Latest / Sunlight Matters / 💡 Light, Health & the Built Environment: Ulysse Dormoy on the Real Cost of Indoor Living

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💡 Light, Health & the Built Environment: Ulysse Dormoy on the Real Cost of Indoor Living · Sunlight Matters

• 0:00
  Ulysse Dormoy: Go back a hundred years and you know, heliotherapy was a thing.
• 0:03
  Ulysse Dormoy: It was a thing until we found things like antibiotics, which has then meant that we sort of understand that we get better by taking taking something.
• 0:13
  Ulysse Dormoy: Like today is being used heavily in a therapeutic sense for all sorts of things.
• 0:18
  Ulysse Dormoy: Isn't that a form of supplementation?
• 0:20
  Ulysse Dormoy: Isn't that because we've stripped something away that we're now using it in a different sense?
• 0:26
  Ulysse Dormoy: It's not entirely different to you know the uh uh sort of the the supplement industry in in nutrition.
• 0:34
  Ulysse Dormoy: We've we've stripped a load of stuff out of nutrition and and and now we're we're we're supplementing.
• 0:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: So you know the concept of photobiomodulation, which is now a big industry in red and infrared light, it's just a supplementation.
• 0:47
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, if if we if we lived more, if we spent more time outdoors, maybe we wouldn't need it.
• 0:52
  Ulysse Dormoy: But we've we're completely ignoring the physiological aspects of light for humans and we've reduced it to luxe.
• 1:00
  Ulysse Dormoy: Will architecture and design have an impact on the health of nations in the future?
• 1:04
  Ulysse Dormoy: I think it can.
• 1:05
  Ulysse Dormoy: And the creators of the built environment need to understand that they can have a massive influence on how we are, how we exist physiologically in the future.
• 1:15
  Ulysse Dormoy: A building isn't just a nice thing to have.
• 1:18
  Ulysse Dormoy: A building can can can deliver far, far more.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Sunlight Matters, the podcast that reconnects us with the sun.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Join us as we explore the power and influence of our star, the force at the heart of everything.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Each episode, we speak with leading experts to uncover the ways sunlight shapes our world.
• 1:42
  Dave Wallace: I've been really looking forward to this conversation.
• 1:44
  Dave Wallace: We've had a we've had a couple of chats, and I'm like, um, I think there's a lot of ground to cover.
• 1:50
  Dave Wallace: So uh welcome to the podcast, Ulysses.
• 1:53
  Dave Wallace: Uh, delighted to have you with us.
• 1:56
  Dave Wallace: I I wondered if you could just start by telling us a bit about uh yourself and Atrium, the company that you're the CEO of, uh, and then we can get into it.
• 2:06
  Ulysse Dormoy: Brilliant.
• 2:07
  Ulysse Dormoy: Thank you.
• 2:07
  Ulysse Dormoy: And thank you for having me on the podcast, by the way.
• 2:09
  Ulysse Dormoy: It's uh it's it's nice to be uh nice to be here.
• 2:12
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um so yeah, so so um I'm the CEO of of uh Atrium Limited.
• 2:18
  Ulysse Dormoy: We uh historically have been a distributor of lighting products.
• 2:24
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um today I would say that we've shifted somewhat into a slightly more specialist area.
• 2:30
  Ulysse Dormoy: We haven't we haven't uh we haven't relinquished our position as a as a distributor.
• 2:35
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um but we've been on an evolving journey.
• 2:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and it started about 10 years ago, um I'm gonna say, um, where we started to understand a little bit more about um the impact of lights on humans within the built environment.
• 2:56
  Ulysse Dormoy: And at the time, um it was a very simple thing.
• 3:00
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, we decided to um select the drivers that we were purchasing as opposed to just purchasing them from our production partners.
• 3:11
  Ulysse Dormoy: And we chose to do that because we felt at the time that we really had a responsibility to try and put the best quality we could into spaces.
• 3:20
  Ulysse Dormoy: And um with that, we decided to partner with with one particular brand who um deliver very high quality flicker-free drivers.
• 3:32
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, and and we did that on products that you know um were easy to do, let's say, you know, some products we can't we can't make that uh that change.
• 3:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: But gradually from that, we started looking at um at quality of light, what's coming out of the luminaire, forgetting, forgetting form factors, forgetting aesthetics, you know, what is actually being delivered out of a luminaire.
• 3:55
  Ulysse Dormoy: And uh with a colleague Jeremy, um, Jeremy and I uh spent a few days wandering up and down Regent Street, Oxford Street, Westfield, whatever, spectrometer, spectrometering anything we could um just to see what was what was uh you know being delivered into retail environments.
• 4:15
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um were more accepting than others, some we were sort of politely showing the door.
• 4:21
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and so so so some very high brands actually, how high value brands were were at times showing us the uh the door very politely.
• 4:29
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um but what was really interesting there is that we we spent quite a bit of time within the beauty brand arena because we thought, you know, if anyone's gonna have it right, it's gonna be the beauty brands.
• 4:42
  Ulysse Dormoy: And shockingly, more often than not, they got it horrendously wrong.
• 4:47
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and there was, you know, we we would talk to the to the staff in the stores and and they were commenting on how they were taking their clients outside to see how they'd been made up.
• 5:03
  Ulysse Dormoy: And at that point, you're thinking something something's not not right here.
• 5:07
  Ulysse Dormoy: And that there was only one brand that I think we found within the beauty and sector that which did it really well.
• 5:13
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and we then subsequently found out that the founders were photographers, so they understood light, they they understood, they understood the sort of the the basic principles.
• 5:24
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um so that's that started us sort of on a on a on a pathway.
• 5:28
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and we were then starting to consider what was actually being used within the fixtures that we were buying in and then selling on.
• 5:39
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and it's it's sort of evolved gradually, you know, deeper and deeper.
• 5:44
  Ulysse Dormoy: And then early, let's say, um maybe around 2019, 2020, it might have been 2021.
• 5:54
  Ulysse Dormoy: I've been spending some time telling people within the business that you know for me, light was sort of uh uh today was somewhere sat between um technology and health and well-being.
• 6:06
  Ulysse Dormoy: And annoyingly, um, someone said, well, prove it.
• 6:12
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and uh so so so that that's I say annoyingly, but I say I say in jest actually.
• 6:18
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um you know that meant that I needed to start putting some thoughts together, some ideas, some you know, uh you know, going out and trying to find information that would would substantiate the comments.
• 6:31
  Ulysse Dormoy: And one of the first pieces I came across was um Scott Zimmerman's um paper on um uh you know uh melatonin and the optics of the human body.
• 6:43
  Ulysse Dormoy: And that was that was uh yeah, quite literally eye-opening to me because you know I'd I'd only understood melatonin to be produced by Pineal Gland.
