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.

Louis I. Khan: The Kimbell Museum

Great Masters

Louis Isadore Kahn (1901-1974) was one of the great masters of twentieth century architecture. His work was based on the principles of modern architecture abstraction while he resorted to classical monumentality, patent in many of his projects. Kahn was also considered the architect of light.

After emigrating to the United States at four years old, Kahn was admitted in 1920 at the School of Fine Arts in Pennsylvania. In 1924 he qualified as an architect. After several collaborations and traveling in Europe, he founded his own design studio in Philadelphia.

Kahn's work is characterized by abstraction of architecture, simplicity and greatness of forms and a special care to daylight. His projects are defined by polygons and polyhedra that are sorted to produce a monumental and elegant architecture. Geometry is his guideline to project. The order is also very important in the work of Kahn, because it explicitly determines the arrangement of geometry.

However, the most important element in Kahn's architecture is light, as it defines the volumes and spaces. For Kahn, light is a design element that gives life to architecture projects. In today's notebook, we will briefly present one of its most representative projects: The Kimbell Museum.

Louis I. Kahn in the Kimbell Museum.

The Kimbell Museum was a project built in 1972, in Forth Worth, Texas, being commissioned by Kay Kimbell, to host his art collection.

The museum is based on an orthogonal arrangement of exhibition halls, covered by 16 concrete vaults cycloid.

Model of the project. 

The main façade is defined by an open porch on the first two cycloid vaults, preceding the exhibition galleries.

Porch of the Kimbell Museum. Joe Mabel.

Each vault rests on four main pillars, so that the joint of the vault and the wall allows a slit through which daylight penetrates into the porch.

Joint of vault and wall, creating a slit. Xavier Jaurebiguerri

The vaults covering the exhibition galleries are very interesting. Kahn had a wide knowledge on the reflection of light, so he designed a skylight in the keystone of the cycloid, to allow daylight into the galleries would agree.

 Original section of the project

However, direct sunlight should be avoided in the galleries, as the artwork can be damaged by radiation. Consequently, Kahn designed a reflector under the skylight of the keystone, so that the light is leading on the vault and the walls of the rooms. This is the result:

Kimbell Art Gallery

In short, this is one of the great works of contemporary architecture that combines geometry, space, order and light.