Daylight in Architecture

Light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself the revelation. The relationship of a space with the daylight affects it’s design detail discovery, the way we perceive the textures and it effects our psychology. We feel differently on contrasting spaces because of the way the space is lit. The areas with a good interpretation of natural lightning tend to make us happier, contrary to the places with not very successful natural lightning, which make us feel stressful and less creative.

Based on the way a space is lit, we have three categorizations: The bright open hall, the room with a skylight and the room with the light entering from the side.

The open hall consists of a roof held by columns. We can see this type of design on Mahadeva Temple, Kaitabhesvara temple, Market hall etc. Architects have also tried to use this method of lightning on enclosed rooms.

When it comes to the achievement of excellent light, quality is more important than quantity. Having as much light as possible isn’t preferred to having good quality lighting.

Front lighting is poor quality because it doesn’t have good textural or shadow effect.

In the old theaters, floodlighting was used to give an enchantment feeling, and it also had good shadow effect so the audience can sense the textural effect too. In the modern theaters they use the opposite logic, even the richest materials appear flat and shoddy.

The room with a skylight is a room that is closed in all the sides and opened at the top. The most famous and dramatic use of skylight in architecture is the Pantheon in Rome, 126 AD. The lighting in Pantheon is so successful and so well-thought that many architects have unsuccessfully tried to copy it and use it in their buildings. It’s fascinating to see such good architecture being used back in that time.

The room with the light entering from the side is commonly used in the Dutch houses. It is used when there is no space for windows in the other sides of the building and the light comes only from one side. In an experiment by the School of Architecture in Copenhagen, they discovered that by shutting the lower shutters in a Dutch house the light evens in the entire room and by shutting the upper half the light concentrates on the window area of the room.

In conclusion, if you want to create a more concentrated area, we need to make the sources of lightning fall into one area, to give us the best quality of form ant texture. On the other hand, it we want an openness effect we cannot use this method because we need the light to spread all around the area.

Daylight is one of the only things an architect can’t control directly, so the way we build should adapt to the amount and quality of daylight there is.

Scale And Proportion

Steen Eiler Rasmussen was a famous architect and urban planner. On his book, “Experiencing Architecture”, some of the things he pays attention to are scale and proportion.

In our last session, we got the chance to learn more about scale and proportion. Proportion refers to the relationship of parts of a body to one another and to the body as a whole, whereas scale is the comparison we make of a form to the size of another form. In architecture, scale is used to compare the size of the drawing to the size of the actual building.

There are two types of scales: Visual and Human Scale.

The visual scale is the act of comparing the sizes of two forms visually.

The human scale compares our human size to a building or a form.

We saw examples of how different architects have used the human scale in the past. Michelangelo purposely enlarged the sizes of the doors and windows, so he can give the building a simplistic view.

Proportion refers to the harmonic differentiation of one part to another or one part to the whole. This is also important in the compositions we make where we have to consider the part to part relationship and the part to whole relationship.

There are some theories of desirable proportions that can assist order and the perception of buildings.

The golden section is the most common used order. The ratio is defined by the number Phi (1.61). It is used way more than we think in buildings, nature and the human body as well.

The regulating lines are the lines that help us connect to form with each other. These are really important in every design, especially on the compositions we are making.

Le Corbusier developed a theory called The Modular, which is based on the golden section and the human proportions. He took the average human size 183 cm. He adapted his designs on a way so they can be more approachable and usable on our day-to-day life.

Anthropometry is the act of designing based on our body measurements and designing for the disabled people.

During our lecture, we also got to see and learn more about the principles of compositions, how important they are, the ways we can follow them on our compositions and how architects follow them on every design.

Perceptual bases for Architectural Design

The way you can tell if a building has good architecture is by the way the elements communicate with one-another. This communication can be achieved with vision, temperature, humidity, sound and texture. The architect has to select the communication image and design techniques. He has to pay attention to making the architectural form a composition of components. A big design issue appears when the architect has to find the substance of the architectural expressions. There are three important alternatives when it comes to architectural statements. We have to know the meaning of the building and the forms or images related to that meaning, the relative importance of the meanings have to be expressed and a logical order of building construction that will develop these images visually while providing good physical enclosure.

