Daylight in Architecture!
Hello everyone! Hope you are doing fine, I am sorry for being so late in posts ,but due to midterm exams I had no time to spend it on social networks. Finally holidays are here and we are going to spend more time together!
I had to post this article a few day ago but as I said...
Anyway, this article is one of my favourites. This article consist on Daylight in Architectural life.
Daylight is constantly changing and of course it cannot controlled by architects, but we can give a solution that the same room can be made to give different spatial impression by the simple expedient of changing the size and location of its opening.
Light distribution.
Pantheon, the magnificent legacy of ancient architecture shows the vast knowledge of his creators in terms of brightening big spaces. Through using oculus, the hole located at the top of the dome, the hall procures concentrated rays of sunlight, which further reflect from the yellowish pavement onto the ceiling and then become effectively diffused. This method prevents coming across any deep shadows inside. The space is clear and pleasant to the eye, and we intuitively feel acoustics and airiness of the place.
Rasmussen explains some rules on brightening in architecture. He refers to photographing and using flesh light in it. Although it may prevent taking blurred pictures, it inevitably flattens photograph.
Good light is connected with creating good plastic effects, in the rooms. Hence, a good photographer in order to attain satisfying outcome, experiments with positioning his light sources until the greatest scope of plastic effects will be obtained.
Framing the sunlight.
Rasmussen leads us through three types of designing light sources.
bright open halls (see Pantheon)
buildings with skylight(Copenhagen’s City Hall)
rooms with side lightening(Dutch houses)
We cannot dismiss the art of Le Corbusier and his horizontal windows going all the length of the rooms. This method enabled the residents to enjoy big amounts of side light, beautifully showing the textures and creating the crystal clarity of Le Corbusier’s space.
Le Corbusier’s Church in Ronchamps, in which lightening was designed quite differently. The project outraged his contemporaries, but simultaneously showed the architect’s profound understanding of the possibilities architecture gives. His use of light in the church is ingenious. At first glance, it seems random and neglectful, but just as Picasso was drafting thousands of sketches, before he came up with the final outcome, Le Corbusier had also very explicit vision, of what he wanted to achieve. Colour in Architecture
In architecture colour is used to emphasize the character of the building , to accentuate its form and material , and to elucidate its divisions.
But how we experience colour depends on the surrounding colours, the level of saturation, and what kind of light falls on it. Rasmussen says about the light effect on colours: “Warm and cold colors play an important role in our lives and express very different moods and emotions. We experience them in the variations of daylight from morning to evening. It is true that the eye adjusts itself to the gradual change so that the local colors of details appear the same throughout the day. But if we observe the whole as a unit – a landscape or a street scene – we become aware of the changes in the color scheme. The entire mood changes with the changing light.”
When a painting loses its colour it no longer exists as a work of art but this is not true in architecture, for the art of building is first and foremost concentrated with form; with diving and articulating space.
Hope this article serves you as much as it served me to learn the true meaning of daylight and colour in architecture.I am really surprise how this both ingredients serve to the `Chef` (architecture in our case).
I wish you guys a happy holiday and please stay tuned.