My new video on bringing natural light into a house form without side windows.

Important as color is, it sometimes blinds us to form. “I see in color, so I shoot in color,” Jay Maisel once told my uncle. But if what you want to convey is shape and volume, doing away with any distracting hues can be the best tool. Photo here is by Clyde Butcher.

The solar energy that today lands wasted on thousands of acres of deteriorating San Francisco roof membranes will in the future be treated as a hotly contested resource. Rooftops will have to be thoughtfully partitioned, with sunlight allocated in proper proportion to roof gardens, interior daylighting (skylights), photovoltaics, and solar hot water (though increasingly efficient PV panels are […]

What color are my white walls? It depends on the time of day. With white, the early morning light glows orange, cool evening light is a quiet blue, only grey winter skies suffuse the room with pure white. A warm color lit by cool northern light would look muddy and insubstantial; the same with a […]

A surprisingly effective way to draw light into a room is by use of a light shelf. These horizontal reflectors are mounted either inside, outside, or on both sides of a southerly-facing window. Sunlight bounces off the surface and onto the ceiling within.  Any bright surface will diffuse daylight effectively. In my office though, I […]