Lighting/ Space Design

2012-02-05T14:16:00.000-08:00

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Le Petit Prince

CHAPITRE XIV
La cinquième planète était très curieuse. C'était la plus petite de toutes. Il y avait là juste assez de place pour loger un réverbère et un allumeur de réverbères. Le petit prince ne parvenait pas à s'expliquer à quoi pouvaient servir, quelque part dans le ciel, sur une planète sans maison, ni population, un réverbère et un allumeur de réverbères. Cependant il se dit en lui-même:

- Peut-être bien que cet homme est absurde. Cependant il est moins absurde que le roi, que le vaniteux, que le businessman et que le buveur. Au moins son travail a-t-il un sens. Quand il allume son réverbère, c'est comme s'il faisait naître une étoile de plus, ou une fleur. Quand il éteint son réverbère ça endort la fleur ou l'étoile. C'est une occupation très jolie. C'est véritablement utile puisque c'est joli.

2012-01-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

Jorge Luis Borges
...
- Pero, no es muy oscuro el sótano?
- La verdad no penetra en un entendimiento rebelde. Si todos los lugares de la tierra están en el Aleph, ahi estarán todas las luminarias, todas las lámparas, todos los veneros de luz.
- Iré a verlo inmediatamente.
...

2012-01-06T01:45:00.000-08:00

Alfred Tennyson

............................... and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep,
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.

2011-12-24T00:08:00.000-08:00

Galileu Galilei
"Wine is composed of liquid humour and light."

2011-12-16T02:27:00.000-08:00

Guy Debord
La Sociétè du Spectacle, 1967

2011-12-05T14:39:00.000-08:00

Bryan D. Palmer
"The night is different, its opposition to day marked by darkness and danger... But its fears are balanced by its freedoms..."

2011-11-22T23:03:00.000-08:00

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939)

"HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

2011-11-04T04:57:00.000-07:00

RUN DMC
‎"We make a mean team my adidas and me
we get around together, rhyme forever
and we won't be mad when worn in bad weather
My adidas...”

2011-10-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

Marcel Duchamp (1975)
" I like the word 'believe'. In general, when one sais 'I know', one doesn't know, one believes. "

2011-10-20T23:35:00.000-07:00

George Lukacs
"The anarchy of the chiaroscuro of the everyday."

2011-10-12T23:32:00.000-07:00

Soundgarden
Black Hole Sun
Lyrics Songwriters: Cornell

In my eyes, Indisposed, In disguise As no one knows.
Hides the face, Lies the snake And the sun In my disgrace.
Boiling heat, Summer stench.
‘Neath the black The sky looks dead.
Call my name Through the cream,
And I’ll hear you Scream again.

Black hole sun, Won’t you come
And wash away the rain?
Black hole sun, Won’t you come?
(…)

2011-10-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

McKinzie Wark
"History is not about time, it is about space. Everything is about space."

2011-10-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
"Your time is limited. Don't waste it living someone else's life."

2011-09-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

Claudia Donà (1988)

"We live in a world overflowing with our own productions, a world in which objects beseige us, suffocate us, and very often distance us from one another both physically and mentally....they make us forget how to feel, to touch, to think. Accustomed to living in a uniform light, we have grown oblivious of the shadows and fearful of the dark."

2011-09-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

Richard Hamilton (1922-2011)

"Pop-art is popular, transitory, dispensable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, sexy, glamorous and a great business."

2011-09-02T00:09:00.000-07:00

John Hodge
(in Trainspotting)

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself.

Choose your future.

Choose life.

2011-08-31T03:02:00.000-07:00

"Horisont"
by Roger Ström, 2008
Painting, Acrylic on Masonit Board

2011-08-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

Demokrata No. 182, August 30, 1944

”At night, I regularly meet an old gentleman. We have dubbed him the ‘sleepless father’. I once asked him: ‘Why don’t you go to sleep?’ – ‘I cannot,’ he replied in a low voice. ‘I have a son up on the barricade near the BGK bank. He is my only son. Ever since he has been there I cannot sleep’.
He smiled apologetically and set out again on his never-ending walk. And I remained silent.”

