Description

“Light, Life, and Healthy Buildings”

The dynamics of daylight and sunlight set the rhythms of life on planet Earth. They can also help make our buildings and cities much healthier places to live. From mood to metabolism, from daydreams to delight, simple access to daylight illumination and window views has enormous power over how humans live their lives.

Lisa Heschong is a Fellow of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES).She was a Founding Principal of the Heschong Mahone Group (HMG), an architectural research and consulting firm, and a licensed architect for 30 years.

At HMG, Heschong led the research team that found a correlation between daylight in classrooms and improved student performance, and daylight and retail sales. As Chair of the IES Daylight Metrics Committee, she helped establish a new set of climate-based daylight performance metrics, including sDA and ASE. 

She is the author of Thermal Delight in Architecture; co-author of The Skylighting Guidelines; The Advanced Lighting Guidelines; Residential Windows: A Guide to New Technologies and Energy Performance; along with numerous technical papers on building science and energy performance. Her newest book Visual Delight in Architecture: Daylight, Vision and View (Routledge 2021) combines recent research findings with 40 years of experience in evaluating daylit buildings to explore the physiological, cognitive, social, and cultural importance of daylight and view in our everyday environments. 

She currently serves as Chair of the IES Medal Committee. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Richard Neutra’s “Institute for Survival Through Design” Foundation, the executive committee of the Santa Cruz Chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association, and the Board of Directors of Ecology Action, an environmental non-profit. 

She has a B.Sc. from UC Berkeley, Summa Cum Laude, and a Master’s of Architecture from MIT, where she was awarded the AIA School Medal. In 2011 she received the Haecker Award for lifetime achievement from the Architectural Research Centers Consortium

When not on a Zoom call, she loves to sail with her husband in Monterey Bay, ride their horses in the Santa Cruz hills, and play with her rapidly growing grandchildren.