• 6:53
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um maybe, maybe that's just my narrow-mindedness um at the time.
• 6:59
  Ulysse Dormoy: And it started to it started to sort of evolve from there.
• 7:03
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and bit by bit, you know, I've ended up, yeah, I know you've you've spoken to to Bob and to Glenn on your previous podcast, but yeah, I've ended up meeting them.
• 7:13
  Ulysse Dormoy: And yeah, we're we're we're at a point now where I'm at a point maybe, um, and the business may be sort of um going that way too, um, is that once you've learned something, you can't unlearn it.
• 7:32
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, and yeah, I think I think there is an opportunity to do good and to think about, yeah, and hopefully, let's say responsibly think about what we are doing to um people when they are in that space.
• 7:50
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I know you know the other day we talked a little bit about it, you know.
• 7:54
  Ulysse Dormoy: I think I think it's absolutely crazy.
• 7:57
  Ulysse Dormoy: That there are there are stronger words I'd like to use, but I'm not sure you might need to use a bleeper um if I was to use them.
• 8:04
  Ulysse Dormoy: I think it's absolutely crazy.
• 8:06
  Ulysse Dormoy: Well, there you go, there you go.
• 8:07
  Ulysse Dormoy: All right, I'm allowed, I'm allowed to say things like that.
• 8:09
  Ulysse Dormoy: Okay, yeah, um that you know when we deliver light for plants, we give plants an energetic value of light.
• 8:19
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, it's photon flux, uh, sorry, BPFD, um, photosynthetic photon flux density.
• 8:26
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, and it's an energetic value of light, and we give that to plants because we want plants to be productive.
• 8:34
  Ulysse Dormoy: And yet we've narrowed our understanding of light for humans over the period of the last maybe 100 whatever years to a visual aid.
• 8:48
  Ulysse Dormoy: And we've completely we're sort of almost completely ignoring everything that we knew that light did in a health and well-being sense, you know, whether that was to um help with uh help you know, cure rickets or or or TB, you know, we've we're completely ignoring the physiological aspects of light for humans and we've reduced it to you know lux.
• 9:13
  Ulysse Dormoy: I and we don't do that for plants, and we don't do that for plants because we want them to be productive.
• 9:21
  Ulysse Dormoy: Do we not want humans to be productive in their workspace?
• 9:24
  Ulysse Dormoy: It's it I just think it's it's bonkers.
• 9:27
  Ulysse Dormoy: It's bonkers.
• 9:28
  Dave Wallace: I I I it's it is bonkers.
• 9:31
  Dave Wallace: I mean, and and I think we're gonna talk a lot more about that.
• 9:34
  Dave Wallace: Um, but I I I was just curious because it sounds like you had intuition around this.
• 9:41
  Dave Wallace: And you know, when you talk about quality of light, there's light flicker.
• 9:45
  Dave Wallace: Uh I mean I was in Dubai last week and I had a little infrared camera with me, and bloody hell, it was like a a strobe-lighting uh kind of disco in in the in the uh exhibition hall that was there.
• 9:59
  Dave Wallace: You could see the flicker, just unbelievable to me.
• 10:03
  Dave Wallace: Um but so it was sort of flicker, was the the thing that you kind of identified, and then it feels like you intuited your way into well, there is something else going on.
• 10:14
  Dave Wallace: Is that right?
• 10:17
  Ulysse Dormoy: At the time, at the time, um it was more to do with um materiality, how do we represent colours in the right way?
• 10:27
  Ulysse Dormoy: Right.
• 10:28
  Ulysse Dormoy: So so it wasn't it wasn't so much to do with um a human aspect of light.
• 10:34
  Ulysse Dormoy: It was more to do with you know environment, how do you make the environment look as good as as it possibly can do?
• 10:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and of course, you know, when you strip something, yeah, strip strip uh you know colours out of a light source, then you know objects you know stop being able to render you know that colour um yeah, or uh reflect that colour effectively.
• 10:55
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um but it's actually more you know it it it has been a gradual process, um, you know, and uh maybe a slow burn up until more recently.
• 11:05
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and yeah, I I I I think I've I've been in the industry now for uh 30 plus years.
• 11:16
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and honestly, I think it's probably one of the most exciting times.
• 11:21
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, I think I think you know, I don't know which point light will become mainstream in the same context as let's say nutrition or physical exercise, you know.
• 11:33
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um uh but I think we're getting closer.
• 11:38
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, I I I I think because because the sun comes up and comes down every day, we just assume that that happens.
• 11:45
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, over the last 150 years, we think we're in control of electric light, which we sort of are.
• 11:51
  Ulysse Dormoy: We switch for the light on, so we switch it off when we when we want it, when we need it.
• 11:54
  Ulysse Dormoy: But we've become uh what's the word I want to use?
• 12:00
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um complacent, maybe around light.
• 12:03
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um maybe more so than other things like like nutrition and exercise.
• 12:10
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, there's there's there's a huge volume out there on you know healthy eating, you know, the the gut brain axis.
• 12:20
  Ulysse Dormoy: It's it it swallows up a huge amount of oxygen.
• 12:22
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um physical exercise, you know, takes takes quite a quite a you know chunk of space as well.
• 12:27
  Ulysse Dormoy: Sleep science is is is big, but we're not talking about light, I think, in the in in the right context, because I think we are just acclimatized to it.
• 12:39
  Ulysse Dormoy: It just it's just there.
• 12:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: We accept it as it is without really delving deeper.
• 12:44
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yet go back a hundred years and you know, heliotherapy was was was a thing.
• 12:51
  Ulysse Dormoy: It was a thing until we found things like um antibiotics, which has then meant that we sort of understand that we get better by taking by taking something.
• 13:02
  Ulysse Dormoy: But light today is being used heavily in a therapeutic sense um for all sorts of things, uh but isn't that a form of supplementation?
• 13:14
  Ulysse Dormoy: Isn't that because we've stripped something away that we're now using it in a in a in a different sense?
• 13:21
  Ulysse Dormoy: It's not entirely different to you know the uh the sort of the the supplement industry in in in nutrition.
• 13:30
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, we've we've stripped a load of stuff out of nutrition and and and now we're we're we're supplementing.
• 13:37
  Ulysse Dormoy: So you know the concept of photobiomodulation, which is now a big industry in red and infrared light, it's just a supplementation.
• 13:45
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, if if we if we lived more, if we spent more time outdoors, maybe we wouldn't need it.
• 13:53
  Dave Wallace: Um I mean it it is it's crazy, isn't it?
• 13:56
  Dave Wallace: I mean, you you like I mean you talk about going back a hundred years, we would have lived a much more outdoor lifestyle.
