The article, designing a house for the sun, was explaining how to design a house to receive the maximum amount of natural light and heat. It explains many things from the direction your house should be facing to where to place windows in the house. .
I learned that when it is time to place the house that you should have it diagonally to the south. This is because every room gets direct sunbeams during one period of the day. Also this means that rooms on the south corner get sun from sunrise to sun set. This keeps the house the warmest.
The article explained that when u want the light to balance then you should shape the house so that every important room in the house can get light from at least to sides. This means that you should have windows on 2 different walls in the house.
If your house that you are designing has no exterior walls then you should have a window on the ceiling. This means to have a skylight. The skylight should fill the rooms as much as possible. You can also reflect the sunlight off the walls to fill up the room. In the article it shows many ways to place the skylights. One example is an obscure-glass diffusing panel below the skylight to soften the light that is coming into the room. Another example is a light shelf. This bounces the light back onto the ceiling so that you don't get the direct rays of the sun. This is to make the natural light not as bright.
I learned a lot about how to use the most out of the sun in this article. I really enjoyed reading about windows, skylights, and shapes of houses. This article has inspired me to make my house as energy efficient as possible. I will do this by putting lots of windows in and facing my most important rooms diagonally to the south. I will also put lots of skylights in and maybe put a diffusing-glass panel or light shelf in. Whatever I do, I will try to save energy. We have the sun, so use it.
