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Light as material – spatial and form-giving characteristics
It is commonly agreed, that “[l]ight is a prerequisite for our
ability to see and experience the world around us. Light
describes the surroundings on the basis of the variation of
light intensities that reach our eyes. Light and shadow tell us
about form, material, softness and hardness, lightness and
weight” (Mathiasen & Voltenen 2008:115). As argued by the
Danish architect and light designer Merete Madsen, light is to
be considered as a sort of architectural material, “because in
a very direct way [light] is a constituent part of the shaping of
a space” (Madsen 2004:34). The particular quality of daylight
as material is, that it “is of a changing and intangible char-
acter which is specifically qualifying exactly because of [this
ambient] liveliness that is transmitted into a space” (Madsen
2004:34). Following Madsen, regarding light as a changing and
“intangible kind of material, means that you need to work with
light by skilful thought more than by crafts” (Madsen 2004:34).
She concludes this by citing James Turell; “A lot of the learn-
ing to work with light, since it doesn’t form by working with the
hands as clay does, is this working with light through thought”
(Madsen 2004:34).
This article introduces methods for engaging in the sensation
of light and how it unfolds as experiential qualities. The method
introduces qualities of experiential engagement as well as
strategies for conceptual analyses. The architect Juhani Pallas-
maa also brings forth the idea of ‘thought’ as a working mode,
but relates to a multi-sensory and embodied mode of think-
ing: “It is similarly inconceivable that we could think of purely
cerebral architecture that would not be a projection of human
body and its movement through space. The art is also engaged
with metaphysical and existential questions concerning man’s
being in the world. The making of architecture calls for clear
thinking, but this is a specific embodied mode of thought that
takes place through the senses and the body, and through
the specific medium of architecture” (Pallasmaa 2005:46). To
perceive the presence qualities of light as a material in itself
involves both the sensing of light, the thinking through a work-
ing mode, and the analysis of light in its spatial and form-giving
characteristics.
The concept of light-zones, and simultaneously zones of dark-
ness, is an approach to perceive, consider and analyse light in
space considering the spatial and form-giving characteristics.
“As concept, light-zone(s) are areas, fields or zones of light.
It is a way of considering light in space as forms of bubbles
or spheres of light, which as light-zones can be compressed,
expanded, combined, exploded, etc., all according to the
character of ’the meeting’ between the light-zone(s) and the
space itself (inclusive of the space’s content). Thus, the daylight
in a space can be regarded as a composition of light-zones”
(Madsen 2005).
Light-zones are inseparable from the spatial context where
they appear. The shape of the aperture (daylight) or armature
(artificial light), as well as the distribution of (artificial) light
sources, generates the particular illuminating effects, which
is further influenced by the characteristics of the illuminated
surfaces. The suggested method of experiential engagement
described in this article, introduces a ‘thinking through experi-
encing’, which takes place through a multi-sensory embodied
mode of investigation.
Architecture as an experiential encounter
The interest in articulating experiential accounts from within
an embodied and multi-sensory engagement is an approach,
which has references back in early experiential philosophy,
and theatre and design practice. The difficulty is how to explain
and bring evidence from the experiential qualities, and how to
encounter an analysis that at the same time correlate with both
outside observations and shared accountability. In citing Henri
Bergson ”[t]he objects which surround my body reflect its pos-
sible action upon them” (Bergson 1988:21), Pallasmaa argues,
“[i]t is this possibility of action that separates architecture from
other forms of art. As a consequence of this implied action, a
bodily reaction is an inseparable aspect of the experience of ar-
chitecture. A meaningful architectural experience is not simply
a series of retinal images. The ‘elements’ of architecture are
not visual units or gestalt; they are encounters, confrontations
that interact with memory” (Pallasmaa 2005:63).
Already in the 1920s at Bauhaus “theatre provided a place in
which to ‘experience’ space” (Goldberg 2001:102). At Bauhaus
they argued for a research logic in the approach of staged
methods and evidence formats, which lead to the emergence
of performance exercises as abstract investigations into spatial
and experiential phenomenon. “Production of space was being
experienced here as a dynamic constellation of movements and
tensions that went beyond the addition or subtraction of vol-
umes […] structures, forms, colours, light and above all rhythm
became key categories of a new and elemental strategy in the
research and construction of space. Walter Gropius called it
‘research of essentials’ – for a different, liberated architecture”
(Blume 2008:45).
The Bauhaus investigations introduced the ‘mobile space’,
the individually conceived spatial experience that follows the
experiencer, which informs the architectural relationship at any
moment and in any activity. As formulated by Walter Gropius
“[t]he stage work is intimately related to the work of architec-