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Light: The Latest Architecture and News

Santiago Calatrava's Oculus Opens to the Sky in Remembrance of 9/11

On the 15th anniversary of 9/11 yesterday, the skylights at Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus at the World Trade Center opened for the first time, allowing light to fill the massive space as a memorial to the attacks on the twin towers. Following the masterplan laid out by Daniel Libeskind, Calatrava’s design used the angle of light as a guiding principle for orienting the transportation hub – so that at precisely 10:28 am each September 11th (the time of the collapse of the North Tower), a beam of light would pass through the opening in the roof and project all the way down the center of the Oculus floor.

Weather Forms Exhibition by Stallan-Brand

The word Scotland is derived from the ancient Greek word for shadow, or darkness and gloom ‘skótos’. Quite simply Scotland’s ancient meaning being ‘shadow land’. “Our weather shapes everything in our world; our psyche, our homes, our fashion, our architecture, our culture … weather is an omnipresent force”.

Scottish practice Stallan-Brand present art and architectural works that explore ‘how our place on earth defines us’ challenging the popular idea that ‘people make places’ by demonstrating that they in fact make us.

International VELUX Award for Students of Architecture

The International VELUX Award for students of architecture is a competition that wants to encourage and challenge students to explore the theme of daylight - and to create a deeper understanding of this ever-relevant source of energy, light and life. The award encourages projects that celebrate the privilege of being a student with curiosity and with the willingness to think “out of the box” – as well as consider the social, sociological and environmental dimension of daylight.

Call for Concepts: Amsterdam Light Festival 2016-2017

Amsterdam Light Festival invites artists, designers, scientists, engineers and architects to submit ideas for artworks to be staged at the festival's 2016 - 2017 edition. The fifth edition of the Amsterdam Light Festival will take place in the city center of Amsterdam in November 2015 till January 2016. The deadline for submissions is 11th of March 2016.

How the Science of Light Will Affect the Future of Architecture

There is arguably no aspect of architecture in which science is more influential than in the realm of lighting; from the florescent bulbs of the late 19th century to the LEDs that only became truly viable in the past decade or two, advances in the science of creating light have been quickly followed by architectural experimentation. In this excerpt from her book "Superlux: Smart Light Art, Design & Architecture for Cities," Davina Jackson recounts the tremendous advances made by lighting in the 20th and early 21st centuries, and looks forward to the next frontier - that of "smart lighting."

Today’s smartest lighting innovation has no need for machine-generated power. Simply fill a clear plastic bottle with water (plus bleach) and silicon-seal it through a hole in the roof of any rudimentary shelter. Behold: daylight floods the dark interior.

PET bottles for conducting radiance, solar-powered LED lamps for night visibility and satellite-enabled smartphones to exchange instant knowledge globally: these are the 21st century’s keys to illuminating billions of people living rough in settlements. Like the original campsites of London, New York, São Paulo and Sydney, some of these slums will become great global centers.

Nightscape 2050 Travelling Exhibition in Singapore

In celebration of the International Year of Light in 2015 and the practice's 25th anniversary, Lighting Planners Associates (LPA) is putting up an ambitious show Nightscape 2050, with the exhibition travelling from Berlin to Singapore and then to Hong Kong and Tokyo, from August 2015 to June 2016. Nightscape 2050 is intended to be one of its kind for Light and Lighting, in which visions of the future of lighting and the way LPA imagines to use this light are shared with the visitors.

Light Matters: The Missing Element At the Venice Biennale

“Elements of Architecture,” the Rem Koolhaas-curated exhibition at the 2014 Venice Biennale, delved into several remarkable structural as well as technical components of architecture, including floors, walls, doors, stairs and toilets. But why was light missing? 

My manifesto for the inclusion of light as a fundamental element of architecture — after the break. 

Villa Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier

Villa Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - Exterior Photography, Houses, FacadeVilla Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - Exterior Photography, Houses, FacadeVilla Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - Exterior Photography, Houses, LightingVilla Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - HousesVilla Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - More Images+ 32

  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2012
  • Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project
    Manufacturers:  Q-railing, Planikafire

Sum of Days at The MoMA / Carlito Carvalhosa

Sum of Days at The MoMA / Carlito Carvalhosa - Featured Image
Photograph by Jeffrey Gray Brandsted / © Carlito Carvalhosa

The space of sound created by Carlito Carvalhosa’s Sum of Days on exhibit at MoMA until November 14, 2011 is a sublime environment of billowing white fabric and the white noise of the atrium reflected upon itself. The psuedo-boundaries established by the translucent material that hang from the ceiling create a confined space of light and ambient sound – fleeting and ephemeral. Upon entering the exhibit, you pass an array of speakers affixed to the wall. They are emitting a low hum – the sound of voices and echoes that are distant, yet recognizable. It is unclear at first from where these sounds are originating, but behind the fabric bodies are drifting in and out of view. The curtains, which are constantly swaying, direct you in an ellipse to the center of the space where a single microphone hangs, picking up the noise within the exhibit and sending them to the dozens of speakers that hang at intervals inside the curtains, along the walls of the exhibit, and up through the galleries at the mezzanine levels that overlook the atrium.