2011-08-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Frederic Chopin Museum, Warsaw:

"Due to weather conditions and the positive effect that had on his health, Frederic Chopin spent in Valldemossa the winter 1838-1839, in Mallorca, Spain."

2011-07-30T02:13:00.000-07:00

José Craveirinha

"Andaimes
até ao décimo quinto andar
do moderno edifício de betäo armado.

O ritmo
florestal dos ferros erguidos
arquitectonicamente no ar
e um transeunte curioso
que pergunta:
- Já caiu alguém dos andaimes?

O pausado ronronar
dos motores a óleos pesados
e a tranquila resposta do senhor empreiteiro:
- Ninguém. Só dois pretos."

2011-07-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

Núcleo de Artes, Maputo

2011-07-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

Mia Couto

"Se a cidade se fez minha foi, em grande parte, porque nessa altura eu andava a pé. A cidade era minha enquanto calcorreava as sombreadas ruas e tomava posse dos passeios atapetados do lilás que tombava dos jacarandás."

("But if the city became mine, this was largely because at that time I went on foot. The city was mine while I tramped along its shady streets, and took possession of its pavements carpeted with the petals that fell from the jacarandas.")

2011-07-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

Sun City, South-Africa

No Comments

2011-06-30T05:43:00.000-07:00

"Ireneo Funes (1889):

Más recuerdos tengo yo solo que los que habrán tenido todos los hombres desde que el mundo es mundo.
Mis sueños son como la vigilia de ustedes.
Mi memoría, señor, es como vacíadero de basuras. "

2011-06-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

Paper presentation at:
(Poster Format)

CIE 27th SESSION: 10 - 15 July, Sun City, South Africa

Title:
THE CITIES´USERS AND URBAN SENSES
- A qualitative approach to Outdoor Urban Public Space Lighting -

http://www.cie2011.co.za/

2011-06-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

From an air company onboard magazine:

"Travelling is not that simple. It´s not enough to just fly to a far-off city, because we only travel when our attention comes with us. In fact, that´s the most essential baggage item. Very often, we carefully pack our bags with all the necessary objects but we forget to board with the most important thing: our attention."

2011-06-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

"Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system."

2011-06-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

Paper presentation at:

LIVEABLE CITIES TOUR 2011
14th - 15th June NUDA invites to a free Liveable Cities event in Stavanger, Tou Scene.

Title:
LIGHT URBAN DESIGN STRATEGIES
- A qualitative approach to Outdoor Urban Public Space Lighting -

http://www.nuda.no/

2011-06-08T03:45:00.001-07:00

William Stearns Davis, A day in Old Rome

”No street lights. Nobody stirs outside if possible, unless accompanied by friends or slaves with lanterns or torches, and it is no harm to carry heavy bludgeons, for despite the watch there are all too many sneak thieves, cut-purses, and even open bandits.
…at night there is no small peril of being harassed by loose tiles which rattle down from the lofty housetops, or less dangerous but most disgusting, of being drenched by buckets of filthy slops flowing recklessly from upper windows into streets. Then towards dawn your sleep is ruined by the incessant rumbling of the wagons with timber, brick, building stone, cement, and all kinds of food supplies, which have to be excluded from the city in daylight hours.”

2011-05-19T02:57:00.000-07:00

Listening to James Turrell talk at Moderna Muset, in Stockholm a few days ago, couldn´t avoid refering to the illusionistic theatre movement that used the black box as a magic of secrets. His play with perception made me think about Lumiere Brothers centenary contribution, about cinema or moving image in general, and how we ask to be tricked to be amused. Me too.
Then reminded me that you don´t have necessarily to follow any Guru.

