Latest / Sunlight Matters / Built to Thrive: Light, Health & the Future of Architecture

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Built to Thrive: Light, Health & the Future of Architecture · Sunlight Matters

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UNKNOWN: Thank you.
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SPEAKER_03: I thought, oh, okay, being an architect, I will have more impact because I'm actually affecting where people are living, which will affect their health, their well-being, their psychology, everything, because we are surrounded by these buildings.
0:13
SPEAKER_03: We live, well, these days as modern humans, we live 90% of our time in these buildings.
0:18
SPEAKER_03: So it's affecting us from when we are born till when we are passing away.
0:22
SPEAKER_03: And no medication would allow us to help all the way through.
0:26
SPEAKER_03: So this is a lot more impactful way of being useful to humankind and being useful to
0:31
SPEAKER_01: our health and living.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: LED lighting and the fact that actually LED lighting in buildings is often suboptimal to the point where it might be causing damage to us.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think one of the findings was incandescent light, you know, the old light bulbs were actually better in terms of the light that they were giving off.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: And suddenly I'm like, well, in the race to kind of make us all much more energy efficient, did anyone think about the law of Welcome
1:07
SPEAKER_00: to Sunlight Matters, the podcast that reconnects us with the sun.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Join us as we explore the power and influence of our star, the force at the heart of everything.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Each episode, we speak with leading experts to uncover the ways sunlight shapes our world.
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SPEAKER_01: By the way, I love the painting behind you, the picture behind you.
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SPEAKER_00: The
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SPEAKER_01: moon in Louisiana, that is just stunning.
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SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I really love this one.
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SPEAKER_03: I wish I had the actual painting.
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SPEAKER_03: This is just the poster that I got from Louisiana Museum.
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SPEAKER_03: Just couldn't help myself.
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SPEAKER_01: It's just...
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SPEAKER_01: Quantalism, is it?
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SPEAKER_01: So it's just beautiful.
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SPEAKER_01: Anyway, let's get started.
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SPEAKER_01: Welcome to today's show.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: And I am delighted to welcome Dr.
1:57
SPEAKER_01: Mandana.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: I hope I pronounced that right, from UCL.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: And you're a lecturer in health and well-being in sustainable buildings and also Deputy Director of Light and Light Programme.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: So would you like to just give us a bit of an introduction to yourself and tell us a bit about the roles that
2:20
SPEAKER_03: you play?
2:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thank you, Dave, for that introduction.
2:23
SPEAKER_03: Yes, I go by Mondana Connie, but my full family name is Sari Connie.
2:28
SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, you have all the right to confuse that a bit.
2:32
SPEAKER_03: Somehow, since I moved to UCL, I have turned into just the Connie part.
2:36
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
2:37
SPEAKER_03: But that's how it is.
2:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, as you mentioned, I'm a lecturer at the moment in health and well-being and sustainable buildings at UCL.
2:46
SPEAKER_03: My background is architectural engineering, and I've also studied design for sustainable development.
2:53
SPEAKER_03: So basically some of the things that I have been really passionate about, so I have in general followed my passion all the way through in terms of the topics that I've studied and continue to sort of follow up in terms of research and education.
3:08
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, as you mentioned, I'm at the moment Deputy Director of Light and Lighting Program.
3:15
SPEAKER_03: It's a Master of Science program at Bartlett in Built Environment and Faculty of Built Environment.
3:22
SPEAKER_03: From next year, I will be the director of this program, hoping to, well, continue what it's bringing in terms of creativity and technology, enlighten lighting, but at the same time, hoping to meet the next generation's needs in terms of what we actually need in education related to this topic.
3:46
SPEAKER_03: Of course, we always have to make things better, and this is The hope is to have enough momentum to create this next generation platform.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm immediately struck by the fact that in terms of what you're lecturing on, it talks about well-being and buildings.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: And I'm kind of fascinated, like as an architect, how you kind of then moved into thinking about, I guess, the more psychological aspects of people in buildings.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: Where do you kind of sort of start from in that journey?
4:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a really good question.
4:22
SPEAKER_03: It could go back a really long time, actually.
4:25
SPEAKER_03: I see that myself, that you're bringing back everything to when I started actually my journey, because initially I wanted to be a medical doctor.
