Hypothesis
        Students are placed in environments where lighting conditions create disruptions to students’ circadian rhythms and disengage students from nature. According to Riverdale Vision Care, around 20% of people have hypersensitivity to lights, and around 10% of people have light induced migraines.
     
Responsive lighting will chemically and psychologically realign students with their environments, providing better mental and physical health for already strained individuals. 

• Why

        The unavoidable truth is that students will be studying late into the night and constantly readjusting their sleep rhythms. This is not aided by the inundation of overhead fluorescent lighting during both nighttime and daylight hours.
       
    Embedding adaptive options that connect students with the natural state of the outdoor environment would allow for better decisions in sleep and rest for students.

• How

        Create responsive lighting units that simulate sunlight. In rooms without windows, flat, unchanging lighting isolates individuals from the outside environment. Light temperature and direction of light also play into the perception of synthetic light sources. The use of fresnel lenses make beams parallel, similar to how a computer screen operates (many large screen televisions employ this technology).
       
    Lightboxes can be constructed relatively cheaply with reclaimed materials, making this solution manageable both financially and environmentally. Placing sensors at an outside source of the building would allow for these responsive LEDs to change along with the environmental light conditions, on both color temperature and intensity of light.
       
    While still imperfect, this would be a step in creating the feeling of natural lighting in spaces that would otherwise not have any. The scattering of beams that occurs in our atmosphere is called Rayleigh scattering, and creates a warmer light due to the scattering of blue and violet wavelengths. This is what gives the sun its warm yellowish orange hue, and the sky its blue hue. This same process can be simulated by nanoparticles, or soap suspended in water. The point of decision in whether to disengage and begin to move the body towards a resting state has a lot to do with environmental lighting factors. The disengagement in many campus rooms and workspaces from the outside environment creates a need for other modes of indication, such as synthetic lighting.

• What

        Small tweaks in the kind of light and placement in lit settings will help to rebalance students’ circadian rhythms.
       
    Creating details that allow for management of lighting and opportunities for better self regulation will stretch across all levels of the design continuum.

• So What

        Creating a greater connection chemically and subconsciously to the outside environment will help in resetting the natural rhythmic patterns of the human body, allowing students to become less stressed and better rested.