Andrea Branzi
"Opacity and nebulosity belongs to the post-illuminist visual culture, where vision is no longer the instrument that allows for the investigation of profound mechanisms upon which reality is based, but becomes a more complex perceptive instrument, independent of any recognizing function and producer of more delicate, poetic experiences that are less clear, but richer than other information."

2011-05-12T07:20:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Horn (2002)
Light imprisoned in the belly of the whale

""
Horizontal roots,
Ramifications of gill-wings
Suckled on cold blood.
Endlessly alone in slippery corridors,
Shapes of air, shapes of moon,
In all this floating where to hold on?
Rubbing the body, to create a fire
In the hotel of unborn words,
Bessie love in Paris, 1928

In the night words are wandering
Like shadows inside the head,
Gliding across the marble of water.
A golden rod interrupts the flow,
Writing in reverse upon black water,
Redeems sentences through waves,
Kindles a turmoil of signs
In mirror transparency.
Trembling words search for a new order,
Asking the moon for orientation
In the dome of interwoven words.

Escape from the belly of ramified echoes,
Whirling around the heart-pulse of the whale.
My shadow invents its fever,
Clasps the cold throb
Sending flames of light
In the center of the heart.
Uncertain if love contains deliverance within the fire.

The grain of seed in the word,
Nourished in darkness,
Unable to fasten the heart-knot,
Is light and shadow at once,
Floating in the sphere.
A drop of air and water
Takes shape within the whale
As a scream.
Birth of words,
Resounding across the waves,
Gliding towards the sun.
""

2011-05-09T04:03:00.000-07:00

Lucy Goodison

"A large body of evidence indicates that early Cretan religion may have included a cult of the sun, apparently practisised by women. This evidence had traditionally been overlooked, perhaps because it jarred with conventional ideas about male-sun, female-moon symbolism."

2011-05-03T15:16:00.000-07:00

2011-04-30T16:11:00.001-07:00

José Saramago

""A viagem não acaba nunca. Só os viajantes acabam. E mesmo estes podem prolongar-se em memória, em lembrança, em narrativa. Quando o visitante sentou na areia da praia e disse:
“Não há mais o que ver”, saiba que não era assim. O fim de uma viagem é apenas o começo de outra. É preciso ver o que não foi visto, ver outra vez o que se viu já, ver na primavera o que se vira no verão, ver de dia o que se viu de noite, com o sol onde primeiramente a chuva caía, ver a seara verde, o fruto maduro, a pedra que mudou de lugar, a sombra que aqui não estava. É preciso voltar aos passos que foram dados, para repetir e para traçar caminhos novos ao lado deles. É preciso recomeçar a viagem. Sempre.""

Some months ago, José Saramago, 1998 Literature Nobel Prize, died in his bed in Lanzarote (Spanish Island), where lived most of last 18 years. The reasons for his move were several but clear. As he once said, a person takes nine months to die, so his house was open to public only a month ago, having had, with me, just a few visitors. Everything still as it was, the clocks stoped at 4pm and, Camões, the twelve years old dog, seams like still waiting for his owner to return. As he also wrote, the travelers may extend in remembrance and narrative.
Myself, as a (relatively) good (relatively) young Portuguese, never had finished a book from Saramago before. Now, after visiting his ”A Casa” I did, and highly recommend it in your own native language.
Now in Stockholm, not far from the same place where that Nobel Prize was to him dedicated once, where todays morning walk took me, I take his Drummond quote "E agora, José?"

""The journey does not end ever. Only the travelers end. And even those may extend in memory, remembrance, in narrative. When the visitor set down on the beach sand and said:
"Nothing else to see", beware not the case. The end of a travel is only the beginning of another. One needs to see what has not been, see once again what has already, watch now in spring what before during summer, see under daylight what seen during the night, under the sun where the first rain is to fall, watch the green harvest, the ripe fruit, the stone that changed its place, the shadow that was not here before. One needs to return to the steps once taken, to repeat and chart new paths alongside these. One needs to resume the journey. Always.""

