Luis Barragan: House-Studio

Great Masters

Luis Barragán (1902-1988) was the most important Mexican architect of his time and no doubt one of the most influential artists of the XX century.

After graduating as an architect, Barragán traveled to France and Spain, where he discovered traditional Mediterranean architecture, which influenced his architecture. Consequently, the work of Luis Barragán is infused with light, color, functionality and tradition, all essential qualities of architecture.

In 1947 he projected his residence, annex to a workshop, in Tacubaya, Mexico City, which was declared by UNESCO as World Heritage Site. Currently, the House-Studio is preserved as its author lived there until 1988.

But the key issue is: Why Barragan is considered a master of light? This question finds an answer in his most emblematic work: his house-studio.

Barragan distributed spaces of your home in an orderly manner, keeping coherence among all its parts, but each room is designed thinking in different lighting.

Thus, each room is defined by the light that is perceived: the library is bright, the dining room is intimate and the light is warm in the living room.

 

Great window in the library.

 Dinning room

Living room

Consequently, the light is an element that determines the function of space.

Furthermore, Barragan cares especially the relationship between light and color, creating different perceptions from the reflected light on color. Proof of this, is the hall where the author places a gilded mirror under a skylight that has two functions. On one side, the specular surface allows that light which is reflected in the mirror reaches the bottom of the hall. On the other hand the golden color of mirror transforms the reflected light with a warm color, even when the sky is cloudy.

The control of the hue of the light, from the reflection of light in the color, is a very common resource in the architecture of Barragan. Another example is observed in the skylight of the same project, where its inner walls are painted in yellow. Thus, the light that penetrates through the skylight is dyed as in the example of the mirror, with a warm color.

In conclusion, it is clear that Luis Barragán was a great master of the use of light in architecture.

Materials and light III: Color

Technical Report

Previously, we studied how materials behave under light. In essence, the two qualities of a surface, in the illumination study are:

Reflection: O how light is reflected.

Reflectance: O how much light is reflected.

Well, the color is a quality that affects the reflectance of a material. Dark colors, such as blue or red, reflect less light, while bright colors like yellow or turquoise, reflect much light. We can see the following example:

The picture shows three spheres of different color, from left to right, red, yellow and blue. Next, let's take a measurement, in false color map of the luminance emitted by each sphere. The luminance is a measurement unit in cd/m2, which represents the brightness of an object [1].

As we can see, the yellow sphere reflects a lot of light (in this particular case, almost 30,000 cd/m2) while the red sphere reflects much less. Finally we can see that the blue sphere reflects very little light.

Consequently, we can say that color is decisive in reflectance. To realize this statement, we represent a graph where we see how much light is able to emit every tone, as a percentage:

Later, we will study the effect of color radiation, decisive on the use of the architecture.

Until next time.

[1] CIE: International lighting vocabulary. Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage, 2011.

Overture

As many others before me, for years I wished to write a blog because I've always liked to express my thoughts, opinions and limited knowledge through words. Maybe I only need the substance... 

And the substance could not be other than the light in the architecture, the element that allows the perception of the project, because as one guy, who seemed like a crow, told:

"Architecture is the wise, correct and magnificent play of volumes collected together under the light." 

My fascination for light and architecture comes from my childhood, when on a family trip I discovered the Pantheon in Rome. That same day I had the chance to return to visit it. I just sat on the marble floor and looked at the large central oculus.

For me, at ten years old, the Pantheon represented the highest expression of art and that perception was due to the massive dome and the light coming through the oculus. I suspect that many others before and after me have had a similar feeling, the perception of something so perfect that catches our attention and thoughts. Without going too far, a few years ago, an amateur boxer who visited it thought something like: 

"When I saw the light from the oculus of the Pantheon in Rome, I knew I wanted to be an architect."

Yes, that's what the amateur boxer but extraordinary architect Tadao Ando thought, reason why he hung up the gloves and picked up the pen.

My journey took me to practice as an architect and devote to teaching. My work at the University has always been linked to the investigation of light in architecture, so short time later I was able to deliver my doctoral thesis, a dense study of daylight through the skylights. The tribunal president arrived a little earlier the thesis show, so I had a chance to talk with him. Basically, he said to me:

"I really liked your thesis, although it is as thick as a brick."

That, more or less, was what Alberto Campo Baeza told me. He liked the result, but would have preferred something more didactic, closer to the architect. For what little I know, Alberto Campo is a humble person, away from the typical stereotypes of famous architects. He invited me to share the little knowledge I have learned with others like him, which is why I have decided to start this blog. I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I write it.

Finally, I apologize for my poor fluence writing in English. I trust it is not a major obstacle to enjoy with the paper.