4:35
SPEAKER_03: My mom is a medical doctor and I was really interested to follow up that trajectory of field and was fascinated by biology, by physiology of human being, by psychology and not just human, like, you know, just nature in general.
4:48
SPEAKER_03: My dad is also like, has been is a professor in natural resources and was always fascinated by how we are living and how our habitat is affected by us, how it's affecting us.
4:58
SPEAKER_03: But then I was encouraged by actually a sentence my mom told me to go to architecture rather than going to meditation.
5:07
SPEAKER_03: And you know what that is.
5:07
SPEAKER_03: I guess it's kind of famous.
5:09
SPEAKER_03: I don't know who has said this, but it's like...
5:11
SPEAKER_03: If you're a medical doctor, if you're a doctor, if something goes wrong, if you do something wrong, it goes under the ground.
5:17
SPEAKER_03: So it kind of gets forgotten somehow.
5:21
SPEAKER_03: But if you're an architect or a building or building your environment, this is staying underground.
5:27
SPEAKER_03: So it's much more impactful.
5:28
SPEAKER_03: It will affect us for years and years or hundreds of years.
5:32
SPEAKER_03: I thought, oh, okay, being an architect and a building, being in the building, that I will have more impact because I'm actually affecting where people are living, which will affect their health, their well-being, their psychology, everything, because we are surrounded by these buildings.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: We live, well, these days as modern humans, we live 90% of our time in these buildings.
5:52
SPEAKER_03: So it's affecting us from when we are born till when we are passing away.
5:56
SPEAKER_03: And no medication would allow us to help all the way through.
6:00
SPEAKER_03: So this is a lot more impactful way of being useful to humankind, being useful
6:05
SPEAKER_01: to our health.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's fascinating that because I think I haven't really sort of sat down and thought about that.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: But what you're saying is so true, you know, and it's the places we live and the places we work and Whatever we do, they tend to be inside, don't they?
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Particularly, you know, in the northern hemispheres.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: And I think you said 90% of our time is indoors.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I'm kind of interested because I get this feeling that architecture and when people are thinking about buildings, they kind of...
6:43
SPEAKER_01: you know, will design the building and they'll talk about things like sunlight and daylight.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: But it will almost be an afterthought to the actual way that the building will look and work rather than something which should be almost the top priority.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, is that kind of a fair assessment?
7:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
7:04
SPEAKER_03: definitely.
7:05
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's basically the whole point of how...
7:11
SPEAKER_03: sort of make the best out of this built environment that we have.
7:14
SPEAKER_03: We need this condition.
7:15
SPEAKER_03: We have to, I mean, we have strived for millions of years to be able to create environment that is safe and allows us to sort of thrive.
7:26
SPEAKER_03: And we have to still continue again, through research and education to make it better and better for us.
7:33
SPEAKER_03: And we know that, okay, this area that we've created, these type of buildings, of course, they are safe for many reasons.
7:40
SPEAKER_03: They're structurally sound and so on and so forth.
7:43
SPEAKER_03: But we have to also be aware and conscious of the fact that all those millions of years, we didn't evolve in these conditions.
7:52
SPEAKER_03: We were more outside.
7:55
SPEAKER_03: getting a lot of sunlight.
7:56
SPEAKER_03: We were getting a lot of daylight.
7:58
SPEAKER_03: Our body is evolved basically as people under the sun rather than people in 90% indoors.
8:06
SPEAKER_03: And we need to understand how this transition, which has happened really recent, is affecting us.
8:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and we still don't know a lot, actually.
8:19
SPEAKER_03: It is only...
8:20
SPEAKER_03: perhaps 30, 40 years we know, started knowing about the circadian rhythm and how the light is affecting that and through our ganglion cells, a lot we still haven't even discovered.
8:32
SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of by itself quite scary that we are in this condition that we don't know much about how it's affecting us.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: Look, I mean, it's really like, you know, the more I ponder that, the more I'm like, God Almighty, you know, we have...
