POETICS OF DAYLIGHTING : A STUDY OF THE IMAGINATIVE AND PRAGMATIC OF DETAILS, MATERIALS AND ILLUMINATING TECHNIQUES IN ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

Light is imperative to carry out activities in architecture, be it for aesthetic effect, to create mood or to fulfill functional needs. Therefore, many discussions of the poetics of day lighting, be it contributed by academics or professional architects, frequently revolve around the quality of spatial experience that focuses on the role of light in defining and revealing architecture, form and space. Therefore, daylight is often embraced as a strategic way of designing, such as allowing natural daylight to heighten architectural experiences.

However it is essential to understand that daylighting plays an important role on the realization of daylight design in architecture or space. For instance, allowing the preferred quality of light streaming into the space and the way that light can be brought into the space. Daylighting is not just about lighting the space but how daylight strategies are being conceptualized including the positions and the materials used to manipulate the light, space and architecture.

This paper would like to study and analyze architectural forms through their elements and details. Various case studies will be analyzed to demonstrate how daylight quality could be accentuated. Each case study will show that besides fulfilling the pragmatic role of bringing in light, daylight actually heightens and defines the space, thus drawing a closer relation between people, space and architecture. The investigation of this dissertation thus focuses on the importance of architectural form as well as its elements and details and their influence in the pragmatics and poetics of architecture and the spatial experience.