Visualizing Perceptual Dynamics in Architecture

Most designers would agree that natural light is essential to the experience of any great work of architecture, but as a professional discipline, we lack consensus on which characteristics of daylight quantify or qualify the visual performance of a space. Perceptual qualities such as brightness, contrast, and temporal variability influence our experience of physical space and while illumination, both natural and artificial, adds depth to complex geometries, daylight infuses otherwise static interior spaces with shifting compositions of light and shadow. Unlike artificial light sources, which can be adjusted to meet a desired visual effect regardless of location and time, daylight is sensitive to an array of influences. The latitude of a given location affects the length and intensity of daylight hours throughout the year, while local changes in climate affect its hourly strength and variability. Surrounding site conditions can amplify or diminish the sun’s ability to penetrate an interior space and it’s often difficult to predict how these conditions will change over time. Architecture is greatly altered and enriched by the dynamic visual qualities of daylight, yet it is most often valued simply for its ability to provide adequate illumination and evaluated through surface-based measurements which do not account for the rich diversity of composition within the field-of-view. While there is some agreement on the minimum amount of illumination that is required for the human eye to perform visual tasks, there is a lack of consensus on how much contrast or brightness makes a given space visually appealing.