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The combination of light apertures on various sides
avoids having figures and objects appear only as silhouettes
due to backlighting. Alongside large windows to provide
background brightness, additional small apertures provide ac-
cents while shifting individual activities at workplaces or sit-
ting areas into the appropriate light. Other astonishing spatial
effects can be achieved by means of double-shell structures
with staggered openings, through which light is guided and
distributed as though through channels, as in the Baroque era.
In Balthasar Neumann’s Church of the Fourteen Saints, for
example, the main space is surrounded by an illuminated spa-
tial layer. As the light passes through openings from various
directions, the passage of time throughout the day is experi-
enced through migrating fields of light, shadows, and luminous
atmosphere, an example being the rotating shafts of sunlight
in Erik Gunnar Asplund’s cylindrical library in Stockholm.
Light renders architectural and spatial structures identi-
fiable. Illuminated forms are thrown into relief against dark
backgrounds, and shadowed figures against bright ones, con-
figuring figure/ground relationships. The shadow zone of an
open ground level detaches architectural mass from the earth.
The shadowed edges of eaves delimit the building overhead.
Architectural structures are articulated by the shadows cast by
window frames, profiles and joints. Gradations of brightness
ranging from the outside towards the interior begin with the
darkness found under roof overhangs, and continue into the
depths of the house in a series of staggered levels, as cultivated
in particular in the traditional Japanese house through finely
regulated filtering (> filter) using grating, folding screens, and
sliding paper doors (shoji). At times, however, distributions of
light and shadow render structural and spatial forms ambigu-
ous, for example through the nebulous effects of diffuse or
translucent materials, or when light filtered through lamellae
envelops everything in a unifying pattern of stripes.- A room’s > use and mode of occupation is as strongly
influenced by light and shadow as it is by size and shape.