One of Utzon’s
most important works is a house he designed for himself and his family near
Petro Porto on the Spanish island of Majorca, off the Mediterranean coast near
Barcelona. The house is one of
those extremely rare, successful essays in the conscious production of a
vernacular building by a professional, and appropriately a significant example
of Utzon’s understanding of sun and daylight. Not so long ago, the production of (vernacular) buildings,
the control of daylight, and thermal control were one and the same. There were no mechanical or electrical
means for providing visual or thermal comfort. At this house, which Utzon called Can Lis, he developed a
most interesting approach to daylighting, one which, in a vernacular manner,
guided his design decisions throughout the project.
Utzon’s
daylighting strategy at Can Lis recognizes three ideas. The first is that a
little sunlight goes a long way.
For the most part, direct sun is visually uncomfortable and inefficient
and the same is true thermally; it is typically a mistake to bring quantities
of uncontrolled direct sun into a space.
Direct sun is fine if you are lazing on the seashore or enjoying a
leisurely stroll. But too much
sun, even a little sun from the wrong direction, easily introduces glare and
overheating to a building interior.
Utzon’s second idea was that views of sun-washed and daylight-washed
surfaces and landscapes can bring the satisfaction of sunlight and a sense of
the passage of the day into a space while minimizing the visual and thermal
problems. Seeing the unmistakable
evidence of sun on a nearby surface or in the distance is a very effective
substitute for being exposed to direct sun. The third and crucial idea was Utzon’s recognition that in
Spain the sun follows a relatively high arc through the southern sky (at least
in comparison to his native Denmark) and therefore configuring and locating the
house’s openings toward the horizon would minimize the attack of direct sun and
maximize the intake of more desirable, diffused skylight.