8:49
SPEAKER_01: maybe walked ourselves into situations where, you know, we might actually be damaging our health by the way we live.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a piece of research, which I think has just been published by a colleague of yours at UCL, which is talking about LED lighting and the fact that actually LED lighting in buildings is often suboptimal to the point where it might be causing damage to us.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think one of the findings was incandescent light, you know, the old light bulbs were actually better in terms of the light that they were giving off.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: And suddenly I'm like, well, in the race to kind of make us all much more energy efficient, did anyone think about the law of unforeseen consequences in terms of what this might be doing to our health?
9:38
SPEAKER_01: So to me, it was a great example where people haven't done this for the wrong reasons but the net result may be you know actually terrible for us as humans
9:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, definitely.
9:52
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we are making decisions as we know more, but of course, at the same time, we are creating situations for ourselves that probably are still unknown.
10:01
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, this is also my whole point of emphasizing on research and education and how important they are, even though I think sometimes in a lot of contexts, their importance are being neglected or not as clear for a lot of people.
10:19
SPEAKER_03: Research is a waste of time.
10:21
SPEAKER_03: It's a luxury.
10:21
SPEAKER_03: Or education.
10:22
SPEAKER_03: You don't need education.
10:24
SPEAKER_03: You can just better be off.
10:26
SPEAKER_03: These kind of things you hear a lot from many already because you can get rich by not educating yourself.
10:35
SPEAKER_03: And just exactly what you're saying about this example that you mentioned shows how important is to continue having new insights continue challenging what we know and changing the paradigms through research and how important it is to continue educating people so have the right capacity to bring those actually back to the society otherwise we will end up in these loops definitely the energy saving was an important part it was a lot research but yeah of course it's not enough that's why we need to continue that's why research these new insight constantly changing what we know is very important.
11:14
SPEAKER_03: And that's, for me, that's the only way or these two trajectories are the only way that we can shape our future.
11:23
SPEAKER_03: And otherwise, we will be stuck in a situation that we might end up not getting enough of the right light in the right time, like if we want to talk about just the light, and already that would create in future later on conditions for us that are will require medication etc so so it's really like why don't we prevent it before it gets to becoming a source of a problem of obesity or cancer or whatever all these issues that we know are from lack of proper access to daylight and it's proven that there are really high correlations with from breast cancer to obesity to all sorts of disease diabetes to how the exposure to light or the history of exposure to light of those type of patients have been.
12:11
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I mean, research
12:13
SPEAKER_01: and education...
12:14
SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of, if you follow the trajectory of many of these diseases, they kind of correspond in many ways to some of the changes in our behaviour.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we are spending more and more time inside.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Like I read some pretty frightening research which says that since COVID, the average American and Brit I think, is spending two hours less outside than before.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: Now, for many of us, we won't even think about the consequences of that.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, as you say, like, we need education.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: So we need, you know, and I guess a question for you is if I was to be doing an undergraduate course in architecture and building design, how much of it is about like health and wellness in terms of the people who are going to inhabit the buildings you're in.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what the answer to that is, but I'm presuming it's not a huge amount.
13:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're totally right.
13:13
SPEAKER_03: It's not actually a huge amount that we have.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: I mean, these things also have been introduced in recent years.
13:21
SPEAKER_03: For example, at UCL, we have a program in health and well-being, which is a result of same people thinking the same issues.
13:28
SPEAKER_03: And of course, that understanding is there, which comes through the research.
13:32
SPEAKER_03: We have these insights that we are challenging these existing paradigms.
13:36
SPEAKER_03: So we are creating basis for educating people more and more towards this and creating the capacity that is required to basically roll the wheel towards the right direction and hoping it will go to well I'm confident that it does like when we started talking about sustainability I was a student then and this was introduced immediately at Chalmers in all the modules for example in all the educational no matter what kind of discipline what kind of program that they had to be um In all the programs, there had to be one module about sustainability within that field.
14:16
SPEAKER_03: And I think that already created a huge impact for our generation to focus and really put aside a big part of what our thinking, our projects on this topic.
14:28
SPEAKER_03: And then it started rolling.
14:30
SPEAKER_03: So it's really...
14:32
SPEAKER_03: important to have that.
14:34
SPEAKER_03: But as you said, I mean, it still is limited.
14:36
SPEAKER_03: It's not that we talk about it in every other program or every other module.
