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Alberto Campo Baeza 2019-Sharpening-the-scalpel-03-Light-is-much-more

This document discusses the importance of light in architecture. It states that light is the most luxurious material used by architects. It allows architecture to overcome time, as demonstrated by famous structures like the Pantheon, Hagia Sophia, and Farnsworth House. The document compares light to salt, noting it must be used judiciously - too much or too little diminishes the architectural space. It also emphasizes the quality of light is important, not just the quantity, and discusses how different structures employ light in distinctive ways. The author aims to reclaim light's tremendous value as a primary material for architects.

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Metehan Sagir
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75 views4 pages

Alberto Campo Baeza 2019-Sharpening-the-scalpel-03-Light-is-much-more

This document discusses the importance of light in architecture. It states that light is the most luxurious material used by architects. It allows architecture to overcome time, as demonstrated by famous structures like the Pantheon, Hagia Sophia, and Farnsworth House. The document compares light to salt, noting it must be used judiciously - too much or too little diminishes the architectural space. It also emphasizes the quality of light is important, not just the quantity, and discusses how different structures employ light in distinctive ways. The author aims to reclaim light's tremendous value as a primary material for architects.

Uploaded by

Metehan Sagir
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LIGHT IS MUCH MORE

PUBLISHED IN

Tectónica n.26, Madrid, 2008

Firenze Architettura, no. 1&2, Italy, 2014

Sharpening the scalpel, Madrid, 2019


“An architect starts to be a real architect when he or she discovers that light is the
central theme of all architecture. Every day that passes, I am more certain of the truth
of this statement, which I wrote and published more than fifteen years ago.”

LUXURIOUS MATERIAL
Light is the most beautiful, the richest and the most luxurious of materials used by
architects. The only problem is that it is free, within everybody’s reach, and as a result,
we do not value it sufficiently.
Architects of old used marbles and bronzes and modern architects use steel, special
plastics and different kinds of glass. All trying to make buildings capable of persisting in
man’s memory, persisting in time. And only those architects worth their stuff, the
masters, have understood that light, precisely light, is the principle material by which
architecture becomes capable of overcoming time. That is how Hadrian when he
constructed the Pantheon, and Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus when they
erected Saint Sophia, and Mies van der Rohe when he built the Farnsworth House
understood it.

EMOTION
And in order to make light present, to make it solid, shade is necessary. The appropriate
combination of light and shade tends to awaken in architecture its ability to move us
profoundly; it can even bring tears to our eyes as it summons beauty and summons
silence.
Throughout the past years, many of my students have visited the Pantheon in Rome and
have written me a postcard saying, “I cried”. Those who did not cry do not write me. That
was the deal we made in class, and my students continue to uphold it.
When the employees of Caja de Granada –the Granada Savings Bank– in Granada
entered my building for the first time to work, some were deeply moved and cried. I
always go to see them every time I return there.
And when the queen of Spain entered the building to preside an awards ceremony, she
was generous enough to praise the loveliness of the light that filtered through the space.
And the press reprinted her words. She understood perfectly that light is the central
theme of all Architecture.

LIKE SALT
In my classes, I have often compared light with salt. When light is meted in doses with
care and precision, like salt, the stew of architecture reaches its best state. Too much
light undoes and dissolves the tension of the constructed space. And too little, leaves it
bland, mute. Just as the lack of salt in cooking leaves the food tasting insipid, the excess
of salt ruins it. In general, nearly all architects overdo it with the salt, in their use of light.

QUALITY OF LIGHT
And if the quantity of the light used is important, its quality is no less so. That is what
History has always shown us. When architecture, thanks to steel that allows opening
large holes and glass that allows closing them, replaces the concept of the mastery of
solid light with that of transparence, a profound revolution occurs.
In the Pantheon of Rome, the architect’s wisdom leads him to frame the greatest quantity
of light with the greatest quantity of shade. And thus, the luminous circle is surrounded
and enclosed by the deepest shade, which makes that divine light from above even more
luminous, if that’s possible.
In Saint Sophia in Istanbul, the brilliant architects open a crown of high windows through
which not only direct light pours in, but also indirect light, reflected off of its profound
white jambs so that the rays of light crossing in the air look almost like a miracle.
In Farnsworth House, the architect, with the same wisdom as his predecessors, but now
with knowledge of steel and glass, decides to propose absolute transparence. And there,
the light as it is suspended in air evokes that “breath of a soft breeze” by which the
prophet describes the presence of divinity.

WHAT FOR
Thousands of books could be written about light. I recommend those by Henry Plummer
and the works of Le Corbusier. In these brief words of introduction, I don’t intend more
than, once again, to reclaim light’s tremendous value as a first and a principal material
with which we architects work. And one that is conceded to us freely every day. To
remain in the memory and hearts of the people. To make them happy with architecture.

MY WORKS IN LIGHT OF LIGHT


I will try to shed some light on the understanding of light in my works.
The Gaspar House in Cadiz, a Hortus Conclusus, is a house full of shade in which the
four large hollows of the corners allow the passage of a silent light in a clear operation
of transparence in order to achieve continuity with the space contained by the patios.
The Turegano House in Madrid, a white and cubic cabin, is a box through which sun
pours in from the South in streams. The special light of the West, which we capture at
dusk by means of a large picture window open at the highest point, is a lesson learned
from the houses of Pompey, which use the same mechanism.
The Asencio House in Cadiz uses the effective mechanisms of Turegano House in
greater dimensions but as the orientation is different, the large picture window opens
here in the ceiling like a large skylight through which abundant light pours in.
The De Blas House in Madrid, Belvedere, develops an operation of transparence to take
advantage of the spectacular landscape offered to us in the front. Thus, the landscape
is underlined, giving it special value. Below, inside of the podium full of shade, a square
picture window opens, framing this landscape and at the same time distancing it.
The Centro BIT in Mallorca, the secret garden, is a nearly biblical garden of 24 powerful
orange trees enclosed within a box of travertine marble and open to the sky. To provide
it with shade in order to work, it is covered with a light ceiling in an operation of the utmost
transparence.
The Granada Savings Bank (Caja de Granada), in Granada, impluvium of light, is in
addition to many other things, one interior cubic box of glass and alabaster set in the
middle of a larger box made of reinforced concrete, with 9 potent skylights shaped, sized
and placed so that the sun crosses the space every day in such a way that the light is
accompanied by beauty and silence.

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