Augmented Light: Advancing Window & Lighting Technology

Abstract

Light has an innate ability to impact the physiological state of human beings. Although, modern day architecture hasmade immense strides in lighting design, little has been done to leverage this unique characteristic of light. A growing body of research has successfully qualified these non-quantitative effects of light into a new conceptual framework called the Human Centric Lighting Model. This new model considers the impacts of interior lighting as threefold: Visual, Biological and Emotional. Working within this new framework, this thesis explores the possibility of creating richer interior experiences by leveraging current day lighting and sensor technology in hopes of enrichening the rudimentarydialogue between interior and exterior lighting. Additionally, it considers technology’s role in shaping future cities as virtually augmented spaces that intermix physical and virtual components to create a new kind of urban environment that is shaped as much by physical architecture as it is by informational and cultural; these cities exist as physical places with augmented digital overlays. It aims to assist architecture in resolving the growing tension between physical and virtual spaces by re-establishing the role of the window as a liminal point of transition between not only interior and exterior space but physical and virtual as well.