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Light: The Latest Architecture and News

How Satellite Images of the Earth at Night Help Us Understand Our World and Make Better Cities

Satellite images of Earth at night make for fascinating, beautiful pictures. But they also confront us with a growing form of pollution. Why do we waste so much energy to light outer space when we only need light on the ground? High-resolution satellite data can now deliver detailed insights into how humans have shaped the night, and these earth observation systems are about to reform our urban planning. They can become an integral part of project development and control, as many strange ecological, political and social phenomena become apparent with a closer look at the night-time imagery of our planet.

NEWSUBSTANCE's Coachella Pavilion Takes Visitors on a Journey of Light and Color

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UK-based design studio NEWSUBSTANCE has debuted at the Coachella Valley Music & Art Festival with a seven-floor pavilion taking visitors on an “ever-changing journey of light, color and perspective.” The 75-foot-high (23-meter-high) pavilion named “Spectra” consists of a spiral form featuring an observation deck at its peak, projecting a rainbow band of color.

The dazzling color scheme is produced by the separation of light waves by their varying degrees of refraction, embodying the lively spirit of the Coachella festival. Through this manipulation of the physical properties of light, Spectra is capable of producing over 16 million colors.

Cardboard Pavilion "Get High Without Drugs" Wins FAB FEST Prize

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Quirky, innovative and visceral, Get High without Drugs was awarded first place in the fabrication category at this year’s International FAB FEST* in London.

Mollusk-like and mysterious from the outside, the form of the pavilion emerges from the combination of a zonohedron and a dome. Seventy-two hexagonal surfaces were formulated into fold-able nets that could then be digitally fabricated from flat-sheets and assembled into load-bearing modules. A puzzle-like routine drove the assembly of the modules into the pavilion’s dome-like form.

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Smart Everyday Nighttime Design Aims to Use Light as a Means to Build Better Communities

Working out of a UNESCO world heritage site in Cartagena, Colombia, Smart Everyday Nighttime Design is a research project that aims to use light as a means to build better communities. The project, spearheaded by Arup’s Lighting team with urban-lighting leader Leni Schwendinger, seeks to address nighttime activation of Getsemaní’s streets and public spaces in a bid to improve safety, stimulate the night time economy and engage with the local communities and events.

This documentary, produced by PLANE—SITE, presents the project’s findings and explains the research process and the resulting prototype. The team had two main ambitions:

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Workshop: Light in Action

Techniques, technologies, construction, controls: master it all during LIGHT IN ACTION, a fast-paced, one-day lighting education.

Take a break from the office desk to earn 3 AIA credits and 2 NCQLP credits. The program includes:
- tour of a rare NYC factory
- 'Art of Lighting' tour (1 AIA and NCQLP credit), showing art lighting techniques, through the Edison Price Lighting Gallery.
- dimming controls primer (1 AIA credit), including how to design for Title 24.
- 'LEDs as IoT' presentation (1 AIA and NCQLP credit), analyzing LEDs as the future hub for the Internet of Things.
...and more!
Sign up with info@epl.com

Casa Elíptica / Mário Martins Atelier

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  • Area Area of this architecture project Area:  400
  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2014
  • Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project
    Manufacturers:  Grohe, Beissier, Catalano, Chainlight, Cifre ceramica, +8

Call for Concepts: Amsterdam Light Festival 2017-2018

Amsterdam Light Festival is an annual light art festival in the Netherlands that presents the rapidly developing concept of light art in all its forms. After five successful editions, the festival will return to Amsterdam’s city center for the 2017-2018 edition. From artists to designers, engineers to architects, and professionals to students, the festival invites creators from around the world to submit their creative interpretations of the theme EXISTENTIAL. The deadline for submissions round 1 (curatorial selection) is 31 January 2017, 11:00 CET.

Amsterdam Light Festival presents two exhibitions, following two routes in Amsterdam’s city center, each with its own unique

Installations Accent Stuttgart Region During Light Art Festival

The KulturRegion Stuttgart successfully wrapped its three-week Aufstiege ("Ascents") Light Art Festival in October. Curated by Joachim Fleischer, the festival showcases work by over 40 artists from 10 countries. The 37 installations were available for viewing nightly from 8 p.m. to midnight across 25 cities near Stuttgart, and particularly popular exhibits have been extended.

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Santiago Calatrava's Oculus Opens to the Sky in Remembrance of 9/11

On the 15th anniversary of 9/11 yesterday, the skylights at Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus at the World Trade Center opened for the first time, allowing light to fill the massive space as a memorial to the attacks on the twin towers. Following the masterplan laid out by Daniel Libeskind, Calatrava’s design used the angle of light as a guiding principle for orienting the transportation hub – so that at precisely 10:28 am each September 11th (the time of the collapse of the North Tower), a beam of light would pass through the opening in the roof and project all the way down the center of the Oculus floor.

