Concepts in Practice Lighting [antikvár]

Introduction Light has been worshipped, converted to power, used to measure time, to propagate plants, guide ships and cut through sheets of steel. Without light the human race could not exist. Light is also the agency by which objects are rendered visible. To work with light is to handle a both dangerous and beneficial medium. Light can blind the eye, while laser surgery can restore lost sight. Light can be used as a cure for depression or as a tool of sensory deprivation. Since the beginning of time we have had a dynamic relationship with the phenomenon of light. Since the discovery of fire human beings have controlled an element which has allowed them to see in darkness, kept them warm, could be used to cook meat, and helped to keep wild beasts at bay. They also discovered fire would burn them, if not handled with respect. In much the same way that electricity can end or preserve life, so too fire proved a double-edged sword. Early lighting design The first construction to utilize light in a creative and spectacular manner was the Hagia Sofia, a church built between 532 and 537 AD in Istanbul, during the reign of the Emperor Justinian, a ruler obsessed with religion and war. Hagia Sophia, built as a physical manifestation of the heavenly realms above, still stands as a triumph of beauty and design. Its ascending domes are pierced by shafts of light, causing the interior to glow with a burnished splendour as ifthe very walls had been lit from within. A mysterious element was brought into being which was more than the sum of light meeting architecture. From the shimmer of mosaics and marbles there is a transmission of the mysticism woven within the fabric of Eastern Christianity. It was not until the Gothic cathedrals of the thirteenth and fourteenth century were constructed that such a transcendent clarity was once more captured in the geometric equation of low northern light and coloured glass. The first of these cathedrals to display the beauty of luminous windows was built by Abbot Suger of Saint Denis in France, around 1140 AD. The precision and skill required to construct this building was extraordinary and the result was essentially emotional. Contemporary accounts relate that it was the richness and scale of the windows that stirred the people's imagination. These stained glass windows formed a translucent gateway to worship.