Circadian Folds:

Designed by: Joe Crumlish, Christopher Fettes, Ethan White

Submitted to the Velux Daylight Competition

This proposal seeks to tackle the challenges of daylighting in an Urban Context. As many New York office buildings are being repurposed into residential spaces, the issue of providing sufficient and equitable access to daylight becomes incredibly important. Access to daylight has been shown to directly improve human health and well-being, and our proposal for the Circadian Folds explores ways that daylight can be brought into the re-purposing of existing buildings and become a vehicle to provide autonomy in an affordable housing development. In approaching these challenges, this project focuses on developing daylighting strategies at two scales: the large scale of the building in the urban context of New York City, and the small scale of light penetrating an individual dwelling unit.

This project overall strives to explore solutions for daylighting in a contemporary urban fabric where access to healthy living spaces is becoming increasingly important. These solutions operate at multiple scales, and allow for abundant natural light to flow into the spaces in a dynamic manner. By taking on this proposal and exploration for daylighting in New York City, our team is seeking to re-examine how urban residential infill is approached, and ultimately reach a set of strategies that uplifts the quality of life for inhabitants by allowing them to develop a living relation with daylight through their living space.