The image communication in architectural design can be approached in different ways:

The architect has to know the room shapes and sizes, who is going to use the space and for how long and he has to have environmental control. They have to know the building type, because there’s specific designs for some types of building, like schools, hospitals, banks etc. The architect also has to analyze the site and the approachability of the terrain. Every architect has it’s own style and they express it in every one of their works. They study the environment and the human behavior. Building technology is a relevantly new concept but it has become really important in the past decade. All of these have to come together to create a successfully designed building.

The next step for the architect is the ordering of the spaces that are required in the building.

Signs and Symbols are used to understand the function of the building or the spaces within the building.

Our minds are structured to perceive our surroundings in a way that organizes our visual field. This is called gestalt psychology and the organizations we see are called gestalts.

Figure-ground designs are presented when we can’t tell which part is the background and which is the physical figure.

Center of gravity is when our understanding of the composition develops from their relationship to the center.

Configuration is the process of our mind simplifying the visual elements in order to understand it.

When an object’s form, color, texture, sense of mass and cultural signification can be used to create hierarchies between it and other objects, we have similarity.

Proximity allows the designer to relate two dissimilar objects by placing them near each other.

Symmetry produces visual groupings to hold our attention longer.

Closure and good continuation is the concept of our mind finishing incomplete objects.

The concept of Form Reproduction argues that we will visually complete a form that we’ve seen before from our memory.

Vignettes are powerful images that are not exact in the way they are produced.

Archetypes are common used rules in different constructions for a specific reason.

Structural and mechanical systems follow well-defined Patterns, as does the process of constructing a building.

The architect should be continually conscious of the design objectives and the way the form of space will convey these concerns to the user.

Texture

2D Composition with colors

2D Composition

Patterns with our friend’s unit

Patterns

Overlapping and Juxtaposition / Classwork

Overlapping and Juxtaposition / Homework

Designing a 2D Organization in pairs

Designing a 2D Organization

Designing a 2D Organization

Organizing a 2D Organization in a Bounded Area II

Designing a 2D Organization in a Bounded Area

Form and style in Visual Arts

The categorization of design is based on the senses that are being mainly addressed. There are three main categories:

1.      Visual

2.      Auditory

3.      Audiovisual

There are three types of visual design: Visual static surface design, visual static solid design and visual mobile temporally developed design.

Visual, static, surface design can be presented in flat, curvy or polyhedral surface. The components that are presented are line, texture and color. The visual, static, surface design is also divided in three different designs: Strip design, Bounded-area design and all-over design.

Strip design is long, narrow and continuous. It is developed by the extension or the separation of the units in heraldic stripe.

Bounded-area designs are two dimensional designs with a size and shape limit, differentiating on the shape and size of the area that is presented. They have a frame and the artists has to create a composition within the frame.

Allover design doesn’t have a frame in any of the four directions and it is only two dimensional. It has to arrange the units on two coordinate, intersecting system of lines and not just a single main axes. This type of design can be flat or three dimensional. It is repeated again and again as long as there is room for it’s repetition.

The visual, static, solid design is a three dimensional type of design with extension in depth and length. The units consist of different solid parts. There are four categories to this design: Exterior design, interior design, combinations of two and intermediate.

The exterior design is the architecture seen from outside. It can have different designs and different meanings from different points of view.

The interior design is the design you see when you’re surrounded or partially surrounded inside of a building, room, garden or enclosed city square.

The combinations of two is the connection between the interior design and exterior design. Different elements can have different designs on the interior and exterior part.

The intermediate design varies from the amount of three dimensional development. When it has a low relief it is considered static surface design on a bounded area and when it is high and detached from the background it is considered static solid design.

There are two types of visual, mobile, temporally developed design: Mobile Surface Design and Mobile Solid Design.

Examples for mobile surface design are motion pictures and shadow plays on a flat surface.

Mobile Solid Design presents solid figures in determined motion. It is presented in three dimensions.

Auditory Design has three main categories: Musical design, Word-sound design and Verbal-musical design.

Musical design is based on thematic development of rhythm, pitch, timbre etc.

Word-sound design is presented when literature is spoken.

Verbal-musical design is a combination of musical and word-sound themes and patterns.

The two types of Audiovisual design are:

Audiovisual surface design, which is the combination of mobile visual patterns and music.

Audiovisual solid design, which is the combination of mobile solid patterns with auditory ones.