Light of welfare: Daylight as an integrated quality of the welfare housing

The program of welfare architecture takes its point of departure in the modern movement. As a reaction towards the dense overcrowded cities, where people were living close together in poorly maintained apartments providing the residents with a potential health problem, new approaches to dwelling design arose. The social engagement in people’s wellbeing had a physical representation in an architectural program. One of the often-mentioned concerns in the architectural program of modern movement was: Daylight.

When experiencing the dense city at the beginning of the previous century, it was obvious that the lack of daylight in the dwellings were a significant problem and a natural consequence of that was the ambition to include more daylight in housing schemes. This led to design concepts where large apertures and balconies were included in the design. From the beginning of the 1930ties, through the post war period and until now the daylight design continues to attract attention all through the architectural design process.

The objective of this paper is to investigate how the different daylight design and the approaches to designing with daylight at different historical time affects the daylight situation in welfare housing.