- THE NORTH WOOD FACTORY -
National Assembly Building
Chapel at Mount Rocco
Reflection
Study of Light, Matter and Space
This study was done to mainly gain an understanding of reflective lighting in architecture. Three buildings were chosen that uses reflective lighting principles. These are as follows- National Assembly building in Dhaka Bangladesh and Unitarian Church in Rochester by Louis Kahn and Chapel at Mount Rocco by Tadao Ando. The model in Plaster combines the lighting strategies of Louis Kahn with the spatial sequencing of Tadao Ando.
The following quotation by Louis Kahn describes the lighting strategies in National assembly building."In the assembly I have introduced a light-giving element to the interior of the plan. If you see a series of columns, you can say that the choice of columns is a choice in light. The columns as solids frame the space of light. Now think of it just in reverse and think that the columns are hollow and much bigger and that their walls can themselves give light, then the voids are rooms and the column is the maker of light and can take on complex shapes and be the supporter of spaces and give light to spaces. I am working to develop the element to such an extent that it becomes a poetic entity which has its own beauty outside of its place in the composition. In this way, it becomes analogous to the solid column I mentioned above as a giver of light."
- Louis Kahn
The chapel on Mt Rocco by Tadao Ando is in Kobe, Japan amidst an array of greenery with a daunting view of the sea.The territory of the chapel is a series of spaces that frame sensations and optical experiences through different lighting strategies. There are thresholds that define each segment of the journey as one moves through the building.
The territory of the resultant building is fabricated with series of spaces like that of chapel at Mount Rocco.
The journey begins in a colonnade. Like Chapel at Mount Rocco by Tadao Ando, the end of the tunnel offers a choice. One leads to the outside world, the other leads to the building, a dark uncertain entry. A winding dark entrance with a guiding light directs one to the central hall.
On all sides the central hall is wrapped by hollow columns. It receives reflected light from the hollow column that is formed through an intersection of a cube and a cylinder. The hollow columns receive reflected light from windows above eye level like that of the paraboloid roof in National Assembly hall in Dhaka and at a smaller scale in first Unitarian church in Rochester.
The windows cannot be directly seen in any space. One can see reflected light from the surfaces of the building.
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Models in Plaster
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1. Louis Kahn, quoted in Francesco Cacciatore, The wall as living place: Hollow forms in Louis Kahn;s Work, 2016
Sectional Model