Relying on natural lighting instead of artificial for the majority of your lighting needs comes with a number of benefits:
Improved general health and happiness of building occupants
Improved energy usage and associated costs
Interesting light/shadow patterning
This week’s prompt is part architecture study, and part people watching. Look at how the buildings you interact with bring in daylight. Is it diffused to create consistent lighting across an entire space? Do the elements of the building create an interesting pattern play between light and shadow? How do these elements affect the people inhabiting those spaces? Do people behave differently in daylit vs artificially lit spaces?
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And we’re back! The Visual Case Study challenge - part 2 - will run from today until September 8th. My catch up sketches will be mixed in with the next two weekly reviews - daylighting with this week’s, and pathways with next week’s.
Which brings us to this week’s prompt: Elevation. I think with all the access we have to digital modeling software nowadays, it can be tempting to jump directly into designing in 3D, but there’s value in looking at things in 2D as well. Working in elevation is especially useful for picking up on patterns, both in your own design, and in the surrounding context. Looking at the elevations of the surrounding context is also especially useful for informing your own designs, whether you pull out a texture pattern, or continue lines from neighboring buildings - i.e. window lines, floor levels, etc.
This week, take some time to really study your surroundings in elevation. What patterns can you pick out? Is there continuity between one building and the next? Or is there intentional discontinuity?
Have you ever had to stop in the middle of a busy city sidewalk? Chances are, there wasn’t much space for you to get out of the way of other passersby.
While pathways are generally designed to get you from point A to point B, they are rarely just that, or at least they shouldn’t be. Circulation without secondary uses takes up a lot of space - space that is more likely to be unoccupied that occupied at a given moment. This space is inefficient, costing more to maintain than it returns in value. Dissolving the circulation into the rest of the program maximizes the value of the space. For instance, crossing an atrium might get you from one part of a building to another, but it can still serve an alternative purpose as it’s own individual space. Likewise, as in the sketch above, a pathway cutting down the middle of a busy street may also serve as a sort of park or greenway, with places to sit and enjoy the nature that lines it on either side.
This week, take some time to observe how circulation has been approached in the places you inhabit. Is it well dissolves into the program, taking up no extra space of its own? Is it completely closed off from everything else, such as in a closed-space office building? Or is it somewhere in between, occupying it’s own space, but in an unobtrusive way? How can these circulation spaces be improved?
This post is going to focus on the inclusion of green space in residential applications - particularly, in multi-unit buildings such as apartments and dormitories. A quick google search on creating an indoors/outdoors connection brings up hundreds of examples of suburban and rural homes, with large yards and plenty of deck-space, but finding anything relating to smaller-scale urban living is nigh impossible without the right search terms and some patience. What you do find, is that there’s generally four different approaches to integrating green space into multi-unit living:
Balconies
Image found here.
Probably the most common was apartments integrate outdoors space, balconies allow for most, if not all, units in a building to have their own private outdoors spaces. While it’s possible to turn these spaces into small private jungles, they still have limitations. You generally can’t grow grass or other ground cover on balconies, and many have a weight limit (depending on how they’re constructed), limiting just how many potted plants you can include. Limited or not, they are currently the best way to provide residents their own private outdoors spaces in a packed urban context.
Terracing
WE architecture + Erik Juul's Urban Garden and Housing
Terraces offer spaces that could be semi-private, in that, depending on the number of terraces per building, each one could serve a portion of the building, while the rest of the residents are to use a different one. They are also larger than the average balcony; potentially large enough that several different outdoor zones/rooms could be developed on each one.
There is also more potential for growing ground cover on the terrace. Since they’re essentially reinforced roofing systems, they could be further reinforced to include green roof design, creating a sort of artificial ground. There is still some limit on exactly what can be grown: for instance, one could not grow a tree on a terrace, unless it’s potted, as the soil in such a system is generally pretty shallow.
Roof-top Gardens/Green Roofs
Image by HarrisonGreenNyc
These are essentially larger versions of terraces, likely taking up most, if not all, of the roof of the building. They share all of the pros and cons of terraces, with the added pro that they are generally even larger, allowing for even further zoning of space.
Courtyards
Image by Terrain.
The only option that actually engages with the ground, courtyards provide opportunity for larger plantings, and more of a park-like atmosphere. Like green roofs and terraces, courtyards provide opportunity for outdoor rooms, if they’re large enough. Depending on layout of the building, they could also be connected directly to the street.
Factors to consider:
The method that one goes with ultimately depends on a few factors.
How public or private they want the green space to be. Does each resident get their own space, or is it shared? How many residents share the space? Is the space also accessible by the public?
