Light in the Public Realm

The Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation are very pleased to be able invite everyone to the online open lecture lecture, Light in the Public Realm with the American architect and artist, James Carpenter.  

In the lecture, James Carpenter will focus upon a 40-year trajectory of work that brings agency to the presence of light, allowing it to reveal the properties and presence of nature within our built environment.

James Carpenter has worked at the intersection of art, engineering and the built environment for 50 years, advancing a distinctive vision based on the use of natural light and glass as the foundational elements of the built environment. Carpenter founded the cross-disciplinary design firm James Carpenter Design Associates in 1979 to support the application of these aesthetic principles to large-scale building projects. 

Carpenter has been recognized with numerous national and international awards, including an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He holds a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and was a Loeb Fellow of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.  

The lecture is a part of the series of lectures title, The ordinary daylight and focuses on architects that work consciously and qualitatively with the effects of daylight in architecture. 

The series of lectures has included: 

• 'Light is a Moving Material' by the Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi
• 'Sverre Fehn: Structure in Search of its Light' by the Norwegian architect and author Per Olaf Fjeld
• 'Informal Delight' by the Chile-based practice Pezo von Ellrichshausen 
• '...Where the Light Gets In, Intentions, Realities, Paradoxes' by the Swedish architect Johan Celsing
• 'A lightness of touch' by the English architect, Stephen Bates from Sergison & Bates Architects
• 'Reflections on light' by the English architect and professor Dean Hawkes
• 'The Discipline of the Existing' by the Spanish architects Eva Flores & Ricardo Prats 

The lectures are organized by the Royal Danish Academy - Light Lab  and is kindly supported by VELUX Denmark.