The first edition of Virtual Lighting Design has ended! We are grateful for the hard work and innovation shown by our students and guest speakers! A special thank you to Outer Realm VR, Azadeh O. Sawyer, ZGF, and Nathaniel Jones for your live demos! Stay tuned for the next edition, coming soon!

Dr. Siobhan Rockcastle and Dr. Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg were invited to Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) on Wednesday, Dec 5th to present IHBE’s research on ‘Designing Health in the Built Environment.’  Attended by medical researchers in sleep medicine and occupational health, UO faculty are working to set-up ongoing collaborations with scientists doing clinical and preventative research on the effects of indoor environments on human health.

Professor Rockcastle is teaching a new course on Virtual Lighting Design next term (Winter 2019).  Supported by a Nuckolls Fund Grant, this course will introduce students to state-of-the-art techniques in lighting simulation and visualization for use in Virtual Reality.  Registration starts on Monday!

This past weekend, Professor Siobhan Rockcastle and James Carpenter from JCDA led a 3-day workshop exploring the effects of daylight on perception.  Students in the School of Architecture & Environment captured instances of light phenomena and then produced physical constructs through which they attempted to re-create the perceptual effect.  Explorations included a study of color, reflectivity, projected light, transposed light, and caustic dynamics.  Funding for this workshop was provided by the Edward Allen Fund for Technical Teaching.

Join us on Friday, October 19 at 5:30pm in LA 206.

James Carpenter has worked at the intersection of architecture, fine art, and engineering for nearly 50 years, advancing a distinctive vision based on the use of natural light as the foundational element of the built environment. Originally studying architecture before concentrating on the fine arts, Carpenter founded the cross-disciplinary design firm James Carpenter Design Associates in 1979 to support the application of these aesthetic principles to large-scale architectural projects. Carpenter’s work is driven by a deep awareness of materiality and craft as a means of enhancing the individual human experience within the built environment.

Carpenter has been recognized with numerous national and international awards, including an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Smithsonian National Environment Design Award. He holds a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, and was a Loeb Fellow of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a Mellon Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago.

James Carpenter will offer a weekend workshop October 19-21 in Eugene on the perception of an overcast sky.  This workshop is offered for 1 credit and includes a structured design exercise, lecture, and critiques over 3 days (registration information here).  The workshop is co-taught by Prof. Siobhan Rockcastle and Jame Carpenter, principal at James Carpenter Design Associates in New York.  A public lecture  will take place as part of the workshop on Friday, October 19 at 5:30 pm.

The Nuckolls Fund Grant was formed in 1989 with a mission “to help already-established lighting programs expand their offerings and undertake innovative educational ideas.”  The Baker Lighting Lab, under the direction of Siobhan Rockcastle as PI, was awarded this grant for their proposal to develop and teach a ‘Virtual Lighting Design’ course in collaboration with Nathaniel Jones, ZGF, and Luma Lighting.  The Nuckolls Fund Grant awards $20,ooo for the development of technology workflows, hardware, and software for student use.  This course will be taught in Winter Term 2019 at the University of Oregon.  Go here to learn more about the grant.

Assistant Professor Siobhan Rockcastle recently travelled to TU Delft to present her paper, titled ‘OCUVIS:  A Web-Based Visualizer for Simulated Daylight Performance’ at the 2018 SimAUD conference.  Siobhan was also a Scientific Chair and organizer for the conference, chaired a special session on ‘The Centrality of the User,’ and led a workshop titled ‘Simulating Circadian Effects’ with researchers from TU Berlin, EPFL, and Solemma.  The abstract for her paper, authored with Maria Amundadottir & Marilyne Andersen, is included below.

Abstract:

This paper introduces an interactive web-based visualizer for multi-metric daylight simulation results, named OCUVIS. It is able to display simulation-based results for a diverse range of ocular human-centric metrics such as non-visual health potential (nvR_D), daylight-related visual interest (mSC₅) and visual comfort (DGP with Ev), as well as horizontal illumination metrics such as spatial Daylight Autonomy (sDA), Annual Sunlight Exposure (ASE) and Daylight Factor (DF)).  To provide a holistic representation of performance across a multi-directional field-of-view, OCUVIS creates an interactive visualization of results over time and across space, linking temporal and 3D graphics. This allows the user to explore the impacts of dynamic sky conditions, view position, view direction and program use on localized and building scale performance.  OCUVIS bridges the gap between human and building-scale daylight potential to offer a more holistic and intuitive representation of daylight performance in buildings.

In the developed world, we spend 90% of our lives and 40% of the total energy we consume in buildings. Decisions we make about how buildings and cities are designed, constructed, and managed have significant implications for our own health and for the health of our planet.

Collaborating with communities, municipalities, and academic and industry partners to make those decisions, the University of Oregon’s new Institute for Health in the Built Environment—which leverages the expertise of three research centers in the College of Design—advances, integrates, and applies new knowledge from diverse scientific disciplines to support a healthy, thriving community and planet. Baker Lighting Lab joins the Energy Studies in Buildings Lab and the Biology in the Built Environment Center as a founding partner in this endeavor.  See the news about this here.