For over a year now, employees of Australian bank Macquarie have been working in the French headquarters on the Champs-Élysées Marcel-Dassault traffic circle, and know from experience what it's like to enjoy daylight in the office. For Chambers architects has made a point of letting them benefit from natural daylight as much as from the exceptional, everyday view of a prestigious setting. Omnipresent, even in the depths of the floors, direct or reflected, the light spreads everywhere and sometimes clashes with the calm of the half-light. The light is deliberately concentrated in the circulation areas, which are constantly in use during the day, rather than in the meeting areas, as is all too often the case. Face-to-face meetings or video-conferencing require reduced, controlled lighting adapted to video-projection conditions, not a giorno clarity!

Spontaneously, the ecological approach to office lighting has focused in recent years on the technological evolution of energy-saving devices, such as LEDs or presence and luminosity detection... It is preferable to approach the question with natural light as the basic material, for designing spaces, creating ambiences, encouraging uses... From this last point of view, it is high time to rethink space planning with regard to real, and unconventional, daylight exposure needs.