• 14:03
  Dave Wallace: We were surrounded by uh light sources which were kind of giving off infrared light, and you you know, you you you mentioned Glenn uh and Bob, and a lot of what they've been looking at is the impact of infrared light on how our metabolism works.
• 14:21
  Dave Wallace: But it's so bloody obvious.
• 14:23
  Dave Wallace: Like I was on a plane watching the documentary about the origin of humans.
• 14:28
  Dave Wallace: The thing I learned was we spent all our time outside as we were evolving uh on the on the uh savannas of Africa and in the forests of Africa, and then we started moving out, but it across that whole entire time we were outside, and you know, it it's kind of crazy to think that light wouldn't be impacting us.
• 14:56
  Dave Wallace: I mean, it's just you know, and you go back to the origin of life itself, the first sort of Lucre or whatever it's called that sort of crawled out the primordial swamp.
• 15:07
  Dave Wallace: What was the first thing it had to deal with?
• 15:09
  Dave Wallace: Is light, you know.
• 15:10
  Dave Wallace: So as you say, it's kind of crazy that we've sort of honed in on plants and then forgotten about us and you know, other living things as well.
• 15:22
  Dave Wallace: And you you know, as you say, this feels like um it feels like a it new science, but it's not really new, is it?
• 15:30
  Dave Wallace: But it's very interesting that you know it is exciting because it's sort of rediscovering something.
• 15:39
  Dave Wallace: Um so so I mean, we've ended up as a I I I guess a lot more indoors.
• 15:47
  Dave Wallace: We're under LED lights.
• 15:49
  Dave Wallace: Can you just talk a bit about the sort of in the the the built environment, the lights that we're sort of sitting under and some of the the the sort of observations you've got on that?
• 16:01
  Ulysse Dormoy: So um yeah, within the built environment, you know, we've we've pushed heavily for um energy efficiency, you know, energy efficiency for environmental sustainability.
• 16:14
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I'm not against environmental sustainability at all, I'm just gonna say that now.
• 16:19
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, but I think at some point we need to start thinking about striking a balance between environmental sustainability and human sustainability.
• 16:26
  Ulysse Dormoy: And you you mentioned um the uh you know impact of infrared light on on our metabolic system.
• 16:34
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and the fact that we've stripped it out completely.
• 16:38
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, and and we stripped it out, you know, let's say without really knowing, because we didn't have the science at the time, uh, what the long-term impact was.
• 16:51
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, we took infrared uh infrared out because it was deemed to be wasteful, because it was consuming energy, but not delivering anything functional as we understood it at the time.
• 17:04
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, so it wasn't delivering visible light, and we understood we've we had understood light in a uh in that context, I think as a as a visual aid.
• 17:14
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um it's only really more recently that we've started to understand, and with the work, yeah, not just uh Glenn but and Glenn and Bob but others too, that light has a deep impact within our within our physiology.
• 17:31
  Ulysse Dormoy: And and it's not just at the infrared end, it's at the is at the ultraviolet end.
• 17:35
  Ulysse Dormoy: I'm not sure if you were on on the uh uh talk the other day with Richard Weller.
• 17:38
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, absolutely fascinating.
• 17:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, you know, ultraviolet isn't just about vitamin D, it's about you know nitric oxide, you know, yeah, all sorts of stuff that that again is is is being found out.
• 17:51
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I'm and I'm fascinated to learn more about what the impact of green light is next week.
• 17:56
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um but across the colour.
• 17:58
  Dave Wallace: I'm sat here with some green light, by the way, because uh I'm really looking forward to that.
• 18:04
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um yeah, there's things going on across the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum, let's say, or within within the light context.
• 18:12
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, but our indoor environments have narrowed that down to somewhere between 380 and 725, somewhere around there in terms of nanometers.
• 18:21
  Ulysse Dormoy: Uh, I actually took a measurement, uh, I I got a new spectrometer um about a month ago, and I took a measurement last night um at home.
• 18:29
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um we moved into a new build property uh just well, a year and a half ago.
• 18:35
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, I got really excited actually.
• 18:37
  Ulysse Dormoy: I got really excited when we moved in because um because I looked at the down lights, which looked fairly cheap.
• 18:42
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, and um actually they were really cheap as I found out.
• 18:46
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, but yeah, I I could I could see I could see two colours of diodes.
• 18:50
  Ulysse Dormoy: I could see two colours of diodes, down diodes, and I'm thinking, that's amazing.
• 18:54
  Ulysse Dormoy: They've put dim to warm into the house.
• 18:58
  Ulysse Dormoy: So if I went to buy a dimmer switch and dimmed it down and and there's no no impact, I probably should have pulled the downlight out of the ceiling at the time because it wasn't dim to warm, it was a dip switch setting on the back, which would give me 3,000k, 4000k, or 6,000k.
• 19:15
  Ulysse Dormoy: I mean, why you'd want 6,000 K on a residential downlight, I have no idea, or even even in a commercial setting, I'd have no idea.
• 19:23
  Ulysse Dormoy: But we're we're pumping stuff in to um indoor environments, the built environment, but often it's not the occupier who's making that choice.
• 19:38
  Ulysse Dormoy: So we're prescribing light, our industry is prescribing light onto people, and very often when it goes down the value engineering process, that quality of light is being absolutely decimated.
• 19:52
  Ulysse Dormoy: Uh not that long ago, probably about a year, 18 months ago, we were asked to go and visit a project that where the client was um the it's a commercial office space, the um the occupier was telling us that they're having lots of issues.
• 20:11
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um we sort of knew a bit about the project, we knew that it'd gone through a value engineering process.
• 20:17
  Ulysse Dormoy: So off we off we popped with the spectrometer, you know, talk a little bit to the client.
• 20:21
  Ulysse Dormoy: Did you did you um uh yeah, did was there a value engineering process?
• 20:26
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yes.
• 20:26
  Ulysse Dormoy: Uh we sort of knew the answer to that already, get the spectrometer out.
• 20:29
  Ulysse Dormoy: And what was originally specified as CRI 90 was actually CRI 80 with a with an R9, which is which is the red measurement of uh minus 3.4 if I remember rightly.
• 20:43
  Ulysse Dormoy: So decisions are being made for capital cost uh control which bears no value on the operational cost later on, because actually what was happening there is that they had a whole heap of people complaining that they couldn't work in that office because the lighting environment was so bad.
• 21:11
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um so I don't know many occupiers who aren't trying to get people back into the office, um, get people working together, you know, collaboratively.
• 21:22
  Ulysse Dormoy: And yet what better excuse has the occupier given to their staff than to say, you know, I can't work in the office, I'm gonna have to work from home.
• 21:33
  Ulysse Dormoy: I just can't, you know, they've spent millions on this space, but they've cut costs at the capital, you know, sort of investment point at the at the cost of the operational aspect.