2011-04-08T08:04:00.001-07:00

Gregory Crewdson

"Light is involved in both the fiction and the reality, and it even serves as an intermediary between the two."

...

Blog also at:
WWW.THINKLIGHT.SE

2011-03-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

Brigitte Kowanz

(Photo scan: "Now I see" 2002)

"Light is a metaphor for life."

...

Blog also at:
WWW.THINKLIGHT.SE

2011-02-21T12:42:00.000-08:00

Ingo Maurer

(Photo scan: Lamp "Thomas Alva Edison" 1979)

"The light by it self affords very limited pleasures."

...

Blog also at:
WWW.THINKLIGHT.SE

2011-02-16T14:31:00.000-08:00

Bernardo Soares

"Reductio ad absurdum is one of my favourite drinks."

2010-12-13T03:12:00.000-08:00

Fernando Pessoa

Old and enormous are the stars.
Old and small is the heart, and it
Holds more than all the stars, being,
Without space, greater than the vast expanse.

2010-12-05T15:52:00.000-08:00

Paul J. Tilich:

"By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange. Since the strange leads to questions and undermines familiar tradition, it serves to elevate reason to ultimate significance..."

2010-11-28T12:32:00.000-08:00

Jorge Selaron:

" Viver na favela é uma arte, ninguém rouba, ninguém escuta, nada se perde, manda quem pode, obedece quem tem juizo. "

(" The art of living in the slum, no one stills, no one hears, nothing's lost, dictates those who can, obeys those who are wise.")

Very seldom, since the birth of this blog, have I taken the chance for personal notes. Was never the purpose from the start. But very rare occasions deserve the exception, that reinforces the rule, as this last days' events taking place in the north area of Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
With all the solidarity to the people of "The Marvelous City", here to you, with love and saudade, with hope for a deserved change to come.

Read more at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AR1JA20101128

2010-11-25T08:21:00.001-08:00

Richard Wurtman

“We are all involuntary subjects on an experience over the effects of artificial lighting in our health.”

2010-11-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

T.S. Eliot

"Shape without form, shade without color,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
...
"

2010-10-26T10:14:00.000-07:00

Jane Jacobs

"The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations."

2010-10-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

Edward T. Hall

" The shift from reliance on the nose to reliance on the eye as a result of environmental pressures has completely redefined the human situation. Mankind's ability to plan has been made possible because the eye takes in a larger sweep; it codes vastly more complex data and thus encourages thinking in abstract. Smell, on the other hand, while deeply emotional and sensually satisfying, pushed mankind in just the opposite direction. "

2010-10-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

José Luis Sert

“The main concern of urban design must be human kind. We are designing not for specific persons, but for the people and with the people. We must give careful thought to the man in the street that looks at buildings and moves around them. We must use our imagination and artistic capacities in trying to realize desirable places.”

2010-09-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

Antoni Gaudi

“Work is result of collaboration and fomented in love. That’s why necessary to avoid those who are source of hate.”

2010-09-27T02:48:00.001-07:00

Alex Krieger

"In the urban condition everything is imperfect. The absence of something wrong is what is totally wrong."

2010-09-23T04:33:00.000-07:00

Ian Mc Harg

“No species can exist without an environment, no species can exist in an environment of its exclusive creation, no species can survive, save as a non-disruptive member of an ecological community. Every member must adjust to other members of the community and to the environment in order to survive. Mankind is not excluded from this test.”

2010-09-11T03:06:00.000-07:00

Farshid Moussavi

"The urban is the space that allows for collective expression, for places where gatherings can happen that wouldn't otherwise happen, that don't cater only to the individual."

2010-09-06T01:31:00.000-07:00

Denise Scott Brown

" Put a group of architects, urban designers and planners in a sightseeing bus, and their actions will define the limits of their concerns. The architects will take photographs of buildings or highways or bridges. The urban designers will wait for the moment when the three are juxtaposed. The planners will be too busy talking to look out of the window."

2010-08-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Walter Gropius:

“Good Urban design represents that consistent effort to create imaginatively the living spaces of our urban surroundings. In order to supersede today’s soul-destroying robotization, the modern urban designer’s exciting task is to satisfy all emotional and practical human needs by coordinating the dictates of nature, technique and economy into beautiful habitat.”

2010-08-25T03:34:00.000-07:00

Paper presentation

Title:
Light Urban Design Strategies: The Cities’ Users

At:
3rd International Symposium for Dark-sky Parks
7th September 2010, Lastovo, Croatia

With this paper, containing a definition of “Lighting Pedestrians”, I would like to invite the audience to consider that on the Lighting of Urban Space there are more than the conventional five Senses into play. When promoting the ambitioned Place Generation, ideally based on emotional exchange, I state that these other "Urban Senses" reveal when we invite people, the human, to apreciate also the "sense of darkness".

http://www.darkskyparks.org/

2010-08-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

Glare: "discomfort or impairment of vision experienced when parts of the visual field are excessively bright in relation to the surroundings" CIBSE 2006

2010-08-21T04:47:00.000-07:00

Federico Fellini’s Nights of Calibria (1957)

“The city is so vast and we have so much to say to each other.”

2010-08-05T01:18:00.001-07:00

Hillier/ Hanson

"The link between society and space cannot be limited to questions of culture and lifestyle."

2010-07-31T04:07:00.000-07:00

(Recycle over “Ray Gun Virus” 1966, Paul Sharits :1943-1993) By me: The waiting man.

2010-07-27T02:42:00.000-07:00

Art and Urban Space

"Poisoned and magic, Deceitful and authentic.
Polluted and sacred, Rain and shine."

2010-07-13T05:38:00.000-07:00

Mario Andretti

" If you have everything under control, you are not moving fast enough "

2010-07-12T05:41:00.000-07:00

Revisiting 1956 GSD first Urban Design conference.

Harvard University - Graduate School of Design

Executive Educatioon Course
MASTER PLANNING

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/academic/upd/

2010-07-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

- Mrs. Hortense
(Paul Scheerbart)

"...we all suffer from light addiction.
It the most modern of the deseases."

2010-07-09T08:10:00.000-07:00

(photo credits: Julieta Cervantes)

Necessary Weather

Dana Reitz, Sara Rudner: dance

Jennifer Tipton: Lighting design

Yesterday evening I had the previledge to be in the audience for the latest creation of 'Cirque du Soleil - Totem - based in Montreal,QC.

Happened to remember the exact performance I collaborated on stage with, photo above, responsible for my initiation on Stage Lighting, back in 1998.

2010-06-23T02:46:00.000-07:00

Ayse Birsel

“To say that something is designed means it has intentions that go beyond its function. Otherwise it’s just planning.”

2010-06-21T03:52:00.000-07:00

Homi Bhabha

“It is always to early or too late to talk about the cities of the future”

2010-06-17T01:59:00.000-07:00

Gerrit Schwalbach

"A form of language inscribed on a culture and perpetuated by the collective memory, makes it difficult for us to believe that different people perceive their surroundings differently, depending on their experience and habits.
As perception is a cultural phenomenon, urban structures may be perceived very differently by people with different backgrounds."

2010-06-07T21:54:00.000-07:00

Roger Scruton

"We should not be surprised to find that not only pattern, but also colour, light, statuary and material, can enter into and determine the true experience of buildings"

2010-05-13T02:26:00.000-07:00

Henri Lefebvre (1968)

“The city historically constructed is no longer lived and is no longer understood practically. It is only an object of cultural consumption for tourists, for aestheticism, avid for spectacles and the picturesque. Even for those who seek to understand it with warmth, it is gone. Yet, the urban remains in a state of dispersed and alienated actuality, as kernel and virtuality. What the eyes and analysis perceive on the ground can at beast pass for the shadow of the future object in the light of a rising sun. It is impossible to envisage the reconstruction of the old city, only the construction of a new one on the new foundations, on another scale and in other conditions, in another society. The prescription is: there cannot be a going back (towards the traditional city), nor a headlong flight, towards a colossal and shapeless agglomeration."

2010-05-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Arthur Henry Reginald Buller (1874-1944)

"There was a young lady named Bright,
Who traveled much faster than light.
She started one day
In the relative way,
And returned on the previous night."

2010-05-05T04:09:00.001-07:00

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: I, iv

”We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.”

2010-04-21T07:26:00.000-07:00

Henrik Reeh

"“In the eyes of the artist, light converts matter (water lilies, weeping willows and water) into color fragments, which – translated into oil painting – can be fixed on canvas by a Monet.
In Frankfurt’s station hall the same light brings about a sparkle that lights up humans and objects, giving them unfamiliar shapes. As if they had a new inner life, phenomena actually dissolve into light structures that can only just be held together in cohesive images of sight and recall:
“Finally the entire glass hall had become a huge sparkling, and from the people light penetrated outward as from colored paper wrappings beneath which candles are burning. Intoxicated by the light, he had gleamed the most himself, with a small patch of wool in his hands hanging forgotten between needles.”"

2010-04-10T03:53:00.000-07:00

CNDC - Centre National de Danse Contemporaine
Angers

Ouverture Studio
8 April 2010 19:00

World of interiors/ Mondes intérieurs

Concept and artistic direction Ana Borralho e Joao Galante

Lighting Design zéNuno Sampaio

Texts from Rodrigo Garcia

Creation within the Alkantara Festival 2010 program, Lisbon

2010-03-09T04:54:00.000-08:00

Gunnard Asplund, Acceptera, 1933

“If we will demand residents of equally high hygienic standard for all, then the requirement of direct access to sunlight for all dwellings will come to give the new residential areas a completely new character. It is, therefore, a necessity to have an open building principle with parallel buildings positioned according to the sun: east-west in the case of through-going apartments, otherwise north-south. The first-named type of building has, however, the advantage in that it permits cross ventilation and gives the residents a truly effective sunny side.”

2010-02-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

Paul Frankl

"The visual impression, the image produced by differences of light and colour, is primary in our perception of a building. We empirically reinterpret this image into a conception of corporeality, and this defines the form of the space within... Once we have reinterpreted the optical image into a conception of space enclosed by mass, we read its purpose from its spatial form. We thus grasp...its content, its meaning."

2010-01-07T05:49:00.000-08:00

Haruki Murakami, After Dark

" Eyes mark the shape of the city.
Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from mid-air. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a gigantic creature - or more like a single collective entity created by many interwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old.
To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of the activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding."

2009-12-14T00:08:00.000-08:00

(Frame: La haine, by Mathieu Kassovitz)

Jan Gehl

"Compared with experiencing buildings and other inanimate objects, experiencing people, who speak and move about, offers a wealth of sensual variation. No moment like the previous or the following when people circulate among people. The number of new situations and new stimuli is limitless. Further more, it concerns the most important subject in life: people."

2009-12-01T06:10:00.000-08:00

Antoine de Saint Exupery (1900-1944)

"We don´t inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."

2009-10-23T02:27:00.000-07:00

Italo Calvino

(Marco Polo describing fantastic cities to Kublai Khan)

” The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what ïs already here, the inferno where we live everyday, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. First one is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the mist of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

2009-09-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

Anders Johansson
Öland - Substance and Shadow

The Light

"There are horizons in the world which are just as wide as that of the alvar. But there are very few landscapes indeed which are encircled by the cultivated land and the countryside and which, at the same time, mock my attempt to make them part of mankind's territory. Neither are there any mountains, which would give some sort of purpose to the sterile plain or even determine the boundaries. What there is here is - light."