Weather Forms Exhibition by Stallan-Brand

The word Scotland is derived from the ancient Greek word for shadow, or darkness and gloom ‘skótos’. Quite simply Scotland’s ancient meaning being ‘shadow land’. “Our weather shapes everything in our world; our psyche, our homes, our fashion, our architecture, our culture … weather is an omnipresent force”.

Scottish practice Stallan-Brand present art and architectural works that explore ‘how our place on earth defines us’ challenging the popular idea that ‘people make places’ by demonstrating that they in fact make us.

International VELUX Award for Students of Architecture

The International VELUX Award for students of architecture is a competition that wants to encourage and challenge students to explore the theme of daylight - and to create a deeper understanding of this ever-relevant source of energy, light and life. The award encourages projects that celebrate the privilege of being a student with curiosity and with the willingness to think “out of the box” – as well as consider the social, sociological and environmental dimension of daylight.

Call for Concepts: Amsterdam Light Festival 2016-2017

Amsterdam Light Festival invites artists, designers, scientists, engineers and architects to submit ideas for artworks to be staged at the festival's 2016 - 2017 edition. The fifth edition of the Amsterdam Light Festival will take place in the city center of Amsterdam in November 2015 till January 2016. The deadline for submissions is 11th of March 2016.

How the Science of Light Will Affect the Future of Architecture

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There is arguably no aspect of architecture in which science is more influential than in the realm of lighting; from the florescent bulbs of the late 19th century to the LEDs that only became truly viable in the past decade or two, advances in the science of creating light have been quickly followed by architectural experimentation. In this excerpt from her book "Superlux: Smart Light Art, Design & Architecture for Cities," Davina Jackson recounts the tremendous advances made by lighting in the 20th and early 21st centuries, and looks forward to the next frontier - that of "smart lighting."

Today’s smartest lighting innovation has no need for machine-generated power. Simply fill a clear plastic bottle with water (plus bleach) and silicon-seal it through a hole in the roof of any rudimentary shelter. Behold: daylight floods the dark interior.

PET bottles for conducting radiance, solar-powered LED lamps for night visibility and satellite-enabled smartphones to exchange instant knowledge globally: these are the 21st century’s keys to illuminating billions of people living rough in settlements. Like the original campsites of London, New York, São Paulo and Sydney, some of these slums will become great global centers.

Nightscape 2050 Travelling Exhibition in Singapore

In celebration of the International Year of Light in 2015 and the practice's 25th anniversary, Lighting Planners Associates (LPA) is putting up an ambitious show Nightscape 2050, with the exhibition travelling from Berlin to Singapore and then to Hong Kong and Tokyo, from August 2015 to June 2016. Nightscape 2050 is intended to be one of its kind for Light and Lighting, in which visions of the future of lighting and the way LPA imagines to use this light are shared with the visitors.

Light Matters: The Missing Element At the Venice Biennale

“Elements of Architecture,” the Rem Koolhaas-curated exhibition at the 2014 Venice Biennale, delved into several remarkable structural as well as technical components of architecture, including floors, walls, doors, stairs and toilets. But why was light missing? 

My manifesto for the inclusion of light as a fundamental element of architecture — after the break. 

Villa Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier

Villa Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - Exterior Photography, Houses, FacadeVilla Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - Exterior Photography, Houses, FacadeVilla Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - Exterior Photography, Houses, LightingVilla Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - HousesVilla Escarpa / Mario Martins Atelier - More Images+ 32

  • Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2012
  • Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project
    Manufacturers:  Q-railing, Planikafire

Sum of Days at The MoMA / Carlito Carvalhosa

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Sum of Days at The MoMA / Carlito Carvalhosa - Featured Image
Photograph by Jeffrey Gray Brandsted / © Carlito Carvalhosa

The space of sound created by Carlito Carvalhosa’s Sum of Days on exhibit at MoMA until November 14, 2011 is a sublime environment of billowing white fabric and the white noise of the atrium reflected upon itself. The psuedo-boundaries established by the translucent material that hang from the ceiling create a confined space of light and ambient sound – fleeting and ephemeral. Upon entering the exhibit, you pass an array of speakers affixed to the wall. They are emitting a low hum – the sound of voices and echoes that are distant, yet recognizable. It is unclear at first from where these sounds are originating, but behind the fabric bodies are drifting in and out of view. The curtains, which are constantly swaying, direct you in an ellipse to the center of the space where a single microphone hangs, picking up the noise within the exhibit and sending them to the dozens of speakers that hang at intervals inside the curtains, along the walls of the exhibit, and up through the galleries at the mezzanine levels that overlook the atrium.