This book examines the many ways that our lives are enriched by the presence of natural daylight illumination and window views within our buildings. It is written to engage and challenge a variety of readers, including all forms of building and urban designers, plus anyone interested in human health and wellbeing.

Lisa Heschong is an architect and founding principal of the Heschong Mahone Group (HMG), a building sciences consulting firm, where she led groundbreaking research showing a relationship between daylight and student test scores, retail sales, and office worker performance. Heschong is the author of the classic Thermal Delight in Architecture, along with many technical publications about daylighting and energy effi ciency in buildings. A graduate of UC Berkeley and MIT, she is a Fellow of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), and received the ARCC 2012 Haecker Award for Architectural Research. Heschong lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her husband, two horses, and a sailboat, where she never tires of watching the changing colors of the surrounding ocean and sky.

Visual Delight in Architecture examines the many ways that our lives are enriched by the presence of natural daylight and window views within our buildings. It makes a compelling case that daily exposure to the rhythms of daylight is essential to our health and well-being, tied to the very genetic foundations of our physiology and cognitive function. It describes all the subtlety, beauty, and pleasures of well-daylit spaces and attractive window views, and explains how these are woven into the fabric of both our everyday sensory experience and enduring cultural perspectives.

All types of environmental designers, along with anyone interested in human health and well- being, will fi nd new insights offered by Visual Delight in Architecture. The book is both accessible and provocative, full of personal stories and persuasive research, helping designers to gain a deeper understanding of the scientific basis of their designs, scientists to better grasp the real-world implications of their work, and everyone to more fully appreciate the role of windows in their lives.

Introduction

Part 1: Prediction

1. Planetary Rhythms

2. Chronobiology and Human Health

3. The Evolving and Aging Eye

4. The Predictive Brain

5. Attention and Insight

Part 2: Perception

6. Learning to See

7. Patterns of Daylight Illumination

8. Designing with Daylight

9. Elements of View

Part 3: Motivation

10. Daylighting Education

11. Selling Daylight

12. Enduring Urban Forms

13. The Value of View

14. Working with Daylight

15. Healing Daylight

Part 4: Meaning

16. Iconic Daylight and Views

17. Visions of Nature

18. Biophilia and Technophilia

19. Synthesis and Next Steps

Conclusion

Glossary

List of Illustrations

Notes and References

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author