ASSIGNMENT 1.5: Light Box

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.).
Each group of two students will analyze one of the following architects and their selected works:

- Le Corbusier, Chapel at Ronchamp, France, 1959 ( Adrianna+Kyle)
- Louis Kahn, The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, USA, 1972 (Robert+Kelly)
- Renzo Piano, Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, USA 1987 (Mike + Adam)
- Tadao Ando, The church of the light, Osaka, Japan, 1989 (Jared+ Cesar)
- Peter Zumthor, Thermal SPA, Vals, Switzerland, 1996 (John + Lindsay)
- Toyo Ito, Serpentine Gallery, London, GB, 2002 (Jonathan + Sonia)
- Steven Holl, Planar House, Arizona, USA, 2005 ((Henry)

All of you will analyze 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

Illustrate how light is treated and implemented into the selected building, how it gives new meaning and value to the spaces. Print a collage of information, images and drawings.

Compose some elementary digital diagrams that explain 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.

Print 1 page in A3 format (11x17)



Excercise

One of your project’s rooms will be considered as a box to investigate light as an additional design tool.
Your chosen room is now a complete solid with roof, floor, and walls. The exercise will be based on this solid with a 2’ ft. roof/floor/wall thickness and an inner void.
Min. room height is 10’ ft.

Choose three different days of the year (September 21, January 21, April 21) at 9.00am and at 2.00pm and locate your volume relative to NSEW.
For the purposes of this exercise, you are to use the longitude and latitude of Lubbock, Texas.
Program three (3) different narratives for the movement of light across the space in the morning, and three narratives in the afternoon.

The top and two of the surfaces may be cut in order to transmit light; the other interior and exterior surfaces are to receive that light/shadow. Consider the light in terms of slots, pools, bands, stripes, zones, etc.
Choose the number, dimensions, and lengths of your cuts on the 3 surfaces. Cut through the thickness of your box. Establish angular conditions cutting through adjacent surfaces.

Develop a three dimensional digital model showing how your object will need to be cut to articulate your light’s narratives.

Your narrative should address light movement on the interiors of your box, on a wall, one on a wall and the floor, on the floor, on the ceiling, and/or the wall and the ceiling.

Use the computer to develop 2D study diagrams of the light cuts, and a series of rendered transversal sections. You may only use a white surface style.

On 11”x17” paper print the following:

- Series of 2D Diagrams of your cuts, stripes, bands, etc., using the digital media preferred, on the 3 chosen surfaces; Apply operations of repetition with difference; the diagrams should show a progression in your thinking;
- Series of 2D Diagrams of the surfaces receiving the light (3 days in one year- 3 different hours each day);
- One (1) Axonometric view of your light box, using 3D Studio, FormZ or other;
- Three (3) elevations (front views, top view of cut surfaces), using 3D Studio, FormZ or other;
- Two (2) episodic transversal sections of spatial construction, using 3D Studio, Form Z, other, at your choice.

Scale - 1:1 with your construction
Later on you will represent your box with a physical model at a scale of: 1/2” = 1’– 0”.

Create a digital folder: LIGHT BOX
Save all your drawings under 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, Feb. 6 Class discussion