The Art of Lighting Architecture

For some reason I have always been interested in how people choose to light architecture. What I like about the new building in the Art's Department at UCI, the infamous CAC, is that the designers put a certain amount of thought into this. The designers made the building attractive not only in daylight, but at night as well. Instead of creating a sign horribly backlit like the majority of businesses tend to do on their marques they separated the light source from what is meant to be seen. The name of the building is lighted by playing artfully with shape and light. This technique creates a series of fun shadows and highlights on the letters that look beautiful during the daylight too. I like this technique for signage because it only adds light when it is truly needed, instead of during the day when there is plenty of daylight to be used.

This play with like made me think about how lighting designers can not only conserve light by using natural sources to their benefit, but also how they can play with the natural shape of the object to create an interplay of shadows and highlights. I think this technique is very befitting for an arts building.