How green should the space be? Should it be park-like with green covering underfoot? Or will a number of plants suffice?
What kind of building geometry is the designer aiming for? Do they want a stepped look, or holes in the building? Should those holes be on the sides (balconies), or down the middle (courtyard)? Or should there be shelves sticking to the side of the building (balconies v.2)? Or should the building be a perfect cube/prism/etc. with a green hat?
Are these the only options for incorporating green space into urban residential? Probably not, but they are by far the most common currently in use. Personally, I look forward to seeing what other options future architects and designers come up with, and to tackling that question myself.
This week's prompt was fenestration. I'd walked by this window a couple of weeks ago when searching for an interstitial space sketch, and knew it was what I wanted to sketch this week. With this being something I've been researching on for the Urban Green Space posts, I was really excited to see a folding window in action! The beautifully ornate door and railing were just a bonus.
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No matter what kind of establishment you run, a simple deck or patio can increase revenue by up to 30 percent, according to Jeff Caldwell of Superior Shade.
This article talks a little bit about how to create an outdoor dining space for food establishments. In next week’s Urban Green Space post, I’ll be diving a little deeper into both restaurants and retail, analyzing the how and why of creating green space for those particular uses.
This is one from the State of Michigan. This is one from happho.com. I’m drawing from these quite a bit for this post, so I wanted to have them available. There’s still a decent amount I didn’t touch on from these sources that weren’t exactly tying to this week’s theme, so I highly suggest taking a look through them. There’s lots of great diagrams in the first one.
Okay, actual post below the cut
One of the most important factors to consider with openings is natural lighting.How you bring in light from outside greatly impacts the ambiance and function of a space. There are three main types of natural lighting - or daylighting - I’ve noticed in my studies so far: direct, diffused/indirect, and patterned light.
Direct
Direct lighting is by far the most common. This method of daylighting generally makes use of medium to large windows, or a series of windows, to bring light in. This method is highly preferable in spaces where daylighting is meant to be the primary source of task lighting during the day, often used in residential, office, and educational design.
There’s one main pitfall of direct lighting: glare. We’ve all experienced it - you’re watching tv, and at either sunrise or sunset you have to close the blinds and draw the curtains shut because the sun is either hitting the screen directly, or there’s so much light coming in that it’s washing out the view. Bad fenestration designs - those with too-large openings and improper/no use of shading devices - often lead to glare, forcing users of the space to either block out the window or face being blinded during certain times of day.
My absolute favorite use of direct lighting is in the LT Josai House by Naruse Inokuma Architects. The design uses a multitude of beautiful, large windows that bring in tons of natural light without it being overbearing.
Another common and popular method of direct lighting is the use of skylights. This design by José António Barbosa and Pedro Lopes Guimarães makes use of a series of skylights to light a lofted space.
Diffused/Indirect
Diffused lighting is almost as common direct lighting. This method commonly uses a combination of openings and devices such as light shelves, to direct light up where it bounced off the ceiling in a less harsh manner. This method is generally seen in places where direct light can be harmful to the objects inside, such as in museums and libraries. One of my favorite (and one of the best known) examples of this is the Kimbell Art Museum by Louis Kahn. A continuous skylight runs the whole length of each barrel-vaulted hall, and light shelves redirect that light back up onto the interior of the vault. This provides all the necessary daylighting, without direct lighting hitting the artwork and causing it to fade.
Other methods of diffused lighting include the use of frosted/translucent glass, light wells, use of multiple smaller openings, use of glass blocks in place of traditional windows, and using a corridor/smaller space to diffuse light before it reaches its intended space.
Patterned
This method is both the least common, and the hardest to find good examples of, but when done right can be incredibly beautiful. Patterned lighting is not used as task lighting, but rather to bring a level of ambiance to a space. This is often done with some kind of screening effect, but can also be done through the shape, size, arrangement, and color of your openings. The goal is not just to light the space, but to create another layer to the design that more usual openings would not.
This pavilion by Ellsworth Kelly makes use of different arrangements and shapes of colored windows to create a playful light display that will change depending on time of day and/or year. This project also shows how patterned lighting can be symbolic. The pavilion was designed by an artist who worked heavily with color grids and the color wheel, represented by all three sets of windows in one way or another.
The City View Garage by Leong Leong is a good example of the screening technique. Using a screen with different shapes and sizes of cutouts, they create a dynamic display of light and shadows that transforms a traditionally bland use of space into a work of art that will shift and change throughout the day.
In most cases, openings in a building should be designed rather than consulting factory pre-made designs. Any of these methods, if designed well, can add a bright, finishing touch to your design. Of course, if you want to be a showoff like Le Corbusier, you could always use all three.
