natural lighting

pitched roof

shed roof

pitched with a skylight

one of the reasons behind narrowing the kitchen was natural light. it's easier to get natural light in from the sides of a narrow building. natural light will be important for making meals and conserving electricity. a shed roof design helps distribute natural light fairly evenly though a room because the ceiling pitches down from high windows and bounces their light to the floor. in a pitched roof design, as you can see in the top image, the peak and center floor area tend to be dark. this can be remedied by adding a skylight, of which we have two at the moment. the last image shows how a pitched roof design can be lit up with a skylight and a peak window. but even with a skylight, the pitched roof design is darker. the images here were created using some very cool light modeling software that treats light much the way it behaves in reality. each of these models was lit identically from the outside (by light from an old european town square! it's german software). south is to the left, east is behind. the models are 24' x 24' and are viewed through a wide angled lens.