Sun Angles
My grandmother (being played by my sweet mother) serving dinner while my grandfather studies sun angles for the construction of their cottage in Northern Michigan (c.1988).
My grandfather’s last build. A cottage on an empty 40 acre lot in Northern Michigan’s Otsego County. Constructed in 1989 with three bedrooms, a work room and den, with an open concept upstairs where the kitchen, dining room, and living areas all harmonize as one. Instrumental in the final build was how the sun would spill through the large windows and move across the decks that surround the building. ‘For more evening sun on decks, orient axis toward west eg- N70°…etc.’ he wrote next to a sun diagram precisely drawn on lined paper. Another paper shows the fall and spring equinox and midwinter and midsummer sun angles with the hourly changes.
Finding these notes in a drawer one day I was spellbound. The formula for something I’ve never given much thought about (how to orient the cottage) yet it’s all I think about - the sun, the light, and where it will be positioned and for how long. Scribbled on many of my notes throughout the years, as I travelled north to the cottage, are sunrise and sunset times and thoughts about heading west or east to best capture the sun’s direction.
Pictured above and below are scenes I’ve imagined of my grandfather passionately going over notes and equations while Gloria serves him dinner, or he’s sitting at a hotel restaurant in Gaylord while the lot is prepared for construction. What an exciting time it must have been for the two of them.
Work is done at a hotel restaurant in Gaylord, Michigan on how best to orient the cottage to maximize sun exposure (c.1988).
