Page 28 - Between light and shade

between light and shade, TRANSPARENCy and reflection

greatly between the tropics, the tropics and the
polar circles and beyond the polar circles.

While everywhere else on the planet the
sun rises in the East and sets in the West, the
area between the tropics sees the sun swinging
from North to South at midday, depending on
the season. From the tropics to the polar circles,
at midday the Northern hemisphere sees the
sun only to the South and the Southern hemis-
phere sees it only to the North. This is a crucial
insight for architecture. In effect, the East and
the West, which are stable throughout the entire
year, represent the reference point between the
tropics, while the North-South axis is the usual
baseline beyond that.

openings
It is via openings, the holes in the wall or roof,
that light enters buildings, directly, by reflection
or in a diffuse way, and differently depending
on their orientation, the season and the time of
day, with their features, (windows or skylights,
glazing, parapets, balconies, blinds, shutters,
curtains). They determine the architecture 5.

All these components have changed conside-
rably in recent decades but none of them has had

5 Read: La lumière naturelle à bon escient (Natural light used
well), Ravel Office fédéral (Switzerland) des questions conjonc-
turelles, 73 p, 1995, available to download from the internet.
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