Customer Reviews

Light Revealing Architecture

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Any spatial experience is intimately connected with the experience of light. The author has very articulately described this phenomena in architecture, using four major themes - where light helps with a physiological EXPERIENCE, gives a building FORM, defines and enhances SPACE, and thus gives it MEANING. This is an excellent book, well written and has a good association with all aspects of lighting, studied and explained with the help of a wide range of buildings and architecture. It makes a very strong (and convincing) argument, for all designers to pay attention to the importance of light while planning and designing their spaces or buildings.

This book is great. Nearly everything about it is clear, concise, informative, and inspiring.

The format is worth mentioning because the author does everything right. Each chapter is dedicated to a single principle of lighting design, and is immediately followed by a case study that beautifully illustrates that same principle. Also, whenever the text mentions a particular building or room - there is always a lovely and appropriate photograph of that very same room or building RIGHT ON THE VERY SAME PAGE. This is a rare example of a well-concieved and thoughtfully executed book on architecture.

This is a dense and throughtful book that deftly combines theory and practice.

This is in not "architecture porn." The text is the engine here and the illustrations, well...they illustrate the ideas being put forward. The ideas grappled with center around the timeless principles of how light affects architecture -- specifically how light affects experience, how light reveals form, how light shapes space, and even "light revealing meaning." (I raised my eyebrow at that last one, but after considering the book's examples of theatrical light, festive light, contemplative light, and divine light, I got on board!)

Most welcome are four focused sections of the book that consider, for 7 to 12 pages, the interaction between light and architecture of a single building. My favorite of these is Aalto's Mount Angel Abbey Library.

Book nitty-gritty: glossy pictorial boards with a sewn binding; 181 pp. Released without dustjacket. Something like 350 illustrations, most of them in color: mostly color photos with floorplans, elevations, and some sketches. Indexed. Bibliographic and (some) narrative End Notes.