14:41
SPEAKER_03: How does this kind of decision affect our health?
14:45
SPEAKER_03: And I think that should be there.
14:46
SPEAKER_03: How does this decision, how you're making this LED, how does it going to affect people's health?
14:52
SPEAKER_03: How does it affect energy?
14:54
SPEAKER_03: How does it affect?
14:55
SPEAKER_03: So all of them have to be considered instead of just one dimensional.
14:59
SPEAKER_03: And this multi-dimensional thing Thinking about the topics, I think, is something that I'm also supporting a lot within, for example, our own field, my field, which is the built environment.
15:11
SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of new approaches.
15:15
SPEAKER_03: Again, this is sort of what we are...
15:17
SPEAKER_03: have started moving towards understanding the multidimensional aspects of built environment on us.
15:24
SPEAKER_03: So we know, okay, how the thermal conditions are affecting us.
15:28
SPEAKER_03: We know how the air quality is affecting us.
15:30
SPEAKER_03: We know how the light is affecting us somewhat.
15:33
SPEAKER_03: but how all of them together are affecting us.
15:36
SPEAKER_03: What are the interactions between these stimuli?
15:38
SPEAKER_03: And how do we have to adjust between them to create the right environment?
15:44
SPEAKER_03: And this multisensory or multidimensional thinking is something, again, that we are trying to bring into our teaching, our education, and also our research to understand the humans better within this built environment.
15:56
SPEAKER_03: So basically...
15:59
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, constantly going towards introducing topics that help.
16:04
SPEAKER_03: But again, you're right.
16:06
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
16:06
SPEAKER_03: The question that you posed, like, okay, how much do we teach our students and how much do we do focused research on this topic?
16:17
SPEAKER_03: Still minimal.
16:18
SPEAKER_03: We tend to probably pay and spend a lot more of the research money into creating medication that would later on help us with the consequences rather than preventing to get to those consequences.
16:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess that's the way the world works is there's not a lot of money to be had in prevention, is there?
16:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, without going down that particular rabbit hole, I was really interested because I spoke to Nico Gentili from Lund University, who I know you know, and he talked about the balance between environment, financial and social as kind of when you think about buildings, you've got those three bodies.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the social aspect has not been really kind of dealt with.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, environmental, you know, you talk about sustainability and rightly, we're all going down a route of trying to be more sustainable, but nobody's really...
17:21
SPEAKER_01: thought about some of the social impacts of that and you know obviously financial is kind of tends to be the one that you know in terms of building design or whatever tends to be that the thing which kind of leads in which I thought it was just a really nice kind of way of looking at the problem because I think as you say um Yeah, we haven't really, I mean, from what I can see and from what I'm hearing from you, we haven't really thought about, like, people in build, yeah, and just all of these impacts.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: And it's fascinating because it seems that UCL is really kind of trying to lean into this topic and kind of cover it off.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I guess you've got...
18:08
SPEAKER_01: Everyone from sort of physiologists through to architects who, you know, I don't know if you all work together, but there seems to be a very common thread.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: So, and, you know, I guess the output of that could then bleed out more into the mainstream, couldn't it?
18:24
SPEAKER_01: So, sorry, there was a bunch of things I've said in there.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, kind of thing, you know, throw it all up in the air and see what you kind of you can make
18:32
SPEAKER_03: out of it.
18:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, the environmental and financial aspects of things is really like driving a lot of the pathways that we build, of course.
18:42
SPEAKER_03: So what we try to always say is like, make sure that the human is in center.
18:47
SPEAKER_03: So we are thinking about the human needs we are thinking.
18:49
SPEAKER_03: So all these financial decisions that we are making, is it going to be good for us or not?
18:54
SPEAKER_03: Because That would be a drawback if it's not, because then you will basically lose that money.
18:59
SPEAKER_03: That's the simple way of communicate with the finance, you know, so you don't want to lose that money.
19:04
SPEAKER_03: We did a really interesting exercise in one of the healthy building conferences.
19:09
SPEAKER_03: It was in Aachen and it was held by, actually, I forgot the name, but it was...
19:15
SPEAKER_03: Also, the UCL was involved in creating this workshop, and it was creating a setup that we were all having, it was like a role game, a role play sort of game that, okay, you're an investor, you're a building user, and you're the researcher, and the other one is the...
