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Illuminating Light Fittings
Whether indoors or out, light is one of our most precious resources and tools. Natural light, like air is often taken for granted until absent. It is food for our soul both literally and figuratively. Architects and interior designers use light like an artist uses paint or canvas.
A building's form, placement and orientation create its intrinsic character, but the way the light enters and occupies the space, the way it envelopes, accentuates and illuminates its planes; this is what creates ones experience of the form. My personal favorite example of this is Frank Gehry's Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. Within it the light feels tangible, as if the building holds some special power to transport the visitor into a different paradigm, wherein our relationship to light and space and form, to our environment in general, allows us a more vivid, present experience of ourselves, a relativistic self awareness. Bright ambient natural light can make the bleakest edifice feel at once both inspiring and soothing. Whether or not it is filtered, or colored, the form itself directs the light. The form itself becomes a sort of light fixture.
The raw light of an incandescent bulb or hallogen is directed, filtered, refracted or otherwise manipulated to set the mood and create the atmosphere for a space on a more specific, finite scale. It is of course at night that light fittings come into their own. For it is the absence of natural light that permits our man made equivalents to shine, the resulting variety of effects is so diverse and numerous as to be quite dazzling.
Light from a chandelier shimmers and glistens as it reflects upon so many shiny surfaces and prisms, reflecting and refracting into an incandescent rainbow of magical luminosity.
Light filtered through a dark semi transparent shade, casts a sultry haze of atmosphere, oozing elegance across a darkened interior.
Opaque pendant lights throw a sharp circle of light upon a polished bar or counter top, creating a vivid pool of incandescence and throwing the world around it into deeply contrasted shadow.
Directional lighting that spills a still river of warm gold across your work space, illuminating your task, focusing your mind and lifting your spirits.
Whether you are designing an experience, setting a mood or looking for a light to read by, the strategic selection and placement of lamps and light fitting can make the world of difference to a space, and one's experience of it.
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