Light6 min read
The Weight of Light
Why thick walls make the best light, and what a single slot of sky can teach a house.
By Noor Haddad
Light has no weight, yet architects spend careers trying to give it some. In a thin-walled building, light arrives everywhere at once and settles nowhere. In a thick wall, it must travel.
The depth of an opening
A window set deep into sixty centimetres of concrete is not a hole but a small room of its own. The sill catches a bar of sun; the reveal glows; the view is framed twice. We draw these sections before we draw any plan.
“Good light is not bright. It is specific.”
In House of Silence a single slot above the hall moves a blade of light across the floor over the course of a day. The family has stopped wearing watches indoors. That is the highest compliment we have received.
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Materials5 min read
Limestone: A Slow Material
Notes from the laboratory on how pale stone ages, stains and — eventually — heals.
Sustainability7 min read
Designing for the Next Hundred Years
Sustainability is not a label. It is the discipline of making things that are worth repairing.
Spatial design4 min read
The Grammar of Thresholds
Compression, pause, release: how the smallest spaces in a building decide how we feel in the largest.