Light Architecture: Luminous Walls

Luminous walls:
From stained glass windows via modernist wallwashing to pixelated planes

Luminous walls belong to the essential repertoire of qualitative lighting design. With light, spaces can be defined and reinterpreted. Illuminated walls allow us to provide orientation and to perceive the form and dimension of space. Further, their glow and play of brilliants could bestow a space with an impressing scenography. The timeline reveals different lighting approaches: From backlit stained glass windows for spiritual enlightenment in the gothic period to modernist uniform wallwashing. Contemporary examples will open the view for pixelated colour changing planes based on LED technology. The movie with an overview of international projects covers lighting methods and techniques for luminous walls and their visual appearance. With a perception-orientated design perspective the designer could use vertical illuminance to create bright spaces and thereby also contribute to sustainable lighting solutions.

Upcoming lecture:
PLDC - Professional Lighting Design Convention, Madrid 20.10.2011

The overview of international projects from architects like Antonio Gaudi, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Jean Nouvel, Peter Zumthor, Raffael Moneo, Toyo Ito, Christoph Ingenhoven and Karim Rashid or light artists as Peter Kogler and Erwin Redl covers various lighting methods and techniques for luminous walls and their visual appearance.

Note: The image for 1814 needs to be reassigned to Bergisel Panorama in Innsbruck/Austria painted in 1897. The Muhammad Ghawthtomb is dated 1590.

The timeline is a shortened version of the lecture that was presented at the Cornell University in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis in Ithaca/USA and at the Columbia University in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York.

Thomas Schielke
http://www.arclighting.de

• Category

  Science & Technology

[crorillabe]

cool!

[smartflying]

Thanx