Creative Light

When we look at a building we realize that its aspect changes greatly with the variations of daylight. It may be dull under clouds and in the rain: colours and details may bring out its delicate and cheerful beauty in sunshine.

As shown in the first chapter, the specific qualities of the light have a great influence on the external shapes in architecture, that is to say the architect’s design is influenced by the local climate.

In the previous chapters we have spoken of daylight giving shape and creating space in architecture.

The human eye has often been compared to a camera, presuming erroneously that our eyes are cameras of poor quality. This is a false presumption.

It was seen in Chapter IV that usually the eye task, that is to say the object we observe carefully during our work and which we want to see in detail, occupies only a small part of our visual field. The details we see sharply are still smaller, they may be one or two words on a printed page looked at from a normal reading distance (40 cm); or that part of a piece of knitting in which we want to count stitches; or the upper part of the body of a violonist standing at a distance of 20 metres on a platform; or that part of the road on which we see a car approaching at 300 metres distance. This part of the eye task is not wider than a solid angle of ± 2°. If, as stated in Chapter IV, the whole eye task which we can see with fixed head and moving eyes is included in a cone of 8° upwards and downwards and 10° to right and left, the part we can see with the greatest precision is only 1/500 to 1/1000th of it. Now it is obvious that since the whole visual field contributes to the total impression we obtain when looking at our work, the whole composition of that visual field has an influence on the way we see things.

All living creatures are strongly influenced by the rhythm of the sun and the moon, of the seasons, of day and night, of ebb and flow. Mankind is equally influenced by these rhythms.

The human eye can see under a wide range of lighting levels. This adaptability is easily recognised by considering our powers of perception under conditions changing from full sunshine to moonlight.

During the whole of the industrial era between 1840 and 1940, every worker in industry, in the crafts or in offices did his work under lighting conditions that would now be considered completely insufficient, especially under artificial light. But there were hardly ever serious complaints, because there were almost no possibilities for improving the conditions; and we believe that, in general, not very much harm was done to the health of the workers.

Good visual environment means:

Most of the advances in science and industry during the past hundred years have been improvements in technique leading to lower production costs. This is understandable, since profit was the principal motive for these developments. Humanitarian considerations came a very poor second, if indeed they played any part at all.

This book has been written for various reasons.