• 21:48
  Ulysse Dormoy: And um I don't know if you spotted it, I posted something a few weeks back on on Jones Lang LaSalle had done this thing, the 330, 300.
• 21:57
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:58
  Ulysse Dormoy: I did see that one.
• 21:59
  Ulysse Dormoy: Where where three is the value of the you know energy cost of the building, 30 is the rent of the building, and 300 is the 300 is the is the staff cost.
• 22:10
  Ulysse Dormoy: But if you make 1% change to the 300, it's vastly different to 1% change at the 3.3 uh level, you know, in terms of saving energy.
• 22:22
  Ulysse Dormoy: Now, I'm not saying that we go back to incandescent, you know.
• 22:25
  Ulysse Dormoy: I know that some people will say that that's what we should do.
• 22:28
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I would agree that as a broadband emitter of infrared, you can't get better than a burning source.
• 22:34
  Ulysse Dormoy: But I think we're a little bit too far down the line today to be able to necessarily pull that back.
• 22:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: That said, I am going to admit that anywhere at home that I can put an incandescent lamp in, I have put an incandescent lamp in.
• 22:47
  Ulysse Dormoy: And having having spectrometered what we had last night, you know, and it and literally on the on the uh installed fixtures, you know, it literally stops at 7.25.
• 23:01
  Ulysse Dormoy: There's nothing else.
• 23:02
  Ulysse Dormoy: Light some light some candles, put some incandescent lights on, and all of a sudden your environment changes.
• 23:09
  Ulysse Dormoy: So, you know, incandescent light sources deliver give us a huge broadband um you know uh infrared output.
• 23:18
  Ulysse Dormoy: Whereas even if we go into into LEDs, they're always going to be narrowband emitters, so they're never going to be as good.
• 23:24
  Ulysse Dormoy: But I don't think we're gonna go back to, I don't think we're gonna be able to convince the world to go back to incandescent.
• 23:31
  Dave Wallace: If you're enjoying Sunlight Matters, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.
• 23:38
  Dave Wallace: You can also search Sunlight Matters on Google to find more episodes, guest information, and further insights about sunlight analysis, solar exposure, and the way light shapes our spaces.
• 23:52
  Dave Wallace: I mean it it it is interesting though, because you know, you talk about um people finding it difficult to work.
• 24:00
  Dave Wallace: I mean, I I've I've changed all my light bulbs for incandescent, except a couple, which you know, my wife likes to leave a light on overnight, and I'm like, well, there's no point in having that as a as an incandescent.
• 24:15
  Dave Wallace: I look at the light and it physically makes me feel terrible.
• 24:21
  Dave Wallace: I mean, I I and I couldn't describe why.
• 24:23
  Dave Wallace: I mean, but it always, you know, I've responded over the years very badly to lighting, and so other people are doing that.
• 24:32
  Dave Wallace: So you you're right about productivity, but there's also health as well.
• 24:36
  Dave Wallace: So, you know, I was in the Middle East last week and um I did a talk on the sun and was actually invited by First Abu Dhabi Bank, uh, the head of sustainability, who he he I've talked to him a bit about light, and and you know, he was brave enough to put me on a stage.
• 24:56
  Dave Wallace: Uh, and you know, at this this huge conference, I was the only, it was it was a conservation conference, you know, with tens of thousands of people attending.
• 25:05
  Dave Wallace: I was the only person talking about the sun beyond solar.
• 25:09
  Dave Wallace: Um but what's interesting is in doing my homework, I found out that the rate of diabetes in uh the UAE is 21%.
• 25:18
  Dave Wallace: 21%.
• 25:20
  Dave Wallace: Now, diabetes is a massive precursor to strokes and heart attacks.
• 25:28
  Dave Wallace: Like, you know, this is terrible.
• 25:30
  Dave Wallace: So when you talk to people in the UAE, they say, Oh, it's because we got sugary food and you know, there's uh inactivity and all the other bits and pieces.
• 25:40
  Dave Wallace: But if you compare it to other countries where that would be a similar profile, it's not they don't have the same level.
• 25:46
  Dave Wallace: But what the what you do have in the UAE is nobody goes outside because it's too hot.
• 25:53
  Dave Wallace: Most people spend their their lives, you know, 996 or whatever the work ethic is in badly lit, uh well, LED lit workspaces um behind glass that has taken every bit of sort of nutritional uh light out.
• 26:13
  Dave Wallace: Uh and you know, they're just not getting any outside time.
• 26:17
  Dave Wallace: So you know, I was like telling this to them, and I think it was the first time most people had heard this.
• 26:24
  Dave Wallace: And you know, my advice was look, you're not going to change the lighting in your office, so go to IKEA, buy a buy an angle poise lamp, pop it on your desk and put an incandescent bulb in, which you know doesn't feel like a long-term fit.
• 26:39
  Dave Wallace: But I guess the point I'm coming to is that the genie might be slightly out of the bottle now.
• 26:45
  Dave Wallace: So, you know, if I work in an office and I end up uh with I don't know, diabetes or something like that, and you know, I can prove that the the the people who own the office knew that that there was a kind of link or there was causality, you sort of feel like people are storing up problems for the future.
• 27:08
  Dave Wallace: So so now is the time to kind of really get your head around this, isn't it?
• 27:13
  Ulysse Dormoy: So so I don't see this, or I I I haven't seen this, and I've been saying it for a little while, um as something very different to um the tobacco industry.
• 27:27
  Ulysse Dormoy: No.
• 27:28
  Ulysse Dormoy: I I'm I'm going a little bit sort of extreme, maybe, but yeah, the I suppose the difference is is that maybe the tobacco industry knew a little bit more about the impact that they were having than than they led on to over time.
• 27:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um but you're right, I think the genie is coming out of the bottle.
• 27:44
  Ulysse Dormoy: Uh I think we're understanding more.
• 27:46
  Ulysse Dormoy: I think the there are more devices on the market, whether it's a red stroke, infrared light panel, which are quite expensive, uh, or whether it's an infrared red light face mask.
• 27:59
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I think that the we're seeing more of that in the cosmetic cosmetic arena.
• 28:04
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I think the public are generally a little bit more aware of things like red and infrared light through those devices, but they haven't yet correlated it to the the indoor environment.
• 28:16
  Ulysse Dormoy: They haven't quite made the made the made the connection because I don't think anyone's really talking about it necessarily openly enough about what we've what we stripped out.
• 28:28
  Ulysse Dormoy: And you're right, you know, we're we we're spending huge amounts of time indoors.
• 28:33
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, you know, for us, the Europeans supposedly about 10% of our time is outdoors, the Americans are 7%, that's well pretty well documented.
