- No. 04
- Process
- 4 min read
Drawing light.
Before any plan, we draw the sun. A short guide to the studies we make in the first week of every project, and what they usually tell us.
Tomás ReynerPartner, architect
On the first day of a new project nobody in the studio is allowed to draw a room. Instead we draw the sun: where it rises over the site on the longest and shortest days, how high it climbs, what it hits on the way. It is a slow and slightly stubborn habit, and it has saved us from more bad plans than any other.
Part 01Day one: the sun path
We start with a plain sun path diagram for the site’s latitude, printed large and pinned to the wall. Over it we draw the horizon as seen from the site: hills, trees, the neighbouring roofs. Anything above that line is sun we will get; anything below is sun we will not. On a steep site in the Douro Valley, the horizon took two hours of morning sun away from the eastern terrace.1
This drawing is crude and it is always slightly wrong, but it changes the conversation immediately. Instead of asking “where should the kitchen go?”, the team starts asking “where is the light at breakfast?” It is the same question, asked in a better order.
Part 02Day three: the shoebox
By the middle of the week we build a crude model of the main room, often from an actual shoebox, with the openings cut where we think they might go. We take it outside at noon and tilt it to match the sun angles on the diagram. It is the cheapest and fastest light simulation we know, and it shows things a computer will not, like the colour of light reflected off a terracotta floor.
It is the same question, asked in a better order: not where the kitchen goes, but where the light is at breakfast.
The software comes later, and we do use it. But a model in the hand teaches the team something the screen does not: how quickly a patch of sun moves across a floor, and how small a change in an opening makes a room feel entirely different.2
Part 03Day five: the list
We end the week with a single page: a list of every room the brief asks for, and next to each one the time of day it will mostly be used and the light it deserves. Bedrooms for a client who wakes early go east. A study used in the evening goes west, but with a deep reveal. That page goes on the wall beside the sun path, and it stays there until the building is finished.
