in scale 1:12
The scenes will be photographed (with only the artificial miniature lighting, only natural light, and both in combination) for the final presentation.
WORKSHOP: AN EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO ATMOSPHERIC LIGHTING
Tuesday, August 13 | 4:00 PM
Thursday, August 15 | 4:00 PM
Sunday, August 18 | 5:15 PM
Monday, August 19 | Presentations
The immersive hands-on workshop is a practical way to explore the realm of atmospheres and affordances in lighting design. Designed for lighting designers, architects, researchers, environmental psyclogists and enthusiasts alike participating in Moving Bourdaries Nordic X. This workshop offers a unique opportunity to delve deep into theoretical concepts and translate them into an architectural and lighting experience.
Led by architect and lighting design expert Rodrigo Muro, phenomenological researcher and leading expert in the topic of Atmosphere,Tonino Griffero, and architect Clarissa Machado, this workshop will explore the intricate interplay between lighting, atmospheres, and affordances. Participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of how lighting can shape spatial perceptions, evoke emotions, and influence human behaviour within architectural environments.
Through a responsive interactive exercise, attendees will have the chance to experiment with different lighting scenes and atmospheres in space. The given immersive atmospheres seek the engagement of the senses and elicit a kinetic response. Different lighting schemes provide different atmospheres in a specific architectural context allowing to explore effects of light. Participants will learn how to harness the power of lighting to create meaningful and impactful spaces.
Key topics covered in the workshop include:
• Understanding the concept of atmospheres and affordances in lighting design
• Exploring the emotional and behavioural affect of light on human through visual perception
• Active perception/reaction for the creation of emotional large scale wall painting*.
• Hands-on exercises and discussion
By the end of the workshop, participants will emerge with a deeper understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of atmospheres and affordances in lighting design, as well as practical skills and techniques that they can apply to their own projects and design practices. Join us for an illuminating journey into the art and science of lighting design, and discover how light can transform the way we experience the built environment.
Rodrigo Muro
Tonino Griffero
Clarissa Machado
Maria Madland
- NOTES: Material for painting provided by the workshop. Students should bring notebook/ sketchbook, pencils for the“ideation” Day1 stage. Be willing to work in teams and be physically active. No homework is given.
WORKSHOP: AN EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO ATMOSPHERIC LIGHTING
Rodrigo Muro, Tonino Griffero, Clarissa Machado
SESSION 1 – Theory and Ideation
Introduction to the workshop
Topic & Concepts
Material, tools and equipment
Definition of atmospheres and lighting scenes (in groups) – (Work over paper)
SESSION 2–Practice and Realisation
Creation of atmospheres and lighting scenes (in groups) – (Hands on working with lighting fixtures in space)
SESSION 3–Experiencing and Creation
Presentation by Tonino
Painting (in groups) – (Hands on painting with brushes over surfaces)
Discussion and conclusion (ALL)
Documentation (ALL) - (photographs & transcript)
PRESENTATION OF RESULTS-Documented material photographs, transcript/summary of discussion
Discussion and conclusion (ALL)
ROOM S1
For the hands on activities will be divided in 4 groups:
» 2 groups working in parallel for the hands-on lighting and for the handson painting.
» 2 groups are documenting atmospheres around the building.
2 SPACES BY A DIVIVION WALL
- Participants are expected to react to the atmospheres provided by the lighting conditions by painting over the available surfaces at space (walls & floor*). It is not a painting in the artistic sense or depict anything in particular, but a kinetic reaction to space and atmospheres.
WORKSHOP: AN EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO ATMOSPHERIC LIGHTING Rodrigo Muro, Tonino Griffero, Clarissa Machado
DIFFERENT LIGHTING SCENES / DIFFERENT ATMOSPHERES
SPATIAL PAINTING / AFFORDANCE / EMOTIONAL
used only as reference for
AFFORDANCE / EMOTIONAL RESPONSE
Images
protraying painting is space activity. 1. Gemma Schiebe fine art 2.Live Painting Hommageto a Great Woman | Franck Bouroullec, 3.Black on White by Anastasia Faiella
Images used only as reference for protraying different lighting conditons. © IUA Ignacio Urquiza Arquitectos + Max von Werz Arquitectos