The Language of Lighting: How to Read Light and Shadow in Architecture

Imagine if light would not only provide optimum visibility for tasks but convey meanings as well. Standards with recommended lux levels for various visual tasks have led to a quantitative understanding of lighting. However, lighting can also be used to contribute to emotion in rooms and to structure architecture. Would it be adequate to regard lighting as language sent by architects or interior designers and being received by inhabitants and citizens? Adding a semiotic perspective can help to recognize how light and shadow contributes to the meaning of the built environment.

Hotel A Cheda / Orma Architettura

The Hotel A Cheda finds its inspiration in the typical vernacular constructions called "Baracun" in the Bonifacio region. Thus, the project reveals like a long curved stone wall that houses the hotel suites. The materials used also go in this direction by displaying a mineral dominance, intrinsically linked to the landscapes of the region.

Coquique House / Izquierdo Lehmann Arquitectos

This guest house is located next to a vacation home facing Lake Ranco, in southern Chile. The project is conceived as a pavilion to contemplate the forest, made up of two superimposed floors that exhibit both the similarity and the divergence between its parts.

The Innovative Display Cases Housing the Treasures of the Grand Egyptian Museum

Two decades in the making, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Cairo is one of the most anticipated cultural buildings, set to be an architectural marvel and a leading scientific, historical and archeological study center. The vast, billion-dollar mega-project occupies a site of around 500,000 square meters adjacent to the Pyramids UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Giza Plateau. Within its halls, what will soon be the world’s largest archeological museum will showcase 3,500 years of ancient Egyptian history, revealed through a collection of more than 100,000 artifacts –many of which will be displayed for the first time.

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