• 28:42
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, and UAE is something like 96% indoors, yeah.
• 28:46
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, but then you've also got to look at seasonality, and um, I don't know if you spotted, but if not, I'll I'll share it with you.
• 28:53
  Ulysse Dormoy: There was a um a study done in America with about 58,000 um respondents, um, supported by Apple.
• 29:03
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and um, you know, looking at how people spend their time outdoors based on the time in daylight part of the health app.
• 29:12
  Ulysse Dormoy: And actually, when you come to the winter, you know, and and let's say it's probably not very different for us, you know, we might be outdoors 40 minutes a day in daylight, you know, which is quite limiting.
• 29:24
  Ulysse Dormoy: So there's also seasonality to this, um, and that that correlates quite nicely with the stuff that Richard Weller was talking about in terms of you know heart attacks and strokes, you know, being more prevalent in in um in the uh sort of uh early parts of the year, yeah, January, February time.
• 29:38
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, but yeah, actually just touching on a few points that you mentioned there, you know, diabetes.
• 29:43
  Ulysse Dormoy: Diabetes costs the UK, if I remember rightly, something nine billion a year.
• 29:48
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, if we can help maintain or sort of, yeah, if if from the studies that Glenn's done and the and yeah, and the work that he's done, if we can create indoor environments.
• 29:59
  Ulysse Dormoy: That support our metabolism, then we're going to be saving money somewhere down the end of the road.
• 30:09
  Ulysse Dormoy: So it's not that we're necessarily adding to our energy consumption, because we're we'll be taking it from somewhere else.
• 30:18
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, we'll be taking the money from somewhere else.
• 30:20
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, it's it's it's um you know making use of light as a preventative.
• 30:25
  Ulysse Dormoy: And yeah, rather than having it there just as a therapeutic, let's let's do something about it being uh preventative.
• 30:33
  Ulysse Dormoy: You also mentioned about productivity and health.
• 30:35
  Ulysse Dormoy: I don't necessarily think that these two things are uh disassociated, because actually, when we look at our health in the context of mitochondrial function, mitochondrial function is effectively what's making us productive.
• 30:49
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, that's what's generating our energy.
• 30:52
  Ulysse Dormoy: And if those long wavelengths of light, um, and I say if I think it's quite well known that they do respond to light, uh, the long wavelengths help us to produce ATP, then that's increasing our energy.
• 31:06
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and surely then our productivity in a physiological sense, which if our productivity in a physiological sense is then mapped back out to you know what we're actually producing work-wise, you know, it's it it I think there are dots that exist that can be joined together quite quite easy, easily.
• 31:27
  Dave Wallace: And I think, I mean, it it is like so simple this stuff.
• 31:30
  Dave Wallace: Like when you kind of start considering it, it is so simple.
• 31:34
  Dave Wallace: Unfortunately, we live in a world where simple doesn't make money.
• 31:39
  Dave Wallace: And you know, I I was kind of keen to talk about like you know, comment you made to me about LED lights being they're ultra-processed, like you know, we live in ultra-processed environments, and you you said it's a bit like the the food industry where you know vast sums of money have been made over um ultra-processed food.
• 32:06
  Dave Wallace: We've seen and you know, that there's been sort of vilification of kind of natural foods and uh throughout that story.
• 32:14
  Dave Wallace: And I I just wondered if you could talk a bit about the the parallels that you see.
• 32:20
  Ulysse Dormoy: Oh, absolutely.
• 32:21
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um can I can I just touch on the word vilification there of natural foods?
• 32:26
  Ulysse Dormoy: I don't think it's very dissimilar to the vilification of the sunlight.
• 32:30
  Dave Wallace: No, yeah.
• 32:30
  Ulysse Dormoy: No, no, and there's a huge amount of money being made every year in products to to supposedly keep us away from you know keep us away from harm of sunlight.
• 32:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um yet if you look at Richard Weller's stuff, you know, deaths from melanoma seem to be pretty, pretty flat.
• 32:47
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, but so um coming back to the coming back to your question about um foods and stuff, you know, I think the minute you start stripping something out, you know, and you start to process it and it then becomes ultra-processed, you know, it comes back, and we've we've used the word together before, convenience, you know, fast food, it's about convenience, but we've stripped a load of stuff out.
• 33:09
  Ulysse Dormoy: So as a consequence, we've then created this secondary industry, which is all about supplementation, because we've stripped all the good stuff out of the out of the original product, and we need supplementation.
• 33:23
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, transport, yeah, our transport in in systems, let's say today, you know, we use we use cars, we use buses, we use, we use trains.
• 33:32
  Ulysse Dormoy: In a certain sense, those are ultra-processed forms of transport.
• 33:35
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, we used to use our legs, um, you know, we then moved to think riding horses, but that was still a physical activity, you know.
• 33:43
  Ulysse Dormoy: Let's say maybe riding horses a little bit more processed than than than using our own uh our own physical um uh elements.
• 33:50
  Ulysse Dormoy: But then we've created another supplementation, which is gyms.
• 33:55
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, we you know that that's our supplement for not using our body during the day as we used to do, you know, as yeah as we evolved.
• 34:06
  Ulysse Dormoy: Light today has been processed to a point now where I think we it's it's probably fair to say it's ultra-processed because we've stripped out you know components that were of value, and then we have an industry around photobiomodulation, which is supplementation again.
• 34:27
  Ulysse Dormoy: So I think convenience drives towards supplementation, whether we like it or not, it's just the way it's evolved.
• 34:34
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, and I should say, you know, let's let's move the terminology slightly.
• 34:39
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, we're talking about lighting, but I think if we re-bring it back down to light, um, then we start we then we can start talking about glazing.
• 34:49
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, because it's not just the lighting environment, it's also as a consequence of the glazing that we've put onto buildings.
• 34:56
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, I was at a client's space um at the end of last week with with my lovely new spectrometer.
• 35:03
  Ulysse Dormoy: Uh it goes up to 950 nanometers, so so it takes me beyond the visible spectrum, which is great.
• 35:09
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, they have a north facing building, it's all glazed, floor to ceiling glazing, take a spectrometer uh reading, and there's nothing in in the infrared whatsoever.
• 35:19
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, it's it's been the coat, the glazing is very well coated, clearly.
• 35:25
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, yeah, open a window, take a take a reading, and there's tons of infrared out there.
• 35:30
  Ulysse Dormoy: Close the window, there's there's there's literally nothing.
• 35:33
  Ulysse Dormoy: So again, here is a here is a a point where we've processed our access to light, this time through glazing.
• 35:43
  Ulysse Dormoy: And there are loads of brands out there, glazing brands, that talk about um, you know, talk about uh you know uh how healthy light is, but they're selling a product which is actually coated.
• 35:57
  Ulysse Dormoy: So they themselves are part of the problem of the built environment in a in a light context, not a lighting context, but in a light context.
• 36:07
  Ulysse Dormoy: So, you know, maybe with architecture, and this is something that Bob is is is um pretty strong on, but also Glenn, I know we've we've spoken he and I have spoken about it quite a lot of times, is that if you've got north-facing windows, why have they been coated?
• 36:26
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, why are we not why are we not letting the sort of the natural light come through, the pure quality of light?
• 36:34
  Ulysse Dormoy: I get the fact that on east, west, south facing windows, you'd want to maybe coat that because of the fact that you know you don't want the solar heat gain.
• 36:42
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um but why the north face?
• 36:45
  Ulysse Dormoy: Why why does the north face have to be there?
• 36:47
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I and I know there are architects talking to the to the glazing companies, so the glass companies, about yeah, are there ways to make these films um in such a way that they allow some of the good stuff to come back into the environment?
• 37:02
  Ulysse Dormoy: So it's not just a lighting problem, it's a light problem.
• 37:07
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and it stretches beyond the lighting industry into the glazing industry.
• 37:11
  Ulysse Dormoy: We we we we all need to think about what we're doing.
• 37:15
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, and and you know, if I remember Scott Zimmerman's quote, you know, that uh, you know, I can't remember it off the top of my head, but he he basically says that you know, right now we're going through the biggest reduction in solar exposure in human history, and that sort of suggests that we don't know what the outcome is.
• 37:38
  Ulysse Dormoy: We don't know what's going to happen further down the line, but actually we can do something about it.
• 37:45
  Ulysse Dormoy: I think we can make some changes.
• 37:48
  Ulysse Dormoy: One of the challenges here is that I don't think this is a technological problem.
• 37:55
  Ulysse Dormoy: In fact, I know it's not a technological problem.
• 37:58
  Ulysse Dormoy: The problem is a legislative one, and we need to shift the the thinking.
• 38:04
  Ulysse Dormoy: We need to shift, you know.
• 38:06
  Ulysse Dormoy: There's not a year that's gone by in the last probably 10, 15 years, maybe longer, where we don't hear about the NHS, you know, and the problems that it's got.
• 38:16
  Ulysse Dormoy: And, you know, can't we help the process by allowing people to be healthier within their workspaces or their their indoor environment?
• 38:26
  Ulysse Dormoy: Doesn't it doesn't need to be a workspace.
• 38:29
  Ulysse Dormoy: So that further on down the line, you know, we have less issues.
• 38:34
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, I I was awakened to the concept of morbidity compression and morbidity expansion by the guys at the Guy Foundation, um, Alistair Nunn in particular.
• 38:45
  Ulysse Dormoy: And that's where you know you try and have as healthy as life as long as possible, and you you the gap between healthy and unhealthy is limited.
• 38:54
  Ulysse Dormoy: But at the moment, I feel that we're creating spaces that actually allow for morbidity expansion.
• 39:00
  Ulysse Dormoy: So we become unhealthier early, and you know, our unhealthy life you know expands for a longer period of time.
• 39:07
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, it's not just light, but light food or light nutrition movement, they they're all part of the mix, but I think light has been ignored as a significant player, and I think that needs that needs to change.
• 39:25
  Dave Wallace: And I so I I think it's so fascinating because you know, as you say, it has been ignored, it's very little understood.
• 39:34
  Dave Wallace: I mean, just just one thing I was kind of pondering on that is, and I think it it was mentioned on one of the Guy Foundation talks, is we're sort of understanding some of the the wavelengths and their impact on the body.
• 39:47
  Dave Wallace: There's a lot more work to be done in understanding what other wavelengths might be doing, which I find fascinating that you know this is kind of new science as well.
• 39:56
  Dave Wallace: Um but I I I I think it's it's like that whole point of being much more holistic in terms of the way we look at things, and it's it's really kind of countercultural as well.
• 40:12
  Dave Wallace: So you you know, we as you say, like our we're bombarded by supplementation to fix a problem, which is you know, we're eating ultra-processed food.
• 40:23
  Dave Wallace: I mean, the actual answer is to stop eating ultra-processed food and eat natural food, isn't it?
• 40:29
  Dave Wallace: Like, you know, we we stick on these infrared things on our faces, the photobiomodulation devices, as you as you say.
• 40:39
  Dave Wallace: When the answer might be just to get up a bit earlier and get in the morning sun, you know.
• 40:44
  Dave Wallace: So, and that actually is one of the real challenges, I think, for the lighting movement.
• 40:51
  Dave Wallace: I'm gonna call it movement, is that there's perhaps not that much money to be made out of it because I and I I totally take your point though around innovation in terms of the built environment.
• 41:04
  Dave Wallace: I think there's a huge amount to be done, but the answer might be just get a dog and go outside in the morning a bit more, you know, and um sit under a tree at lunchtime.
• 41:15
  Dave Wallace: And it's it's so simple.
• 41:18
  Dave Wallace: Like, I mean, I say this to my family.
• 41:21
  Dave Wallace: I mean, I sent my son off to university with an incandescent bulb as my parting gift.
• 41:26
  Dave Wallace: I I knew he's not gonna see the look the the sun for the next three years.
• 41:32
  Dave Wallace: Um, but I think my family all think I'm a bit of a lunatic, but I'm like, no, I I know there's something here because it kind of makes so much sense, doesn't it?
• 41:43
  Ulysse Dormoy: So so so so I I uh yeah, I think my lot um might have thought I was a bit of a lunatic, and they they've they've come on board you know quite quite well now.
• 41:54
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um probably because they've seen me spectrometer just about everything I possibly can do.
• 41:58
  Ulysse Dormoy: And so they they they they no longer think it's completely completely weird.
• 42:02
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um I think yeah, there is there is a your your point is absolutely valid about um about getting a dog and going and spending out time outdoors, but I think we also have to be realistic.
• 42:14
  Ulysse Dormoy: And our trajectory isn't that.
• 42:18
  Ulysse Dormoy: No, I don't think you know, uh our our course of evolution is going to, I think, continue to drive us further indoors um rather than outdoors.
• 42:28
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, you have to make a conscious effort to to go and spend more time outdoors, um, and yet we've got these things, you know, devices, all sorts of stuff, which which um enable us to spend less time outdoors.
• 42:43
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, I I'm of an age, and I think maybe maybe uh you might be too, where you know if you wanted to go and see your mates, you know, then you'd pick up a phone which had a cable on it, um, you'd make a call, you'd arrange to go and meet them in the park, and you'd spend the day in the park.
• 43:01
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, nowadays, you know, if you want to spend time with your mates, you don't even have to leave your bedroom.
• 43:06
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, you can, you know, there's there's been a complete cultural shift.
