The Luminaire Window: Dynamic LED light supplementing the daylight intake, to meet biological needs and architectural potentials in healthcare

The importance of dynamic daylight to support health and well-being has been more and more recognized. People in hospitals and health care environments have a specific need for optimized daylight conditions. Daylight penetration through window openings is crucial to stimulate circadian rhythm and maintain a healthy sleep-awake pattern. At the same time, the window can provide a pleasant view and connection to the surroundings and enhance the perception of the interior space and materials. All three factors are recognized as important for human well-being and health, but never the less they are seldom considered in a holistic lighting design.

Natural daylight is not always sufficient - for instance on an overcast day, or on winter days. This paper explores a new universal design approach for supplementing the qualities of natural dynamic light by boosting the daylight with dynamic LED light integrated into the window.

A qualitative experiment is carried out by integrating controllable LED in the frame of a façade window in a full-scale mock-up. It is examined how this set-up can support the colour spectrum and intensity of the daylight intake during the transmission time from daylight to darkness.

The findings illustrate that a “luminaire window” has potentials of supporting circadian rhythm, stimulate peoples natural need for contact with nature and at the same time enhance the architectural potentials by using the window as the main (daylight and electrical) light source to create an additional, dynamic illumination layer in the interior space without limiting the daylight intake.

The paper concludes that there are potentials in combining daylight and a dynamic luminaire in a double dynamic window to support health, well-being, and architecture. New research directions are defined combining knowledge on dynamic light from neuroscience, health care, engineering and architecture through transdisciplinary experiments.