1.8 Interiors-Light

PHASE 2: Explorations
ASSIGNMENT 1.8: Interiors_Light
Precedents: Architectural lighting.

Light is one of the most architecture’s important elements. Whether natural or artificial, light might accentuate or mask spatial properties, or make a place feel particular (safe, scary, sacred, soft, intimate, heavy, evanescent, etc.).

Consider the work of the following architects:
- Le Corbusier, Chapel at Ronchamp, France, 1959
- Louis Kahn, The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, USA, 1972
- Renzo Piano, Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, USA 1987
- Tadao Ando, The church of the light, Osaka, Japan, 1989
- Peter Zumthor, Thermal SPA, Vals, Switzerland, 1996
- Toyo Ito, Serpentine Gallery, London, GB, 2002
- Steven Holl, Planar House, Arizona, USA, 2005
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Design reference:
- Luis Barragan Gilardi, House
- Diller & Scofidio, Blur
- Joel Sanders, Five minute bathroom, 24/7 Hotel room
- S. Sejima, Swimming Pool
- Zaha Hadid, Peak Club Hong Kong
- Emergent (T.Wiscombe), The Cell House
- Tom Leader Studio, Stone Pool, Azalea Springs Vineyard, Napa Valley
- Sheila Kennedy, Public Bathroom

Consider the work of the following artists:
- Donald Judd, (sculptor/artist), Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, USA (Aluminum and concrete works)
- Dan Flavin (artist), Light installations at Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, USA

Understand how light is treated and implemented into the selected building, how it gives new meaning and value to the spaces.

• Refer to Pallasmaa’s reader “The Eyes of the Skin”.

The creation of order in a mutable and finite world is the ultimate purpose of man’s thought and actions. There was probably never human perception outside a framework of categories; the ideal and the real, the general and the specific, are ‘given’ in perception, constituting the intentional realm that is the realm of existence. Perception is our primary form of knowing and does not exist apart from the a priory of the body’s structure and its engagement in the world. This “owned body” as Merleau-Ponty would say, is the locus of all formulations about the world; it not only occupies space and time but consists of spatiality and temporality.”
• Alberto Pérez Gómez, "Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science", Introduction.

Exercise

One of your project’s programmatic rooms will be considered to investigate light as an additional design tool.
Your chosen room is however a single unit associated with many units through an envelope, determined by the notion of a “deep surface” replacing traditional concepts of roof, floor and redefine the idea of a wall. Develop your strategy of how those units are divided in terms of opacity, transparency or translucency and such form individual functional spaces. The exercise will be based on this unit type with an up to 2’ ft. skin/floor/thickness and an inner void separated by other related adjacent spaces. Min. room height is 10’ ft.

Choose all four different days of the year (September 21, december 21, March 21, june 21) at 9.00am and at 12.00pm and at 6pm and locate your volume relative to NSEW.
For the purposes of this exercise, you are to use the longitude and latitude of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Compose for your spaces some elementary digital diagrams that explain specific trajectories, how light enters or diffuses, vertical and horizontal openings, how solids and voids are defined through lights, lights and shadows, type of light, natural or artificial, etc.
Evaluate at least three (3) different narratives for the movement of light across the interior space during each of those days.

The exterior surfaces need to be “treated” in order to transmit light and interpret the notion of a “deep surface”; the other interior and /or some exterior surfaces are to receive that light/shadow. Consider the light in terms of its geometry and pattern: such as slots, pools, bands, stripes, zones, etc. Consider angular conditions of how light penetrates through adjacent surfaces.

Develop a three dimensional digital model showing how your partial building object/unit will need to be treated to articulate your light’s narratives. Develop the narrative via 2D study diagrams of the light trajectories and/ or a series of rendered transversal sections on a white surface. Choose the number, dimensions, and lengths of your “treatments” on the exterior skin.


On 11”x17” paper print the following:

- Series of 2D Diagrams of your “treatments”, etc., using the digital media preferred, on different chosen surfaces;
- Series of 2D Diagrams of the surfaces receiving the light (4 days in one year- 3 different hours each day);
- One (1) Axonometric view of your light unit simulation,
- Three (3) elevations (front views, top views of treated surfaces),
- Two (2) episodic transversal sections of spatial construction,
- Analog building light study with a physical model at a scale of: 1:10 (1 1/2"=1'-0").


Create a digital folder: LIGHT Study
Save all your drawings in the subfolders.
It is your responsibility to keep copies and traces of all the studio design process and phases.
Be organized and keep all your digital material in order on your computer.

Due on Fri, Oct. 30 Class discussion