Light study—by Daniel Rybakken
by Cosmina Dinu
The end of the summer is always sudden and unexpected. Is hard to let go to white T-shirts, trips to the seaside and red watermelons. You didn’t got the time to taste them fully and all you can do is swear that next year you’ll do them all more diligently. But what you miss the most are the early sunny mornings when the bright rays wake you up, filling you up with life. Light, like air and water is one of the most precious resource that we as organisms vitally depend on it.
With this thoughts in mind I got really hooked by Daniel Rybakken attempts in recreating natural light impression and all that derives out of it.
Here is his concept: “Daylight in a room gives information or signs of sometimes outside the physical room. These signs gives us a subconscious feeling that our perceived space is larger than the physical room. The contrast between outdoor and indoor decreases. When daylight in a room is removed, the feeling of space decreases, and the contrast between outdoor and indoor increases. I believe that this can result in a feeling of being enclosed for many of us, to be alone or lonely – a social block.”
Daylight in a room gives information from outside. This creates a feeling of an expanded perceived space. A sensation of freedom.
But when the light is out, you no longer get this positive sensation.The room feels smaller, you feel trapped and alone.
Daniel’s first light study – Daylight comes sideways tried to create a feeling of expanded perceived space, through an illusion of natural daylight, revealing the idea of surroundings beyond the actual room, The concept has been to create a blurred, semi-transparent “window” – a recreation of daylight by creating dynamic artificial shadows of objects outside of the actual chamber.
The effect is created by individually dimming the intensity of 1100 LED’s, aranged behind a semi-transparent surface. By adding this motion, the subconscious illusion of daylight is enhanced.
Daylight comes sideways received a “Best of the Best” of the Red Dot Award: Design Concept, for the best illumination concept.
His second attemp -Subconscious effect of daylight tries to replicate the effect of having daylight indoor. The concept is to create a feeling of natural, direct sunshine. This imitation is created through projecting a light pattern giving a recognizable illusion of natural light and shadows.
The lamp has the shape of a small table where the light source is mounted underneath the tabletop. The light gives an illusion of the sun shining through a window because of the artificial shadows that are cast to the floor.
“Don’t look at the table, look at the shadow on the floor beneath it.” The concept gives the illusion daylight is coming into a room by projecting light and the pattern of a shadow onto the floor (the beam comes from a projector under the table). It opens up dark, claustrophobic spaces by giving the impression there is bright daylight streaming in.
The young Norwegian designer is also preocupied by the medical curative properties of daylight, all the positive effects on humans. His most recent project Surface daylight continues the series of recreating positive sensation and the subconscious effect of having bright direct sunlight streaming into a room. Instead of projecting a light onto a surface (as with Subconscious effect of daylight), the idea was to place the light in the surface itself. The lamp is made up of two separate surfaces leaning against the wall. The light is created with LED lamps placed behind the surface.
Design Report awarded Surface Daylight for the best design at Salone Satellite 09.
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