Ancient building examples:
Temple of Amon-Ra Egypt
The direction of the building is directed towards the desert horizon, where the sun rises and sets, cleverly using the trajectory of light in a day and a year, and the huge stone pillars form beautiful shadows under the sunlight.
Pantheon of Rome (AD118-28)
In Christianity, light, including daylight at a metaphoric level, become a symbol of God himself, a divine light that ‘shines in the darkness and was incarnate in Christ, who proclaimed:’ I am the light of the world.’ The cloaking wall and the vault is a semi-darkness whose negation enhances the aerial suffusion of coloured light emitted from huge, jewel-like windows and fills the space with a tangible haze that comes and goes with time and weather.
My thoughts: The light design of religious buildings turned out to be so closely related to the idea and spirit of religion. Before learning this knowledge, I didn’t have much in-depth understanding of the interior lighting of buildings such as churches. It turns out that the design of these buildings and the design of the lighting all have stories behind them. I am very amazed at the use of stained glass in religious buildings. The dark interior environment and coloured light take people’s thoughts to a farther place. This is probably the secret to the calming atmosphere inside the church.
Sketches of interesting cases
What these cases have in common is that they all use rectangular windows, but their effects are extremely different. The skylights in the first picture are mainly arranged in slender rectangles, the second picture subtly uses the natural gap between the walls, and the third picture uses the rectangular windows with scattered heights.
Vocabulary
Constructing metaphysical space 形而上学空间
Evanescence n.（渐渐）消失
orchestration of light to mutate through time 光的编配在时间中变异
the choreography of light for the moving eye 为移动的眼睛设计灯光
refraction of light in a diaphanous film 光在透明胶片中的折射
sifting of light through a porous screen 通过多孔屏幕筛选光线
channelling of light through a hollow mess 通过一个空洞的空间引导光线
the suffusion of light with a unified mood 充满统一情绪的光明
materialization of light in physical matter 光在物质中的物质化
Plummer, H. (2009) The architecture of natural light / by Henry Plummer. London: Thames & Hudson.
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