• 43:12
  Ulysse Dormoy: And um there's a guy called uh Dr.
• 43:15
  Ulysse Dormoy: David Pearlmutter who wrote a book called I'll try and remember the name of the book now.
• 43:20
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um I can't remember the name of the book.
• 43:23
  Ulysse Dormoy: Anyway, um it'll come back to me at some point.
• 43:25
  Ulysse Dormoy: And he he he coined a phrase called um uh uh oh now the phrase is gone.
• 43:32
  Ulysse Dormoy: Oh no, hang on.
• 43:33
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um no, no, here we go.
• 43:37
  Ulysse Dormoy: Evolutionary environmental mismatch.
• 43:39
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and he's he was he's a he's a urologist, and he was basically saying that you know, for him, it takes our physiology somewhere between 40,000 years and 70,000 years to adapt to the environment.
• 43:53
  Ulysse Dormoy: So technically speaking, we are still hunter-gatherers and we're living in this digital age.
• 43:57
  Ulysse Dormoy: There's a that there's there's a there's a mismatch.
• 44:00
  Ulysse Dormoy: So physiologically, we've been built to spend an enormous amount of time outdoors.
• 44:06
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, this this this shift into the indoor environment is not natural for us.
• 44:11
  Ulysse Dormoy: And as a consequence, we we have this issue which um is driving us towards supplementation.
• 44:18
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um but I think we can if the industry is you know ready to think about it in a slightly different way, um, then I think we can we can do good or do better, let's say, than what we're doing.
• 44:35
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and um you know Ty Farrow when I when I spoke to him uh beginning of this year, you know, he said the hippo Hippocratic oath doesn't go far enough.
• 44:48
  Ulysse Dormoy: Do no harm is not good enough.
• 44:50
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, we have to do better.
• 44:52
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I think I agree with him.
• 44:53
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and in the context of you know, is there any money to be made from this?
• 45:00
  Ulysse Dormoy: I think there is.
• 45:01
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, I think, but there's also potentially a level of satisfaction that when we put something into a space, we we we can potentially understand that we're doing better than we are today.
• 45:14
  Ulysse Dormoy: Because again, I come back to the point at the start is that once you've learned something, you can't unlearn it.
• 45:20
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, I don't think the industry is doing well enough today for it's doing better than it was, you know, the quality of light coming out of an LED today is better than it was, but we're still missing vital components.
• 45:33
  Ulysse Dormoy: And you know, the the the the if I if I go to a comparative a comparison with the space station, you know, when you looked at um the two astronauts who spent nine months on the space station, they came back, you know, significant signs of mitochondrial aging, um, accelerated mitochondrial aging.
• 45:52
  Ulysse Dormoy: My question is, what is the difference between our indoor um our indoor built environment um settings to the space station?
• 46:03
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I've come to the conclusion that there's not actually that much difference.
• 46:06
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, the only difference is that we have the choice and we can step outside.
• 46:10
  Ulysse Dormoy: And those moments of stepping outside is slowing down that that aging process.
• 46:15
  Ulysse Dormoy: And of course, they that they're subjected to, well, they were subjected to nine months of ultra, ultra-processed food on the space station.
• 46:23
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, there's probably not a lot of greenery being grown up there.
• 46:25
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, there's radiation, there's there's gravitational issues, but the lighting environment is part of the mix.
• 46:32
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, and our indoor environments a you know, if it you know, if a lighting designer gets involved, they're going to put the best quality of light they possibly can.
• 46:42
  Ulysse Dormoy: If a contractor has a choice, they think they're gonna value engineer it to to within inches of its life.
• 46:47
  Ulysse Dormoy: Light is being prescribed onto people, and as a consequence of that, we need to try and do the absolute best we can because we know we now understand much, much better the impact that we're having, not just on people's mental health, but on their physiological health.
• 47:09
  Dave Wallace: Well, it's it's very interesting.
• 47:11
  Dave Wallace: I mean, just just you know, we kind of need to wrap up, I think, but I I did want to pick up on one thing you said about the trajectory, which is more indoors.
• 47:20
  Dave Wallace: I it it's we've had a little chat about this, about kind of convenience.
• 47:27
  Dave Wallace: Maybe com maybe convenience is the kill switch on humanity.
• 47:31
  Dave Wallace: So the Brits who uh, you know, they started the Industrial Revolution, you know, it's the bloody Brits again.
• 47:38
  Dave Wallace: Uh maybe what they started was the a sort of trajectory which is sort of heading us towards you know, you know, an ill future, basically.
• 47:48
  Dave Wallace: And um I think it's interesting because I do agree with you, like convenience is such a powerful pull on us.
• 47:57
  Dave Wallace: You know, I I remember I did a degree in psychology and my one of my lecturers saying the brain is a lazy organ, and what she meant was it's it's searching for the the path of least resistance the whole time.
• 48:09
  Dave Wallace: And I kind of have held that as a philosophical grounding for much of what I've done, and it sort of feeds into that kind of convenience narrative.
• 48:19
  Dave Wallace: I I sort of wonder whether actually we need to do a lot more to kind of get people outside to you know make sure our children go to the park, our our young people go for walks.
• 48:36
  Dave Wallace: You know, when I was growing up, my parents would always take me out for a walk on a Sunday.
• 48:40
  Dave Wallace: So you, you know, it's sort of like going to legislation, as you say, like we need to maybe we need to legislate for kind of pushing back against convenience, you know.
• 48:52
  Dave Wallace: So I I don't know if you've got any sort of final thoughts on that at all.
• 48:57
  Ulysse Dormoy: Well, I think you know, part of the game here is again, sits sits potentially with with the creators of the built environment is um how do we create those spaces that make people want to spend time outdoors?
• 49:11
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, and added to that, when they are outdoors, how do we um ensure that they get the best quality nutrients when they're out there?
• 49:23
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and you know, when I say that, I'm sort of then referring to how the how these outdoor spaces, how the how the urban environments are designed.
• 49:32
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, and I I I like you know, again, just slightly crazily, you know, took my spectrometer out for a walk with us um uh the other week, um, took a took a reading of you know, you know, clear sky, clear blue sky, and then took a reading um, you know, within within uh sort of uh a wood, and the volume of infrared is phenomenal in the wood.
• 49:56
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah, so yeah, how do how do we create these spaces that are actually nutrition nutritionally good for us um as opposed to big urban sort of developments, you know, with with hard landscape um you know as as the main feature in between buildings.
• 50:16
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um let's shift that a little bit so that we'd you know, we're using, yeah, we evolved with nature.
• 50:22
  Ulysse Dormoy: There's a reason, yeah, there's there's an amazing circularity with nature.
