Articles by Thomas Schielke

Imagine if light would not only provide optimum visibility for tasks but convey meanings as well. Standards with recommended lux levels for various visual tasks have led to a quantitative understanding of lighting. However, lighting can also be used to contribute to emotion in rooms and to structure architecture. Would it be adequate to regard lighting as language sent by architects or interior designers and being received by inhabitants and citizens? Adding a semiotic perspective can help to recognize how light and shadow contributes to the meaning of the built environment.

Light is an essential element to perceive architecture and to live and work in buildings. Therefore architects, lighting designers, teachers and researchers haven written inspirational books about light. They have shared their valuable theories and turned their experience into guidelines to improve daylight design and the art of illumination. 

The General Motors Technical Center fascinates with architecture filled with an abundance of light. Interior offices and showrooms evoke the impression of a calm overcast sky for a human environment and beauty. The campus designed by Eero Saarinen represents an influential icon of midcentury design. Susan Skarsgard’s book “Where Today Meets Tomorrow” opens intriguing perspectives to the origin of the American landmark.

Buildings show normally slow responses to current social issues. However, in the case of the Coronavirus, dynamic media facades have started to send messages of empathy to the citizens of Wuhan. At first, the Chinese government used screens covering complete buildings to create powerful images of hope and solidarity. Later, some countries like the United Arab Emirates joined this effort while a majority of countries has not followed so far.

At first glance, it seems that Apple’s strong retail design has derived from consistent design. But since Steve Jobs opened the first Apple Store in 2001, the brand has changed its store and lighting design concept five times. Thereby change appears as a central factor when a brand grows and expands internationally. For each period Apple developed sophisticated details and has strived for the perfect sky in their store – a smart strategy to enhance naturalness and sustainability.

Light Collective, founders of the project “Women in Lighting”, conclude that although female designers seem to make up possibly half of the lighting design profession, their profile appears much lower than men when looking at judges in awards and speakers at major conferences. Sharon Stammers and Martin Lupton started a project with interviews of female lighting designers and contacted conference organizers to enhance their visibility.

If there is any consistent factor in his work, says Pritzker-winning architect Tadao Ando, then it is the pursuit of light. Ando’s complex choreography of light fascinates most when the viewer experiences the sensitive transitions within his architecture. Sometimes walls wait calmly for the moment to reveal striking shadow patterns, and other times water reflections animate unobtrusively solid surfaces. His combination of traditional Japanese architecture with a vocabulary of modernism has contributed greatly to critical regionalism. While he is concerned with individual solutions that have a respect for local sites and contexts Ando’s famous buildings – such as the Church of the Light, Koshino House or the Water Temple – link the notion of regional identity with a modern imagining of space, material and light. Shoji walls with diffuse light are reinterpreted in the context of another culture, for instance, filtered through the lens of Rome’s ancient Pantheon, where daylight floods through an oculus. Ando’s masterly imagination culminates in planning spatial sequences of light and dark like he envisioned for the Fondation d’Art Contemporain François Pinault in Paris.

While many architects consider windows for brightening interior spaces, Norman Foster is intrigued by natural light from above. The British star architect has long held Louis Kahn and Alvar Aalto in high esteem for how they handled daylight – especially with regard to the roof. In particular large public buildings benefit from this strategy creating enjoyable spaces. Therefore, Foster regards daylight from above as indispensable when he develops megastructures for airports on the ground or tall skyscrapers for work. But daylight from above is much more than an aesthetic dimension, remarks Foster: “Quite apart from the humanistic and poetic qualities of natural light there are also energy implications.”

In Luis Barragán’s poetic imagination color plays as significant a role as dimension or space. Rough textures and water reflections heighten the impact of bright sunlight in his colorful buildings. But where does such vibrancy come from and how is it heightened by the architecture itself?

Satellite images of Earth at night make for fascinating, beautiful pictures. But they also confront us with a growing form of pollution. Why do we waste so much energy to light outer space when we only need light on the ground? High-resolution satellite data can now deliver detailed insights into how humans have shaped the night, and these earth observation systems are about to reform our urban planning. They can become an integral part of project development and control, as many strange ecological, political and social phenomena become apparent with a closer look at the night-time imagery of our planet.