International VELUX Award 2008: Light of tomorrow


VELUX 2008: Light of tomorrow

On 7 November 2007 in Venice, Velux will announce the results of the 2008 Awards. Launched for the third time, with the International Union of Architects and the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE), this biennial award is open to students of architecture worldwide, on the theme: “the light of tomorrow”. 686 projects from 46 countries were submitted to the international jury presided by Hani Rashid and composed of Enrique Browne (Chile), Huat Lim (Malaysia), Eva Jiricna (United Kingdom) representing the UIA, Francis Nordemann (France) representing the EAAE and Michel Langrand, Director General, VELUX France. The jury met in Turin, on 25 and 26 June 2008, and awarded three prizes and eight mentions to students and their tutors, worth a total of 30 000 Euros. In evaluating the projects, the jurors focused on projects that celebrated the privilege of being a student: with naivety, curiosity, and the willingness to take a risk. The jury made its choice according to the following criteria: innovation, technology, poetry, architecture and the way we want to live, and the use of light. Concerned by issues linked to the environment, the three prize winning projects contribute, on different scales, their personal interpretation of daylight. The first prize was awarded to Reilly O’Neil Hogan (USA) for a project entitled “Embodied Ephemerality: Light-FormArchitecture”. His idea was to transform users daily routine in a specifiic subway station in Manhattan, by introducing and projecting daylight in the underground spaces to simulate the light of the outside world. The author demonstrates with talent an understanding of light in big spaces with clear reference to Piranesian light and the Pantheon. The second prize went to two students at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Ruan Hao and Xiong Xing, for their project: “Interface Repairing Light Festival” in New York, a celebration of sunlight in the city. The third prize was won by Dean MacGregor, of Lusiada University in Portugal for his project entitled “Light has a body” that makes ingenious use of the refraction of light in water. Visit the VELUX web site to view all the projects iva.velux.com