The international competition International VELUX Award 2008 knows its winners

The company VELUX A/S announced the winners of the third annual International VELUX Award 2008 in Venice. The first prize went to Reilly O'Neil Hogan, the second prize was awarded to Ruan Hao and Xiong Xing from China, and Dean MacGregor from Portugal took third place. Additionally, eight honorary mentions were given.

“I believe that light and space have an extraordinary impact on our everyday life. This is generally true, regardless of time, place, or belief. Light has an immense power as a material to enliven architecture with something greater than ourselves,” said the main award winner Reilly O’Neil Hogan.
In his project “Embodied Ephemerality,” Reilly O’Neil Hogan explores how to cope with everyday routines - for example, by getting off the subway at a new (wrong) station. When forced to deviate from your routine, you see the city with new eyes. Hogan experiments with bringing sunlight into an underground station, specifically at the Path station in Lower Manhattan, with the goal of enhancing the daily experience of commuters.
“The conceptual idea of exploring underground spaces using daylight is very eloquent, and the entire project is thoroughly developed. The author has demonstrated the ability to understand and work with light in large spaces. The project addresses all aspects of imagination and is presented seriously and professionally,” stated the jury about the winning project.

Second and third prizes go to China and Portugal
The second prize was awarded to a pair of students from Tsinghua University in Beijing for their project “Interface Repairing – Light Festival,” which celebrates sunlight in the city.
“Too often, young architects from China are confused by rapid urbanization, which results in massive, indifferent construction. Design is no longer a process of innovation. We hope to be pioneers among architects and achieve significant changes regarding urban spaces so that the design process in China takes a new direction,” said Ruan Hao and Xiong Xing, students from Tsinghua University in Beijing, for whom the International VELUX Award is their first international recognition.
This year saw a significant increase in participants from China – 124 Chinese students from 38 schools entered the International VELUX Award competition.
The third prize was awarded to Dean MacGregor from Portugal for the project “Light has a body,” in which he explored the fundamentals of light and focused on how light penetrates water and how it behaves when refracted.
“I wanted to show that light can be perceived beyond its physical dimension. You can see it and feel it. I intended to transform this invisible thing that everyone recognizes into a light mass. For this, I used water. It briefly stops the light and refracts it into the space, thus creating a light body,” says Dean MacGregor, who is currently studying at the Lusíada University in Lisbon.
In addition to the three main prizes, the jury awarded eight honorary mentions to architecture students from eleven countries in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Celebrating student talent
The total number of 686 submitted projects from 244 schools represents many different responses to the theme “Light of Tomorrow.” The jury members gathered this summer to evaluate all the submitted projects. The jury did not necessarily seek finished, complete projects, but rather projects that celebrate the privilege of student status – with a certain naive untouchability, curiosity, willingness to take risks, and a tendency toward experimental thinking. Moreover, the jury focused more on projects that addressed specific problems rather than completed construction projects. Significant attention was given to projects dealing with the future.
Chairman of the jury Hani Rashid noted: “I am very pleased with the winners as they represent three different directions of the entire concept of the International VELUX Award. On one side, there is the winning project by a student working in a way that realistically addresses the potential use of light, space, form, and the city itself to create a truly usable architectural response. The second awarded project took a different approach and shows the ideas of students who are working and thinking in the context of globalization and urban renewal based on conceptual thinking. And the third prize goes to a project created on a smaller scale, yet just as impressive to the jury due to its remarkable poetry and mystical approach to light. Overall, the practical, visionary, and poetic approaches have been recognized, which in their way summarize what all the students were addressing in their projects.”

Supporting the debate on daylight
The goal of VELUX has always been to support the debate on the importance of natural daylight and fresh air in architecture. Michel Langrand, a representative of the company on the jury and president of VELUX France, adds: “In order to succeed as a company today, you must have a vision or a project that reaches beyond the product you are selling. For VELUX, it is the daylight and fresh air brought into residential attics by roof windows. It is not just about selling windows, but rather about how important it is to provide natural light and fresh air at an acceptable cost while simultaneously creating the best living environment for residents.”

The International VELUX Award for architecture students is held every two years, with the next edition taking place in 2010.

The winning projects are presented in an annual publication released for this competition. All contributions submitted to the competition are available at www.velux.com/iva.