Challenges in lighting education: a recommended practice

Abstract

Although lighting is a theme usually loved by architects, there are few studies about appropriate pedagogical strategies focusing on its teaching in architectural undergraduate courses. This subject rarely is present in conferences, symposia, and similar events regarding architectural education. Due to historical mistakes, lighting education is often conducted in such courses with no link to the architectural design process. Regarding daylighting, it not always goes beyond solar geometry and insolation control, and electrical lighting is addressed to the discipline of electrical installations, strictly based on a calculation approach. It urges to present lighting to students as an integral and indissociable part of the architectural space itself. Also, it is essential to support a process of learning based on observation and laboratory experimentation. This paper discusses these issues and presents a pedagogical proposal favouring drawing with light, both daylighting and electrical lighting, since the first steps of the architectural design process. An electronic tool yet under development and destined to help in decision-making related to daylighting in the initial phases of design development is also presented. For a sustainable and safe future in a world in rapid transformations due to technological advances and pandemic events, lighting education deserves to be exhaustively studied by educators and architecture schools worldwide. Sharing knowledge in a network seems to be the best way for such an objective.