The architecture of light: architectural lighting design concepts and techniques. A textbook of procedures and practices for the architect, interior designer and lighting designer pdfdrive com

Chapter 12 Building Light from Darkness

With our new-found intuition for the texture, shape and origin of light, we can further expand on our decision-making process to make sure that we are considering all of our options when adding light to a space. If we consider each of these aspects every time we look to add light to our design, we can be sure that the light will support what we are attempting to convey through the design. The convenient aspect of this intuitive knowledge is that it doesn’t yet require knowledge of light levels, calculations, or luminaire technologies. We are still simply addressing the light itself and how that light will interact with the surfaces of our designed environment.
As long as we can visualize light and communicate design ideas for it, we can
find a way to implement it.
Our expanded list of the controllable aspects of light now looks like this:
Light intensity: Bright vs. Dark;
Light Color: Warm vs. Cool;
Light Texture: Directional vs. Diffuse;
We now have a visual understanding of what texture means and what types of sources create these textures.
Light shape: Pools of light, Planes of light, Points of light;
We can now make decisions about how we match the shape of light to the shape of our architecture, surfaces and objects within a space.
Light origin: Where is the light coming from?
Thinking beyond basic downlighting, we are more likely to come up with lighting systems that are truly complementary of the designed space.
BUILDING LIGHT FROM DARKNESS
An effective mental exercise for enhancing the design process is to step back and approach a space as a collection of surfaces that can receive light. This process can be broken down into two steps: seeing an environment as a collection of surfaces and seeing those surfaces for the materials of which they are made.