Helping architects to design their personal daylight

A bstract: - This communication is based on a seven years experience of teaching day lighting to graduate architects coming from very different latitudes and climates. We first created didactic software to help them controlling sun paths. Later, we developed it gradually to support the common part of the problem: the geometrical one. With the same knowledge and tool, the students imagined very different projects, which reflected their different sensitivities and ideas about light, especially in its chromatic aspect. Their works confirmed us the evidence that the justified preoccupation about ecology and sustainability must not obviate the fact that good architecture is, first of all, an art. The software, “Heliodon”, developed by Benoit Beckers and Luc Masset, offers synthetic and original representations that allow the architect to develop its design freely, but controlling simultaneously space and time aspects. It complements commercial rendering software and is a fundamental component of a personal theory about light ambiances and color. The results are very original projects that blend aesthetic expression, geometrical control and environmental conscience. With this teaching, every architect is expected to discover his personal daylight. In the near future, the contributions of architects and urban designers will also be fundamental in order to extend the studies of solar radiation to large urban areas. The collaboration between geographers, climatologists and physicists will be crucial in order to define the appropriate numerical mockups at different scales.