Alberto Campo Baeza and Till Roenneberg awarded for their work on light

Coinciding with UNESCO's International Day of Light, 16th May, The Daylight Award awards its 2024 awards to the Spanish architect and professor Alberto Campo Baeza for his architecture work, and to the German professor of chronobiology Till Roenneberg, for his research work.

The Daylight Award (scientific research and architectural project) aims to reward knowledge, based on research, for the benefit of architectural thought and achievements that create a scientific basis for natural light use in architecture.

The 2024 jury consisted of the Finnish architect and writer Juhani Pallasmaa (jury president), the British professor of circadian neuroscience Russell Foster, the Danish architect Dorte Mandrup, the Dutch professor of environmental psychology Yvonne de Kort, the Swiss professor of chemistry pharmacist Gerd Folkers, the Dutch architectural photographer Iwan Baan and the American director of the Institute of Economic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden, Michael Balick.

The Daylight Award for Daylight in Architecture
The architecture category of the award assesses and celebrates the sensory, aesthetic, emotional, and mental qualities of daylight in architecture. The architectural projects of the 2024 laureate, Professor Alberto Campo Baeza from Spain are restrained and silent examples of sensuous, mental, and poetic qualities in the architectural articulation of daylight.

Campo Baeza's works are celebrations of the silent miracles of daylight in buildings of widely differing functions. His buildings exemplify the spiritual qualities of daylight and thus expand the understanding of the values of daylight beyond the current scope of science.

In addition to his numerous, almost archetypically simple, and focused houses, he has designed buildings for a multitude of other purposes; museums such as Andalusia's Museum of Memory and the recently completed Robert Olnick Pavilion of the Magazzino Museum in New York, the Caja Granada Savings Bank, a sports hall for Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid, the Almería Cathedral Square and several office buildings - all which share the same intention of ennobling the architectural experience through abstraction and reduction.

The architect's unwavering confidence in his essential style often projects an air of silent spirituality, which is a rare, but a highly valuable alternative to today's materialist, consumerist architecture.

Till Roenneberg.

The Daylight Award for research on natural light has been awarded to Professor Emeritus of Chronobiology Till Roenneberg of the Institute of Medical Psychology of the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

Till Roenneberg's attention has focused on chronobiology and issues such as dependencies and circadian rhythms, his research and publications have helped us understand the multiple qualities of natural light and lighting in general and their impacts on human health, well-being and performance. His seminal research findings have been cited numerous times, have influenced many other researchers, and, significantly, have been applied to multiple branches of society, spanning medicine, public policy, and architecture.

Till Roenneberg developed and validated the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire (MCTQ), which paved the way for studies investigating circadian rhythm synchronization in populations around the world. A key observation of his work is the demonstration that human clocks are deeply influenced by the natural cycle of light and dark, despite increasing urbanization.

Roenneberg owes part of his notable influence to the creation of the concept of "social jetlag": a difference in sleep schedule between work and free days that reflects changes that people must make to work and that go against their natural biology. When “social jetlag” lasts too long, it ends up constituting a biological challenge to the circadian and sleep systems of each individual in question. Roenneberg demonstrated links between "social jetlag" and obesity, depression and substance abuse.

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General Headquarters of Caja General de Ahorros Granada by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photograph by Javier Callejas

General Headquarters of Caja General de Ahorros Granada by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photograph by Duccio Malagamba

Cala House by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photograph by Javier Callejas.

House in Mojácar by Alberto Campo Baeza + Modesto Sánchez Morales. Photograph by Javier Callejas.

DOMUS AUREA House by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photograph by Javier Callejas Sevilla.

Rotonda House by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photograph by Javier Callejas.

Andalucia Museum Of Memory by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photograph by Javier Callejas

Between Cathedrals by Alberto Campo Baeza, 2009, Cádiz. Photograph by Javier Callejas.

Sports center. Universidad Francisco de Vitoria Sports Center by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photograph by Javier Callejas

Robert Olnick Pavilion by Campo Baeza and Miguel Quismondo. Photograph by Javier Callejas.

Robert Olnick Pavilion by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photograph by Javier Callejas.

House of the Infinite by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photography by Javier Callejas Sevilla.

Blas House by Alberto Campo Baeza. Photograph by Hisao Suzuki.

Plaza de la Catedral by Alberto Campo Baeza, 2000, Almería. Photograph by Javier Callejas

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ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA

Alberto Campo Baeza. Born in Valladolid (1946), where his grandfather was an architect, from the age of two he lived in CADIZ where he saw the LIGHT. From his father he inherited a spirit of ANALYSIS and from his mother the determination to be an ARCHITECT.

He lives in Madrid, where he moved to study Architecture. His first professor was Alejandro de la Sota, who instilled in him the ESSENTIAL architecture that he is still trying to erect. He is a PROFESSOR at the Madrid School of Architecture, ETSAM, where he has been a tenured professor for more than 25 years.

He has taught at the ETH in Zurich and the EPFL in Lausanne as well as the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And in Dublin and Naples, Virginia and Copenhagen. And at the BAUHAUS in Weimar and at Kansas State University. He spent a year as a research fellow at COLUMBIA University in New York in 2001 and again in 2011. He has given many lectures and has received many awards like the TORROJA for his Caja Granada building. And he was awarded the Buenos Aires Biennial 2009 for his Nursery for Benetton in Venice and his MA Museum in Granada. He has recently been nominated by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the prestigious Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize of 2010.

His works have been widely recognized. From the single family houses Casa Turégano and Casa de Blas, both in Madrid, to Casa Gaspar, Casa Asencio and Casa Guerrero in Cádiz. And the Olnick Spanu House in Garrison, New York, the Centro BIT in Inca-Mallorca, the Caja de Granada Savings Bank and the MA, the Museum of Andalusian Memory, both in Granada, and a nursery for Benetton in Venice. And Between Cathedrals in Cádiz, and just recently a building for Offices in Zamora (2012). And the construction of the new Offices for Benetton in Samara, Russia, which is about to begin.

And more than 20 editions of a BOOK with his texts “LA IDEA CONSTRUÍDA” [THE BUILT IDEA] have been published in several languages. A fourth edition of “PENSAR CON LAS MANOS”, a second compilation of his writings, has just been published. And just now “PRINCIPIA ARCHITECTONICA”, a collection of his texts written during his sabbatical year at Columbia University in New York in 2011.

He believes in Architecture as a BUILT IDEA. And he believes that the principle components of Architecture are GRAVITY that constructs SPACE and LIGHT that constructs TIME.

He has exhibited his work in the CROWN HALL by Mies at Chicago’s IIT and at the PALLADIO Basilica in Vicenza. And in the Urban Center in New York. And at the Saint Irene Church in Istanbul. In 2009 the prestigious MA Gallery of Toto in Tokyo made an anthological exhibition of his work that in 2011 was in the MAXXI in Rome.

Act.>. 04-2012

Published on: May 17, 2024

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