Feb 25, 2013

Geometry, Lighting, and Structure

Buildings can be broken down into their simplest shapes, such as squares, circles, rectangles, and triangles. Doing this allows the designer to articulate as they see fit. The shapes may evolve during the process to finalization. Light is also a key feature to study, since it can affect the position of the building as well as how bright you want your interiors to be. Too much is bad and too little is depressing. Lastly, the structural elements are place there for a reason. Either, to hold up the wall or the floors above. 


Arizona Science Center

Connecticut Science Center

Griffith Observatory

 Detroit Science Center

Kitt Peak Observatory

Liberty Science Center

NY Hall of Science

Muturn National Observation Tower

Yerkes Observatory

Steward Observatory

5 comments:

  1. Very good diagrams. For comparison sake, you may want to be sure you have the same information shown for each example, Geometry, Lighting, Structure. Your simple line drawings showing structure are nice in that they also go back and clearly tie-in to your symmetry topic.

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  2. Good study David. Before I get into shapes, I want to pick out a sentence from your description, "Too much is bad and too little is depressing." While this statement may be true in some instances where adequate attention was not paid to the need for lighting in a particular space, I would urge you to be careful with such statements as they could lead to generalizations about lighting usage at the cost of opportunity. There are occasions where low lighting techniques can greatly enhance the experience of a place, take the example of Daniel Liebskind's Holocaust Museum, or Tadao Ando's church of the light. An example of where a great deal of ambient/ natural lighting creates a fantastic moment, would be when they open the solar screens on the new Milwaukee Art Museum by Calatrava. Of course, in both these instances the lighting quantity is calculated and controlled, and that is the key.

    What will help you now, in the development of spaces, will be to begin to transform your thinking in 2D shapes to imagining 3D volumes. These volumes will begin to tell you more about how people can move through a space, opportunities where light may be let in and so on. Shapes are elevations or plans, but we move through volumes in life, with perspectives and experiences around the corners. This is where the space comes to life. Good luck. acg

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  3. I like the first pass at these diagrams. I could quibble that the formatting is not consistent or that the information is not complete across all of the examples. I will, however, comment on the fact that although visually stimulating, your diagrams do not shed any light on deciphering the buildings. There is really nothing to read in them other than tracings of photographs and in some cases drawings. A diagram is in interpretive tool, rather than a literal overlay. There is really no analysis here. I would urge you to look at the structural diagramming as an exploration of a system rather than just a plan/poche of where the columns touch down. If you are looking to study a long-span strategy, you need to look at the sectional qualities of what makes the span possible.
    Likewise for the lighting. Arrows at windows do not speak to the lighting control systems, the strategy of where and why the light is allowed in or shunned. The lighting affects many other formal strategies in addition to task lighting.
    Finally, I would caution you to be very discerning with your choice of verbiage. Although a trite quip about lighting levels affecting mood, such opinions are not critical in nature and thus diminish the value of any arguments you make subsequently. If you are specifically commenting on an approach to Systemic Affective Disorder (SAD), suffered by those in the northern-most third of the Northern Hemisphere (think the top row of continental US states and north), then a lighting strategy that is predicated upon mood enhancement would support such an argument.

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