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.

Materials and light II: Reflectance

Technical Report

I think it is important to introduce a second technical report, as I like to call it, to define another important material qualities: the reflectance. I wish readers will be patient, because I think that a full understanding of the material qualities allow us to conveniently use light. In future articles of Architect Daylight I will expose less technical issues.

As we saw in the previous technical report, the reflection from a surface depends on its roughness and directly affects the reflected light. However, the surfaces have another quality: the reflectance.

In short reflection defines how light is reflected and the reflectance indicates how much is reflected. If the reflection depends on the roughness of the surface, the reflectance depends on the brightness.

Thereby the darker surface reflects less light and vice versa. As an example we see the following figure with three spheres of different brightness: white, gray and black:

The following image shows the reflected light (equivalent to luminance, a concept that we will see in better time) emitted by the three spheres, in false color map. The blue color represents less reflected light and red more:

As you can see, the white sphere reflects much more light than the other two spheres. This is because it reflects almost all incident light and absorbs very little. On the black sphere, opposite happens. Whenever a beam of light strikes a surface, some are absorbed and partly reflected. Reflect more light, more brighter the surface:

And now, two statements that seem to come from opiate reasoning:

1. - The pure white does not exist. The TV ads were lying.

Every surface, no matter how brilliant, absorbs a minimal portion of light. On the other hand, there is no pure black (except in dark matter or black holes).

2. - The amount of reflected light is what determines the brightness of an object, not vice versa. That is, when a surface reflects a lot of light it is perceived like white, whereas if it absorbs a lot of light it is appears like black.

"Now I understand why I see the things I see"

In simple words: light defines how we see things and not the reverse.

I hope this article has been clearer than troubling, to encourage potential readers to continue reading on light in architecture.

Materials and light I: Reflection

Technical Report

I think I should start slowly, dealing elementary questions about light and architecture. Some readers may regret about that because I start at an elementary level, or maybe because I'm providing a very technical approach to a matter as poetic as light and architecture ... But I must start somewhere.
The first issue I would like to make corresponding to the study of materials and their behavior under the effect of light. As many readers know, the light (either from the sky or a light bulb, a light source in any case) incident on a surface and it is reflected. Thanks to the reflection of light, photons reach our eyes and we are able to identify an object.
The objects can reflect light in many ways. When light falls on a surface it can be reflected in all directions, creating a diffuse reflection or it can be reflected in one direction, creating a specular reflection. This property is defined as reflection of the material. 
Reflection directly depends on the roughness of the surface where the light impact. It really is that simple. When the surface is completely smooth, the incident light is reflected at the same angle of incidence. This is called specular reflection:

Therefore, in the specular reflections we can see the perfect reflection of your face in a mirror or the sky in a building:

The composed reflection is similar to specular, with the difference that part of the light is scattered due to surface roughness:

This reflection is seen in brushed metals, where the roughness is homogeneous:

Diffuse reflection occurs when the light incident on a surface is reflected in all directions, where the ray perpendicular to the surface reaches the greatest intensity:

In diffuse reflection, the angle of the incident light is completely irrelevant. The diffuse reflection is also called Lambertian reflection. It is seen in very rough materials:

Finally, there is a fourth type of reflection, called mixed. It is typical of heterogeneous materials with varying finishes, where there are areas very rough with others polished:

The mixed reflection can be observed in granite, some types of marble, such as travertine, and varnished wood:

With this brief introduction we have seen how the roughness of a surface may affect the reflection of light, hence it is very decisive aspect in the field of illumination. Soon I will expose a further report on qualities of the materials, the reflectance.

See ASAP.