Siobhan Rockcastle has been invited to give a keynote presentation at the Daylight Academy Annual Conference in Garching, Germany on May 22, 2025. Her talk will be titled “Designing healthy daylit spaces: the intersection between research and practice.”
Rockcastle and Ahn awarded an ARS Tallwood Design Institute grant
Siobhan Rockcastle and Kyuho Ahn have been awarded an Agricultural Research Services (ARS) Tallwood Design Institute grant through the USDA for the proposal titled, ‘Surface matters: Exploring the impact of finishes on human factors that limit the market adoption of mass timber.’ This $40,000 grant supports a human factors study on the perceptual impacts of surface finishes in mass timber buildings, with a focus on lighting and acoustic performance and coordination with electrical, mechanical, and fire suppression systems.
Sofia Gonzales and Siobhan Rockcastle receive an AIA COTE Top Ten Student award
Sofia Gonzales’s project, titled ‘WAVE: Widely Accessible Vocation Education Center’ was selected as one of ten winner for this year’s AIA COTE Top Student competition. This project emerged in response to Siobhan Rockcastle’s terminal design studio, called ‘Future Career Center.’ This studio asked students to design a 50,000 SF center for career technical education (CTE) at David Douglas High School (DDHS) in east Portland. In addition to the site and program brief, the students were asked to use the COTE framework for excellence as a basis for evaluating the environmental and social standards of their project. The studio was supported by Octavio Gutierrez and BRIC Architecture, who are currently designing a center on the DDHS campus in response to a 2022 bond measure. Kelly Kottlowski, a former UO grad (M.Arch ’23), also supported the studio as a teaching assistant. Learn more about the winning proposal here: https://www.acsa-arch.org/competitions/2024-cote-competition/winners/#toggle-id-9
University of Oregon and Quinn Evans win an AIA Upjohn grant
Siobhan Rockcastle (UO) joins Denise Gravelle (Quinn Evans) and Julia Siple (Quinn Evans) as PI on a winning proposal, titled “A Research-Informed Guide to Circadian Lighting Design in Existing Buildings.” This research will produce a user-friendly design guide for professionals seeking to implement circadian health goals in existing buildings. For more information, visit: https://www.quinnevans.com/news/quinn-evans-awarded-grant-from-aia-upjohn-research-initiative
Anupam Satumane graduates with a PhD
On Sunday, June 16th, Dr. Anupam Satumane graduated with his PhD from the Department of Architecture. As Baker Lighting Lab’s first doctoral graduate, join me in congratulating Anupam for all of his hard work. We wish him the best in his next adventure as an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Appalachia State University.
Rigel Wakil wins an ‘Interdisciplinary Thesis Award’
Rigel Wakil, undergraduate research assistant and recent B.Arch graduate, was selected to receive an Interdisciplinary Thesis Award for his CHC thesis, titled, ‘Measuring human emotional response to architectural materials in daylighting conditions.’
Invited Daylight Design Workshop at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Siobhan Rockcastle was invited to give a two-day workshop to 2nd-year architecture students at Cal Poly SLO on February 22-23. This workshop was funded by a Nuckolls Funds Grant awarded to faculty at Cal Poly and was designed to infuse outside expertise into the design of core curriculum components in environmental design. Siobhan was accompanied by Kelly Kottlowski, a recent M.Arch graduate from the University of Oregon, who supported the delivery of workshop content and design critiques.
The students produced rough scaled physical models of their design projects and captured these using compact 360-degree cameras. Over the course of two hours, the students manipulated the models to alter the distribution of daylight and drive perceptual effects. These 360 photographs were then uploaded to an online site where students could explore the scenes from an immersive point-of-view. The workshop moved digital on day two and students were introduced to workflows in Climate Studio to model daylight performance metrics and produce accurate daylight renderings using Radiance.
Article accepted to LEUKOS – The Journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society
An article co-authored by Siobhan Rockcastle, Galen Sollom-Brotherton Whalen, Aaron Milgrim, and Robert Davis titled, “The Use of Virtual Screens in Perceptual Studies on Electric Light: A Comparison Between 2D, Panoramic, Cardboard, and Head-Mounted Displays” has been accepted for publication in LEUKOS.
Article accepted to Energy and Buildings
An article co-authored by Siobhan Rockcastle and Alen Mahic has been accepted for publication in Energy and Buildings. The paper, titled, “Simulating the annual energy demand to meet non-visual health recommendations from a luminaire level lighting control system” introduces a novel simulation-based approach and the results from a case-study. The pre-print is now available online.
Research paper on operated window shading and non-visual health accepted to Building Simulation 2023
Research paper on operated window shading and non-visual health accepted to Building Simulation 2023
The paper titled, “The Impact of Operated Window Shading on Visual Comfort, Non-Visual Health, and Energy Demand from Electric Lighting” was accepted to the proceedings of Building Simulation 2023 after a double-blind peer-review process. The paper summarizes research in the Baker Lighting Lab to develop an annual climate-based simulation workflow for evaluating non-visual health and visual comfort in buildings with operated shading and lighting control systems. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lighting R&D Program, part of the Building Technologies Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). the paper was co-authored by Siobhan Rockcastle, Alen Mahic, and Sarah Safranek (PNNL), with support from Dr. Robert Davis and Dr. Belal Abboushi.