Light Bath

Year 2019

Type Lighting Design / Interior

Team Cody Torgersrud + Andrea Lorena Salas Tronsoso, Barani Dharan Srinivasan + Zhou Chen

Brief Create a dynamic art space utilizing both electric and daylight source. Exploratory project to test lighting types against a variety of materials and techniques to formulate a cohesive design within the given space.

Description

The name light bath came out of the meditative effect that spending even a short amount of time within the space induced. This relaxed nature would be idea for a variety of contemplative spaces.

The sandbox nature of the brief lent itself to a large number of processes and techniques being modeled, tested and discarded. From the start of the project color was an important focus. In analyzing the small office space provided it was quickly determined that while the natural light coming in from the windows created an incredible amount of glare. To offset this, it was determined that the windows would need to be augmented to help balance out the light within the room. Through this process I developed the mosaic process used for the window. Using small sections of colored film, I was able to lower the overall brightness within the room while also creating a vivid focal point to the space.

Once that process was decided upon the rest of the room needed to be balanced out and the electrical light sources were deployed to this end. The connections to a stained-glass window were obvious with the daylight approach so it was decided that a similar concept would be tested for the electric application. After many materials tests and iterations, I developed the floating pains design. The directional spotlight was used similar a beam of sunlight, shone through a cloud of layered films hung in front of it.

While the same inspiration was used the final effect of each application was drastically different. The daylight coming through the windows created gradient washes of color that coated the whole room. The electrical light source provided a much more direct interpretation of the colors, laying out the individual shapes and colors on the floor below. Though contrasting the effects complemented each other greatly. The addition of the white, semi-matte, floor heighted the effect throughout the room causing the space to become awash with color.