Light Extracts

“Atmosphere is my style”

JMW Turner to John Ruskin in 1844

Page 5

“Quality architecture to me is when a building manages to move me.”

Pages 10-11 – Image 01

“I enter a building, see a room, and – in the fraction of a second – have this feeling about it.”

Pages 12-13 – Image 02

“The real has its own magic”

Pages 16-17 – Image 03

“The magic of things, the magic of the real world.”

Pages 18-19 – Image 04

“The Body of Architecture”

Pages 20-21 – Image 05

“Material Compatibility”

Pages 22-23 – Image 6

“As a master builder, he must have had an extraordinary sense of the presence and weight of materials.”

Pages 26-29 – Images 07

“The sound of a Space”

Page 29 – Image 08

“The Temperature of a Space”

Pages 32-33 – Image 09

“Surrounding Objects”

Pages 34-35 – Image 10

“Between Composure and Seduction”

Pages 40-41 – Image 11

“Tension between Interior and Exterior”

“The way architecture takes a bit of the globe and constructs a tiny box of it. Brilliant! And that means – equally brilliant! – this: thresholds, crossings, the tiny loop-hole door, the almost imperceptible transition between the inside and outside, an incredible sense of place, an unbelievable feeling of concentration when we suddenly become aware of being enclosed, of something enveloping us, keeping us together, holding us – whether we be many or single.”

Pages 44-47 – Images 12

“On the contrary, it has a great deal to do with atmospheres. Think of “Rear Window” – Alfred Hitchcock. Life in a window observed from without.”

Pages 46-47 – Image 13

“Levels of Intimacy”

Pages 48-49 – Image 14

“But where you have this feeling of the interior as a hidden mass you don’t recognize.”

Pages 50-51 – Image 15

“The Light of Things”. I spent five minutes or so looking at the actual appearance of things in my living-room. What the light was like. And it was great! I’m sure you’ve had the same experience. Where and how the light fell. Where the shadows were. And the way the surfaces were dull or sparkled or had their own depth.”

Pages 56-57 – Image 16

“And this gold leaf – we all know this but it really touched me when I saw it – the gold leaf shone right from the back of the room, out of a deep darkness. Which means gold seems to have the capacity to pick up even the smallest quantities of light and reflect them in darkness. That was an example of light.”

“So the first of my favourite ideas is this: to plan the building as a pure mass of shadow then, afterwards, to put in light as if you were hollowing out the darkness, as if the light were a new mass seeping in.”

“The second idea I like is this: to go about lighting materials and surfaces systemically and to look at the way they reflect the light. In other words, to choose the materials in the knowledge of the way they reflect and to fit everything together on the basis of that knowledge.”

Pages 58-59 – Image 17

“Thinking about daylight and artificial light I have to admit that daylight, the light on things, is so moving to me that I feel it almost as a spiritual quality. When the sun comes up in the morning – which I always find so marvellous, absolutely fantastic the way it comes back every morning – and casts its light on things, it doesn’t feel as if it quite belongs in this world. I don’t understand light. It gives me the feeling there’s something beyond me, something beyond all understanding. And I’m very glad, very grateful that there is such a thing. And I have that feeling here too; I’ll have it later when we go outside. For an architect that light is a thousand times better than artificial light.”

Pages 60-61 – Image 18

“Architecture as Surroundings”

Pages 62-63 – Image 19

“I love architecture; I love surrounding buildings, and I suppose I love it when other people love them too. I have to admit it: it would make me very happy to have made things which other people love”

Pages 64-67 – Images 20-21

“Coherence”

Pages 66-67 – Image 21

“I think architecture attains its highest quality as an applied art.”

“That is when everything refers to everything else and it is impossible to remove a single thing without destroying the whole. Place, use and form. The form reflects the place, the place is just so, and the use reflects this and that.”

Pages 68-69 – Image 22

“The Beautiful Form”.

Pages 70-71 – Image 23