Date

2011

Author

Kocaoğlu, Nihan

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The aim of this study is to understand the purpose, employment and place of specific materials in general, and “light” in particular, in architectural production. This thesis is a critical reconsideration of light as a building material, encompassing all the metaphorical connotations that the term suggests: light versus heavy; “art form” versus “core form”; “figuration” versus “tectonic”; ornamentation versus construction; craft production versus structural logic and abstraction versus materiality. All these binary oppositions combine to provide a conceptual framework for a contemporary interpretation of “light architecture”. Apart from its visual qualities, light plays an essential role in the production of architecture revealing the architectural form, function, mass, texture and context. When considered as an architectural material, light also has the ability to transpose the building into an “art form” as a monumental object, and to provide a dematerialized reality. When speaking of architectural materials, an analysis of the tectonic aspects of architecture is a prerequisite. It was Gottfried Semper’s seminal work that first introduced the rich terminology of the material qualities in the products of architecture. The term “textile”, as an abstract procedure of Semper’s theory, leads to a shift from primitive fabrics to contemporary modulation techniques and becomes a crucial element in the evaluation of such key words as “dress”, “mask”, “skin”, “membrane” and “pure form”. Following the theory of Semper, “textile” can be considered as a starting point for the conceptualization of these key words. Through specific examples associated with light, The Bosphorus Bridge, The Doğan Media Centre, The Kunsthaus Graz and the Image Mill, this study aims to analyze the historical and the traditional materials introduced by Semper together with the contemporary and the modern materials inserted by Bernard Cache and suggests the introduction of light as a modern and contemporary material that may be applied to the abstract procedures defined by Semper as “textile”, “ceramics”, “tectonics” and “stereotomy”. An in-depth reading of Semper and those that followed him: Kenneth Frampton, Harry Francis Malgrave, Karl Bötticher, Wolfgang Hermann, Bernard Cache and Carolina A. van Eck, will provide a conceptual framework for the evaluation of the material qualities of light design in architecture.

Subject Keywords

Light in architecture.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613058/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/20513

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis