Light

Contextual Form and Order

The end goal of this project was to develop a unitarian church for the students and staff at Farmingdale State College. We were tasked with designing a main chapel, memorial chapel, and meditation chapel and an office space. Curved walls with openings had to be used in specific ways to allow for the passage of light into our chapels so that we could control the light and only allow it to reflect in certain spaces to allow for a certain ambiance in our chapels.

Background Research

I was tasked with researching the "First Unitarian Church" Designed by Lous I. Kahn. In this building Kahn uses "Light towers" which sort of act like sky lights to allow for light to be shined down on the 4 corners of the main chapel.

I Believe his method was flawed because as you can see additional unnatural light was needed in order to light up the church, so I did not take is approach. Creating 4 Light towers in the corners of each chapel would also prevent me from creating some sort of curved wall that would look like it belonged to reflect light off of which was the point of this project.

Site Selection

Each Chapel takes in and reflects light and how they light is reflected depends on the time of day. The main chapel in the middle follows the arch of the sun throughout the day and follows the sunlight from East to West. On the Right side of the main chapel is the the memorial chapel which was designed to allow light to come in from south and east. The mediation chapel faces the west as it was created for light to come in that way.