Light and psychology

Why light and psychology?

This course is focusing on cognitive and emotional responses to lighting. Light as a stimulus and cognition and emotions as responses.

Dates

Course start up online seminar 29 & 30 April 2025. Online project presentation (exam) 04 June 2025.

Course content

The course is focusing on cognitive and emotional responses to lighting. Light as a stimulus and cognition and emotions as responses.

Lighting is a crucial variable of any environment and lighting can help create excitement and mystery in various scenes, in films, in theaters, but also in real private or public spaces. Lighting can help a person navigate through new rooms, both large and small, a park or a cityscape. Light can help create a sense of calm and peace in sacred settings, and lighting can lead to strong disapproval of a room we otherwise could perceive as appealing. Light is an essential part of visual understanding of our surrounding spaces, and it can draw attention to meaning and experiences of places.

Hue, saturation, spectral distribution, lighting effects and lighting distribution can contribute to cognitive and emotional responses, good and desired effects, or unwanted negative effects. The students learn how to use different lighting tools, principles, and strategies in aiming at enhanced beneficial effects of natural and artificial light and lighting. The students are also encouraged to keep a critical stance towards relevant literature and findings in the field.

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Learning activities

The course consists of teaching with various learning activities. Examples of learning activities are resource lectures, project work, practical exercises, group discussions, submissions, inspections, and student presentations.

The student is responsible for completing all the assignments in the course and will have to exercise independent disposition of the activities within the framework of the study. It is expected that the students largely work independently and come prepared for the teaching sessions where discussions are made in groups or plenum.

Students are to be present at online resource lectures and take part in individual or online group work supervised by course teachers. Students will conduct large scale urban light analysis on paper and PC/Mac for digital presentation and submission. Independently organised site visits are required in their local urban areas. They will individually and in groups present digitally the compulsory course work.

Coursework requirements

Workshop with written report. Compulsory work must be approved to participate in the final exam.

Compulsory activity and compulsory attendance:

Students must be present (online) for at least 80% of the common activities. The startup seminar (2 day) and exam presentation (I day) are obligatory.

Forms of assessment

The compulsory hand-in is graded passed/not passed and must be passed prior to the final exam.

Final assessment: The exam is a written home exam. The final exam is assessed according to letter grades A-E (F).