• 50:26
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, we breathe out CO2, they they give us back oxygen, they take the CO2 in.
• 50:32
  Ulysse Dormoy: They don't like, you know, plants and trees don't like infrared, and we're starting to understand that we we really need it.
• 50:39
  Ulysse Dormoy: So there's this there's this circularity that happens.
• 50:42
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um and you know, it's it's no, it's I I don't think you know, talking, talking about you know mental health, um, brain health, let's say, you know, it's no big surprise that you've got organizations like mind who have allotments.
• 50:55
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, it's to get people outside, it's to get people out in nature because we all feel better in those environments.
• 51:01
  Ulysse Dormoy: So, you know, let's take some of these different points from different areas.
• 51:05
  Ulysse Dormoy: And I think there's there's um, you know, we can we can do that um to benefit people in general.
• 51:14
  Ulysse Dormoy: And look, I I get really excited these days, and this is really weird because I never thought I'd get excited about this sort of stuff, but I get really excited these days when I see you know a building where an architect is planning to have roof terraces, because all of a sudden, that roof terrace is not just a beautiful area for people, it's a it's an area for people to get you know a healthy boost of of energy from the environment.
• 51:44
  Ulysse Dormoy: And again, I've come back to the end of glazing.
• 51:47
  Ulysse Dormoy: If your roof terrace is on the north face, you know, put normal glazing in, let the infrared come into the building, let people get what they need.
• 51:54
  Ulysse Dormoy: I I think there's I I I did a uh well, I've got I've got an R A B A C P D on light and health.
• 52:02
  Ulysse Dormoy: And one of the final closing remarks is, you know, will architecture and design have um an impact on the health of nations in the future?
• 52:10
  Ulysse Dormoy: I think it can.
• 52:12
  Ulysse Dormoy: Yeah.
• 52:12
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, and and the creators of the built environment hopefully need to understand that they can have a massive influence on how we are, how we uh exist physiologically in the future.
• 52:27
  Ulysse Dormoy: A building isn't just a nice thing to have.
• 52:30
  Ulysse Dormoy: A building can can can deliver far, far more.
• 52:33
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, and I think that's where we need to get to.
• 52:37
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, how do we get to that point?
• 52:39
  Dave Wallace: No, fantastic, fantastic.
• 52:40
  Dave Wallace: Well, I look, I've talked to uh people like Nico Gentili.
• 52:44
  Dave Wallace: I don't know if you've come across Nico and um Mandana Khani from UCL who are really on this.
• 52:52
  Dave Wallace: So, you know, they're they're there educating the next uh wave of architects sort of coming through, and I think uh trying to make sure that they really focus on on understanding that this is important.
• 53:06
  Dave Wallace: But but listen, thank you so much.
• 53:08
  Dave Wallace: It's been we've covered so much ground.
• 53:11
  Dave Wallace: Uh, like all of these things, I'm sure we could talk for a long, long time.
• 53:16
  Dave Wallace: Could you just just a couple of final seconds on, you know, we're heading into winter.
• 53:23
  Dave Wallace: Um you know, I've asked people like Roger Spelt and uh uh Bob and Glenn and Scott what their views are in terms of sort of how you survive winter.
• 53:34
  Dave Wallace: Have you got any sort of short tips?
• 53:37
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um I I I think I think, you know, um look during during the winter months for us Brits, let's say, yeah, we're we're we're about to go into a period where there's not much light in the morning, there's not much light in the evening, you know, maybe you know, make a concerted effort to go for a walk after lunch, you know, um out in the daylight.
• 53:57
  Ulysse Dormoy: And and actually you're gonna do two things.
• 53:59
  Ulysse Dormoy: You know, once you what once you can yeah, for for the for the nutritionists out there, once you've consumed your food food, go for a walk, yeah, you're gonna stimulate your mitochondria, yeah, you're gonna reduce your blood glucose levels that way, but actually you're gonna get outside as well at the same time.
• 54:13
  Ulysse Dormoy: And there's there's other benefits.
• 54:15
  Ulysse Dormoy: So, so maybe you know the two combined um you know allows you to to do two and two equals five, right?
• 54:21
  Ulysse Dormoy: So, so there's that in a in in one sense.
• 54:23
  Ulysse Dormoy: And and whilst this is you know hopefully not a plug for Amazon, you know, if you want to buy some incandescent lamps, you know, they're still they're still available out there.
• 54:32
  Ulysse Dormoy: And you can buy and you can buy them in packs of 10, you know, and just go and chuck some incandescence, you know, in you know, into the places where where where you can.
• 54:43
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um so I think it's a mixture of things, but I think without a doubt, you know, get some outdoor time, you know, because when you know coming back to that um that study um in America, you know, what when we hit the the winter months, we're down to maximum sort of like 40 minutes a day uh of daylight, which is which is you know quite limiting.
• 55:02
  Ulysse Dormoy: And physiologically, we need so much more.
• 55:05
  Ulysse Dormoy: We need so much more.
• 55:06
  Dave Wallace: And uh, you know, people getting outside, don't worry about being in a t-shirt because the infrared gets through your clothes.
• 55:13
  Dave Wallace: So listen, thank you so much for joining.
• 55:16
  Dave Wallace: Uh really enjoyed that conversation.
• 55:18
  Dave Wallace: It's a and um look forward to seeing you uh in the audience at the Guy Foundation's talk next week, which I should say the Guy Foundation's talks are an absolute must.
• 55:30
  Dave Wallace: Um, some of the the best content around this topic.
• 55:35
  Dave Wallace: Uh, and it's all available on YouTube.
• 55:37
  Dave Wallace: So a bit of a plug for them.
• 55:39
  Ulysse Dormoy: Absolutely.
• 55:40
  Ulysse Dormoy: And yeah, they're doing they're doing great work.
• 55:42
  Ulysse Dormoy: It's been great talking to you, Dave.
• 55:44
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, and thank you for inviting me.
• 55:46
  Ulysse Dormoy: Um, I'm not I'm not I'm I'm not the science, but maybe I'm a I'm a different angle.
• 55:51
  Ulysse Dormoy: Fantastic.
• 55:52
  Ulysse Dormoy: Brilliant.
• 55:53
  Ulysse Dormoy: Thank you very much.
• 55:54
  Ulysse Dormoy: Have a great day.
• 55:55
  Ulysse Dormoy: And you.
• 55:56
  Ulysse Dormoy: Cheers, take it.
• 55:59
  Dave Wallace: Thanks for listening to Sunlight Matters, brought to you by Shadow Map, where we explore how sunlight influences the way we build, design, and live each day.
• 56:08
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• 56:16
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• 56:29
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• 56:39
  Dave Wallace: We appreciate you being part of the conversation, and we'll see you next time, where you can keep exploring the world through the lens of light.