Light breaks the darkness

Tadao Ando: Church of the Light

Church of the light (sometimes called "Church with Light") is the Ibaraki Kasugaoka Church's main chapel. It was built in 1989, in the city of Ibaraki, Osaka, and it is one of the most famous design of the Japanese architect Tadao Ando.

The Church of the Light consists of three 5.9m concrete cubes (5.9m wide x 17.7m long x 5.9m high) penetrated by a wall angled at 15°, dividing the cube into the chapel and the entrance area. One indirectly enters the church by slipping between the two volumes, one that contains the Sunday school and the other that contains the worship hall. The benches, along with the floor boards, are made of re-purposed scaffolding used in the construction. A cruciform is cut into the concrete behind the altar, and lit during the morning (as it is facing east).

A lightful ship billowing in the sky

Notre Dame du Haut: exterior and interior views

The Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France, is a pilgrimage chapel, designed by
Le Corbusier in 1954.
It stands, all in concrete, above the town on the top of a wooded hill, white and reflective, visible from miles away, with its aerodynamic tower, its “natural” shapes and wave-curved roof cutting into the sky beyond.
Above the plain altar, the east wall is punctuated by several pinhole-windows and by a single substantial window with the Madonna and Child in silhouette. In the interior, the spaces left between the wall and roof, as well as asymmetric light from the wall openings serve to further reinforce the sacral nature of the space and buttress the relationship of the building with its surroundings.

Light as a 'medical instrument'

A view of the inner space: the corridor and the dining hall

Alvar Aalto's starting point for the design of the Paimio sanatorium in Southwest Finland, was to make the building itself a contributor to the healing process. He liked to call the building a "medical instrument".
For instance, light was considered a vehicle of positive feelings and particular attention was paid to the design of the inside, especially the patient bedrooms.
Aalto was able to bring natural light into the rooms and give the patients the feeling that they were in control of the space.

Also the colour scheme of the patients' rooms was related to light. Aalto had his own ideas about the ceilings of the patients' rooms, for example. "The ceiling of the room should be the colour of the sky", and because the ceiling was painted in darker tones, the lighting had to be arranged so that the part of the ceiling which reflected the light had to be painted in lighter tones.
Another example is the dining hall, that is designed with an eye on the natural lighting.

On the window side there is a double-height space, so that natural light filters into the farthest corner of the room and there are sun blinds outside to prevent glare.

Lighting without windows

Interior of the Pantheon, with ray of light from the center Oculus

On entering the door of the Pantheon (an Ancient Rome buiding), the effect you feel is meant to be overwhelming.

You suddenly find yourself in this huge empty space which causes vertigo and makes you feel tiny. This is how you were supposed to feel in front of the gods and anyone going in today can have the same sensation as the Romans did almost 2000 years ago.
At the centre of the dome's apex, there is a 9 meter diameter hole, the Oculus.
Since the Pantheon has no windows, the Oculus and the entry door are the only sources of light in the interior: the only light penetrates from above streaming down like a river of inner light. Towards midday, the rays coming through the Oculus are particularly intense.
The Oculus was also to let the smoke from sacred fires out. When it rains, it also rains in the Pantheon; the floor is slightly convex so the water flows away thanks to an effective drainage system.

Living in a dark box

Through their buildings, architects communicate their vision of human life, related to light and space.
The Dark Box Bird Cage by Hiroshi Nakao and the Temporary Urban Installation by Ruan Hao are two very different way to intend the role of light in architecture.

Hiroshi Nakao, Dark Box Bird Cage

Since all surfaces are painted black, the interior is a somewhat dark box. However, daylight entering from the large and small enclosed gardens creates a varying mixture of light and dark areas. [...]
A ‘dark box’ it may appear, but with its innumerable holes, it is much more of a ‘bird cage’.

Ruan Hao, Temporary Urban Installation (Light Festival 2008)

The main idea of the project is to propose a light festival in high-density cities in China by means of temporary urban installations, aiming at lightening and “healing” the dark and shaded sides in the streets in high-density metropolis and therefore recreating inviting atmosphere for street-life encountering.