19:33
SPEAKER_03: contractor and we had and there was this building to be built and we need to convince each other like what is the most important thing in building this building so of course the investor wanted to just get his money back so if he's investing this much that's all he cared about and we really got into those kind of roles i was actually playing the investor role and i was like Anything the others once said, I was like, no, I don't think that's true.
19:58
SPEAKER_03: And, you know, when it becomes money, then it's like, okay, I want my money.
20:02
SPEAKER_03: I don't care.
20:03
SPEAKER_03: So it's kind of, it's really interesting.
20:04
SPEAKER_03: It was really interesting game that we played and very eye-opening in a sense that, of course, as a researcher or an educator, you want the best for, you know, not that we all want the best for everything, but, you know, that's the main drive as being a researcher educator.
20:21
SPEAKER_03: You want to create the best conditions forward.
20:24
SPEAKER_03: But then you have to be able to communicate that.
20:27
SPEAKER_03: So the communication is how much health or performance of a human would be, how much money it will bring us.
20:35
SPEAKER_03: So I guess that's one thing in that kind of context to be able to talk about and to communicate.
20:42
SPEAKER_03: So can we put a price on it?
20:44
SPEAKER_03: And that's really, really difficult.
20:45
SPEAKER_03: And that's, I guess, one of the reasons probably we don't pay as much attention to it because it's difficult to put a price on it.
20:52
SPEAKER_03: It's priceless.
20:54
SPEAKER_03: But if we were able to say, okay, this many...
20:58
SPEAKER_03: It would have been really...
20:59
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, building a business case around this is essential,
21:03
SPEAKER_03: isn't it?
21:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is, but it has been very difficult to do so because there's so many parameters involved that you cannot say, okay, I guarantee you that if you do this, you will get this 100%.
21:16
SPEAKER_03: We cannot do that.
21:17
SPEAKER_03: And that's the reason we cannot really sell this in the same way, even though we know that, okay, if people are healthy, this will be beneficial to that building, to the owner of the building to the employer that is going to basically rent that building.
21:30
SPEAKER_03: So it will all at the end be beneficial to the investor, but we cannot say 100% you will.
21:36
SPEAKER_03: With the energy we can.
21:38
SPEAKER_03: So it's like, okay, if you install this, you will save this much energy, then this will be the amount that you will be gaining out of this.
21:45
SPEAKER_03: But this is difficult with the health.
21:47
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, that dilemma is always there and it's kind of an interesting challenge.
21:53
SPEAKER_03: And if we, the only thing we can say is that this is important, we cannot put money number on it.
21:58
SPEAKER_03: And it would be really nice to be able to at least have some estimation.
22:02
SPEAKER_03: And of course, there are research on that as well.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: But it's a really interesting, for myself, it's a very, and I hope I could do some research related to that and I have that always in mind because it's good to have that business mind and be able to understand how to actually make this work.
22:19
SPEAKER_03: That's the point because if the bottleneck is that financially, we cannot...
22:23
SPEAKER_03: put a number on it, then we need to also address that and see, okay, we have changed the paradigm.
22:28
SPEAKER_03: We know that this is good for people.
22:30
SPEAKER_03: We are educating people to create that capacity.
22:33
SPEAKER_03: We are even creating the policies.
22:35
SPEAKER_03: But as long as there is no money involved, or nobody wants to still invest on it, then I guess we are not getting anywhere.
22:41
SPEAKER_03: So it's one part of the whole thing.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's interesting, because I think it's the problem with it is the the return on investment is probably multi-generational rather than, you know, one where you can kind of, it's not something you could put on the stock exchange, basically.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: Like I've been doing quite a bit of reading around the subject of ADHD.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: Now, ADHD, 25% of the prison population in the UK has ADHD.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I read this fascinating research, which was, You can predict to 96%, and this is really fresh research from Japan, 96% accuracy whether someone's got ADHD by taking a picture of their retina.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think pictures of eyes tend to be good markers for certain neurological conditions, and it happens to be that one of them is ADHD.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: Now, then, like, that took me down a little path, which was, well, is there a corresponding...
