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room in an evening to the gleaming brilliance of a festival,
from the mystical gloom of a place of worship to the antisep-
tic and businesslike lighting of the workplace. Alongside the
limitless possibilities for generating atmospheric effects and
scenarios through artificial light, many contrasting moods can
be shaped by daylight as well. Panoramic windows and broad
glazed surfaces display rooms and their contents clearly in
bright light, banishing mystery, while the imagination and
daydreaming are fostered by reduced light and shadow. In re-
fracted light, o jects become indistinct. Reductions of contrast
and colour are associated with stillness. When dim conditions
interfere with vision, the zone of visibility seems constricted.
Darkness, finally, seems to harbour the obscure, the inscruta-
ble. The strongly muted light generated in some sacred spaces
by the use of stained glass has been characterized by Gernot
Böhme (1998) as an enveloping and sheltering form of re-
duced light, a luminosity without source that is set against a
background of ominous darkness.
A mood appropriate to liturgical > ritual is created
through solemn illumination. In dim light, the presence of a
penetrating, brighter light is a striking event. A zenithal light
in the form of a direct beam of sunlight has a numinous ef-
fect. Additionally, Étienne-Louis Boullée observed that when
‘light is admitted into a room without the beholder perceiving
its source, the effect of this mysterious daylight makes an im-
pression of unfathomability, in a certain sense creates a genu-
inely magical atmosphere.’ (1987, 195) The harsh contrasts
of light and shadow found in southern lands, for example,
in > arcades, at times conjure moods that are reminiscent of
the peculiarly inscrutable architecture found in paintings by
Giorgio de Chirico.
Literature: Böhme 1998, 2006; Büttiker 1993; Plummer 2003> light, opening, window
> heaviness and lightnessLighting
Lightness