The International VELUX Award for Students of Architecture returns in 2024, offering students the opportunity to innovate the concept of daylight in the built environment. The award has grown considerably since its launch and attracts competitors from all around the world, spanning 800 schools, 130 countries and amassing over 6,000 projects to date. The total prize money amounts to 30,000 euros.
It has taken place biannually since 2004 with the premise of challenging architecture students to explore what the "Light of Tomorrow" means to them. This theme focuses on how to use sunlight and daylight as main sources of energy and light, and how to ensure the health and well-being of the people who live and work in buildings.
This year, the 2006 winner, architect and Associate Professor Louise Grønlund has illustrated her thoughts on how the competition positively impacted her. She believes that the next generation of architects participating in the Award can gain just as much from the experience as she did and open their minds to the numerous benefits of daylight within indoor spaces and building sustainably.
Winning the award instilled in Louise the curiosity and confidence to delve deeper into the many wonders that daylight offers within architecture.
Daylight makes us aware of the spaces that we find ourselves in every day, all the fantastic nuances and fantastic sensibility that daylight has when it comes to architecture. – Louise Grønlund
She has encouraged students to embrace what the competition can offer them, to access the knowledge available at daylightandarchitecture.com, and to see how "practitioners and researchers talk about daylight and how they work with it in their practice."
The experience may also result in exciting prospects for their learning journey. "I definitely think that the students should be curious about what it can lead to," she said.
Louise chose to use her prize money to study architecture in Japan, and she has continued to explore the vast possibilities in the field ever since. The passion that drove her to participate in the International VELUX Award has only grown over time.
Today, Louise is an Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation in Copenhagen. She involves herself in many projects that focus on daylight in architecture. One recent project is Poetic Daylight, a pavilion located in inner Copenhagen. This project examines three ways daylight affects a building: light from above, sunlight, and reflected light. Poetic Daylight uses these spaces to demonstrate how natural light can impact an indoor environment and increase awareness of its benefits.
"All of us should think about how daylight plays a specific and enormous role in the green transition and in the way that we should build sustainably," Louise emphasized.
