Abstract
This chapter seeks to investigate the design approach of the architectural concept in the narration of the interior space as an unavoidable exploration to highlight the contradictory and complex relationship between the idea of space and its experience. Architects should perceive architectural space using logical diagrams, starting from the interior towards the exterior and not the opposite. Architectural atmospheres should initiate as a result of the internal movements and the relation between space, humans, and light. This relationship develops an experience as a result of a series of architectural spaces that appear naturally in the interior. The articulation of its atmospheres, functional organization, and architectural façade works as a filter to allow daylight to penetrate the building or form contextual situations and the surrounding nature and its inhabited environment.
TopBackground - Inside
One of the most important architectural investigations while designing interior spaces is developed in the process of interior design, an area that does not only houses but also creates the necessary conditions for living. The design process should be structured around the individual search for ways to live - answering the question “what is a home for you?” and should aim to develop the capacities to think about the architectural project associated with a strong sense of specificity, appropriation, and comfort.
Going beyond a technical and superfluous application of technical and formal principles, it is fundamental to nurture an expression of unlimited desire in the process of designing an architectural space that is closely linked with emotions and memories, and that we finally can call home.
This reflection, which we could ironically call a “dream house,” aims to highlight the construction of an architectural project, supposedly original, that seeks to express the identity specificity of each resident student according to his gender, character, socio-cultural particularity.
In this sense, it is explicit about seeking the shortest distance between the “architect” and the “project” or the “author” and “work” as opposed to a practice increasingly committed to the real-estate market and aesthetic trends often mediated in favor of profit and not in favor of qualitative spaces of living.
Light, as a matter, distinguishes cultures, lifestyles, and architectural design. Pantheon refers to its zenith light, by watching physically this enormous building built in the 27 BC and entering its inner space, feeling captivated by its iconic zenith lighting that penetrates and captures the dome's structural coffers. By observing this architecture, one is triggered by the presence of light in the most honorable projects in the history of architecture. Understanding that what makes a build or a design distinguish between millions of projects is the relationship of space and its primitive material that curves and gives presence to its existence, which is light.
Figure 1. Zenith light of Pantheon in Italy (Xhoana Kristo,2015)
Light is the only immaterial material component that adds value to the design by creating qualitative architectural spaces. Only some of those projects which are built around the world have the privilege to be shaped and obtain the qualitative aspects of light that curve the space—naturally growing the desire to design space where the light was manifested. It is not only the space that played an essential role in the process of design, but it was the light itself that played an important role in the shape, amount, and geometry that penetrated the space to add the qualitative values.
What begs to be asked is how to design qualitative light (with its shape, amount, and geometry) and to design spaces with qualitative light penetration.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Architectural Cell: Minimum living space, concept represented in the modernism for maximization of the space and improving the quality of life. It is represented as a single room (as a cell) where in total the amount of room creates the entire shape of the building (body). Here is one of the first parallelisms in architecture of the building to the human body.
Geometry of the Light: Volume of the shape of the light that comes in any opening where the light penetrated for living purposes.
Zenith Light: Light coming from the upper part of a building, the light seems to be coming from the sky in a building, its representation is magnificent and used mostly as a spot light in a dark empty space.
Urban Identification: Identity obtained from the urban development and characteristics that someone lives – social status quo from the urban context, distinguish between the cultural qualitative plays of living and the modern crowded ghettos.
Stimulus: Elements that stimulate, provoke, and wake up emotions or try to keep active in the perceiver.
Prophylaxis: Treatment given or action taken to prevent disease.
Epistemological: Relating to the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.
Architectural Atmosphere: Qualitative values that the architecture of a space obtains and emits to the perceiver. The importance in the sensorial qualities of the space.