23:45
SPEAKER_01: you know if it's the eye is there a correspondence between adhd and and light turns out that people with adhd they tend to suffer from sad more than just the general population so you can see that there's a connection between circadian rhythms light and adhd so going to your question of like the business case you could say well actually a prisoner costs us x amount of pounds or euros or whatever it is and actually if we could provide sort of stimulus you know we know light impacts people like in education if we could stabilize some of these ADHD people by having lighted classrooms or whatever it is you know and I'm just being so high level and you know ridiculously simple I'm afraid around this but You could then say, well, actually, there is a business case, which is, you know, we need better classrooms with more light access because we know that that will reduce the prison population.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: But the problem with that is you're then talking about a sort of 10, 20-year horizon and nobody's kind of interested in that sort of thing, are they?
24:54
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, because that is, I guess, the reality, isn't it?
24:59
SPEAKER_01: That light has this whole new...
25:02
SPEAKER_01: well, emerging topic, you can see the relationship between us and light is such a kind of crucial one to our health and wellness.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: But the problems don't show up for years, do they?
25:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what you're saying.
25:19
SPEAKER_03: I think using the word multi-generational is perfect for this.
25:25
SPEAKER_03: That's the fact.
25:26
SPEAKER_03: And that's why it's going slowly through gradual research that we are doing.
25:31
SPEAKER_03: I mean, research and education, it's not fast.
25:34
SPEAKER_03: We need time for that.
25:36
SPEAKER_03: It takes time.
25:37
SPEAKER_03: And I'm not...
25:40
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't...
25:41
SPEAKER_03: Thank you very much.
25:58
SPEAKER_03: the effects of built environment because of the voices that we create through education, because of the research that we are doing.
26:05
SPEAKER_03: So even though we don't know enough, even though you hear like bits and parts from different research groups, but we are all, you know, working on the right track in terms of thinking about global health, in terms of thinking about the effects of built environment.
26:21
SPEAKER_03: So there are some positive things there.
26:23
SPEAKER_03: There are some...
26:24
SPEAKER_03: I see the light at the end of the tunnel.
26:26
SPEAKER_03: No, I mean, that's...
26:28
SPEAKER_03: And hopefully, I mean, the hope is that we are building better and better buildings, even though currently maybe that's not the case.
26:36
SPEAKER_03: And this takes generations to be going towards what is a little bit, what is more sustainable and healthier for us as humans.
26:46
SPEAKER_03: And creating, and it's not just creating the buildings, it's also like creating the behaviors around the buildings that are required.
26:53
SPEAKER_03: Like how much should we be inside?
26:54
SPEAKER_03: How much should we be outside?
26:56
SPEAKER_03: Do we create enough spaces?
26:59
SPEAKER_03: that allow us to go outside or not?
27:02
SPEAKER_03: How can we incorporate that in the architecture?
27:05
SPEAKER_03: So that should become sort of a physical program of the building that has to accommodate for that, even though maybe it's not necessarily cost-efficient now for the building investor, but it is through what we are saying and through this disseminating, incepting into the...
27:26
SPEAKER_03: newer generations or next generations, I think it will become true at some point that we are creating better and better building.
27:34
SPEAKER_03: The fact that you and I are sitting here and creating this podcast is also towards that.
27:38
SPEAKER_03: And I truly believe in this type of trying to be heard and trying to promote this for a larger number of people.
27:54
SPEAKER_01: Well, look, I think I am really encouraged, actually.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: And I think the fact that UCL, which is, you know, one of the top universities globally is on this kind of gives me great encouragement.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: Because I guess as I've been looking through and doing my background research, there are a lot of people out there who've decided that this is a great topic for clicks and, you know, There's quite a voice on social media around all of this.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: And actually, if you go back to the sources of what they're saying, it's often a bit flaky, to be honest with you.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: But actually being able to reference proper research, which is peer-reviewed, published, you know, through places like UCL and the East Anglian University and all.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm really proud, actually, that the Brits seem to be kind of on this.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's really, really heartening.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: And as you say, I think then being able to kind of bleed that into the educational establishment and creating courses around this or making sure it's part of the narrative, I think is absolutely brilliant.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: But it also feels like we're really at the start of this journey.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Like, as you said, I think sustainability was one aspect.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: But if you think about sustainability and the way it's described as ESG or whatever in, the social aspect has just not been thought about.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's, or if it's been thought about, it's not been thought about in relationship between people and light effectively.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's brilliant that this sort of movement sort of happening.
29:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, definitely.
29:31
SPEAKER_03: And I think, yeah, going back to what you say about UCL and Bartlett as well.
29:37
SPEAKER_03: I mean, Bartlett is, I think, ranked as the first, has the first rank or ranked as what you call it.
29:45
SPEAKER_03: Number
29:46
SPEAKER_01: one position.
29:47
SPEAKER_03: Yes, number one position in architecture and built environment in terms of education.
29:52
SPEAKER_03: And you can see like, I mean, for me, I'm still discovering like many labs and researchers that are focusing on so many aspects of it.
30:02
SPEAKER_03: They're like, oh, I was thinking about that.
30:04
SPEAKER_03: It's really amazing that these guys are already putting it so much forward.
30:08
SPEAKER_03: So it's like really forward thinking, many groups like looking at various aspects of how the environments are affecting us, both indoors and outdoors.
30:17
SPEAKER_03: How do we move in the urban area?
30:19
SPEAKER_03: What are the effects of urban area?
30:21
SPEAKER_03: And really implementing high-tech sensors.
30:26
SPEAKER_03: around just to make this understanding and how the effect of the built environment in terms of pollution in terms of heat etc is on people's well-being and behavior so we are really monitoring this since since long and talking to each other with nature discussions about biodiversity nature and people what kind of vegetation should we have around the city of how it is evolving i don't know so so many so many topics that you know that you just feel really really great just to be part of this and feel that yeah we are on top of researchers are really at UCL trying hard and I'm fascinated I mean I've also joined in two years so I'm really fascinated by the amount of enthusiasm ambitions and work that is being done on this topic so that's why I'm quite normally I'm not so pessimistic person I've just started to being like oh okay we are actually making impact and looking you know feeling really optimistic that this is going going the right direction and we are really trying hard, doing very sophisticated research in terms of understanding how to create these environments that will allow us to thrive better, prevent many of those situations that are consequences that we are facing at the moment.
31:42
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so about UCL, I think that network is really working well from what I'm seeing and I'm really happy to be part of that.
31:50
SPEAKER_03: And as you said, we are still at the beginning of this.
31:53
SPEAKER_03: The topic of sunlight, daylight, exposure to to it we have for various reasons energy driven mainly try to avoid it as much as possible and of course this has shown that it's not optimal either we have seen the consequences and now we are trying to understand those consequences better yeah and Niche research, as you mentioned, from the effects of LEDs to interactions of different exposures to characterising the response to different exposures that we have.
32:25
SPEAKER_03: At least this is something that I'm focusing on.
32:28
SPEAKER_03: It seems really small and very niche to just characterising the response to the exposure that we have.
32:34
SPEAKER_03: But I believe that this little equation could solve a lot of the problems that we have, like how we control the building systems around us to better account for our more natural responses to the environment.
32:47
SPEAKER_03: So from that point of view to how we move in this...
32:51
SPEAKER_03: or how we move outside and which paths are we going.
32:55
SPEAKER_03: I have a student who's also working on healthier paths through the city, like how can we map the healthy pathways.
33:03
SPEAKER_03: Health and safety, of course, you want to be safe as well.
33:06
SPEAKER_03: That's one part of it.
33:06
SPEAKER_03: You don't want to go outside on your bike and bam.
33:10
SPEAKER_03: So there are certain routes, of course, that are safer, that people actually feel safer in those because of the traffic, because of how they are lit.
33:19
SPEAKER_03: So how do we kind of promote those?
33:21
SPEAKER_03: How can we rebuild them?
33:23
SPEAKER_03: What kind of architectural elements are there that make people feel safer there?
33:27
SPEAKER_03: And are they healthy or not?
33:29
SPEAKER_03: So what kind of exposure do you get?
33:30
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's a really nice path, but it's in the most polluted area of the city.
33:34
SPEAKER_03: Is that healthy enough to bike or run in that pathway?
33:37
SPEAKER_03: So it's both indoor and outdoor.
33:39
SPEAKER_03: I mean, outdoor, if it's a densified city, just like London, as it's this mega city that we have.
33:45
SPEAKER_03: So we have that kind of issue.
33:46
SPEAKER_03: So just being outdoor doesn't necessarily mean that you're healthy.
33:49
SPEAKER_03: So So you have to pick your spot.
33:51
SPEAKER_03: So we need to kind of identify those and understand how to create a sort of mobility within this type of city that is healthy and safe.
34:06
SPEAKER_03: So, so many aspects to think about.
34:08
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, that makes it very interesting to move
34:13
SPEAKER_01: forward.
34:13
SPEAKER_01: It's brilliant.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: It's brilliant.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I go back to like I'm, I'm very struck in terms of, you know, actually one of our, one of the solutions to many, you know, I guess many of our problems is actually spending a bit more time outside.
34:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's, you know, that's not possible for everybody, but for many of us actually getting the discipline of being outside is, it is challenging.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: is relatively simple to do.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: And I think if you've then got people who are able to kind of identify safer places and, you know, that's that fantastic marriage of technology and, you know, this research where, you know, an app or something which can tell you a safer path or something, I think is bloody brilliant, to be honest.
34:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
34:59
SPEAKER_03: That's what it, that one is going forward to be an app, as you said.
35:04
SPEAKER_03: At least that's the hope to create that kind of information, like a data-driven information informative ways of how we can be healthier and safer.
35:13
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, on another note, you will talk with Nicholas later.
35:19
SPEAKER_03: Of course, he's focusing again on this response characterization.
35:24
SPEAKER_03: towards broader spectral understanding of light.
35:28
SPEAKER_03: Of course, he will tell you more about it.
35:29
SPEAKER_03: And that's more of the understanding of these responses.
35:33
SPEAKER_03: What are the physiological, psychological responses that we have?
35:36
SPEAKER_03: And there we are also trying to really understand what is the exposure at the personal level.
35:43
SPEAKER_03: So a lot of times we make understanding...
35:47
SPEAKER_03: We have made understanding over years.
35:49
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we are becoming more and more data capable and sensor capable.
35:55
SPEAKER_03: So we have to take advantage of these.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: We have, as a researcher at least, to understand, okay, what am I exposed really here on my body, not in the room?
36:03
SPEAKER_03: Because, okay, the room is the room, but what am I being exposed to?
36:06
SPEAKER_03: So we are using a massive amount of wearables in his studies to understand what actually people are exposed to, how is that going to affect their sleep?
36:18
SPEAKER_03: And one part of it, of course, is also on your infrared that he's really interested in, and he will talk about it with you later on.
36:24
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, and I think that's really fascinating to be able to lead that kind of study that we can have a you know statistically hopefully statistically enough data to be able to say something in that relation like what are these impacts that we are talking about on the built environment
36:43
SPEAKER_01: yeah
36:44
SPEAKER_03: so
36:45
SPEAKER_01: I think it's been a really really fascinating conversation I mean every time I think about this subject I could talk all day I mean literally and I feel very honoured that people like yourself who are spending a lot of time will actually take the time to talk about it I think it's a fascinating subject though And one that I think if we can, as you say, we can get it out there will make a difference to so many people's lives, you know.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's great because this is about reconnecting people with the sun and or, you know, the outside environments more generally or, you know, inside and health and well.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think it's been brilliant.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: But thank you so much for your time.
37:27
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
37:28
SPEAKER_03: It's been a pleasure to be able to be here today and to talk about these various different topics that we talked about.
37:35
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, it is multi-generational, multi-dimensional, multi-effective, hopefully.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to do one thing, which is, so Mandana Carney, who is lecturer of health and well-being in sustainable buildings and deputy director, light and lighting program.
37:57
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, because I just was not...
37:59
SPEAKER_01: When I read it out, the Light and Lighting Programme, it didn't quite...
38:03
SPEAKER_01: The Deputy Director, Light and Lighting Programme.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: Is that at UCL as well?
38:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: When I read it out, it didn't quite make sense to me.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: So hence I slowed down a bit, but it may sound all right.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: But I'm just going to stop now.
38:20
UNKNOWN: Thank you.