2009-09-16T09:23:00.001-07:00

Nan Goldin
Some of your pictures are blurred. You did it on purpose?

"Actually, I take blurred pictures, because I take pictures no matter what the light is. If I want to take a picture, I do not care if there is light or no light. If I want to take a picture, I take it no matter what. Sometimes I use very low shutter speed and they come out blurred, but it was never an intention like David Armstrong started to do what we call, he and I, "Fuzzy-wuzzy landscapes." He looked at the back of my pictures and studied them. He started to take pictures like them without people in them. They are just out of focus landscapes. He actually did it, intentionally threw the camera out of focus. I have never done it in my life. I take pictures like in here when there is no sun or light that I think all my pictures are going to be out of focus. Even Valerie and Bruno and whatever I take, because there is not enough light, and so I use a very low shutter speed. It used to be because I was drunk, but now I am not. The drugs influenced all my life. Both good and bad. I heard about an artist in Poland, Witkacy, who wrote down on his paintings all the drugs he was on. Depending how many drugs he took, that is how much he charged for the portrait. I saw his portrait at the National Museum, a kind of German expressionism, and I loved it. "

2009-08-05T06:18:00.000-07:00

Eduardo Chillida

"From space
with her brother time
under insistent gravity
with a light to see that I can't see.
Between no longer and not yet
I was placed.
Amazement at what I don't know.
Listening to its immensity.
I've tried to look, but don't know if I've seen."

http://www.eduardo-chillida.com

2009-07-31T04:54:00.000-07:00

(Frame by Nan Goldin)

Christopher Alexander

"One of the greatest defects in 20th-century cities was the loss of nearly all awareness of the shape, character, existence, and creation of public space, its enormous public impact and importance. The word "hull" draws attention to these spaces, it helps to make them more solid in our awareness. Above all it encourages us to remember that public space must always be POSITIVE."

http://www.patternlanguage.com

2009-07-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

Merce Cunningham (1919-2009)

"An art process in not essentially a natural process; it is an invented one. It can take actions of organization from the way nature functions, but essentially man invents the process. And from or for that process he derives a discipline to make and keep the process functioning. That discipline too is not a natural process. The daily discipline, the continued keeping of the elasticity of the muscles, the continued control of the mind over the body's actions, the constant hoped-for flow of the spirit into physical movement, both new and renewed, is not a natural way. It is unnatural in its demands on all the sources of energy. But the final synthesis can be a natural one, natural in the sense that the mind, body and spirit function as one."

(April 16th. 1919 - Jul. 26th. 2009, was a North American Dancer and Choreographer.)

http://www.merce.org/

2009-07-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

José Saramago

"All architecture determines a relation between the natural opacity from the majority of materials applied, and natural daylight.
The solid romantic walls would hardly be open to day’s clarity that move the shadows who ultimately would give them meaning. Where shadows seamed to be refused.
The shadow is what allows reading the light."

http://caderno.josesaramago.org/2009/07/15/siza-vieira/

2009-07-02T05:59:00.000-07:00

Fernando Távora (1923-2005)

Architect, founder member of "Porto School", master for Alvaro Siza Vieira and Eduardo Souto de Moura, highlighted the social dimension of architecture, supported on a puristic approach to the Modern Movement.

"Porto School", also composed by: Alcino Soutinho, Botelho Dias, Alberto Neves, António Menéres.

2009-06-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

Piano Improvisation / Video Capture

2009-06-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

(Frame: Hiroshima mon amour, by Alain Resnais)

Tadao Ando

"Just as the great or small dimensions of a space, its low or lofty ceiling, or its continuity or dissected discontinuity are able to move the human spirit, so too should windows be devised with the intent of elevating space to a more sublime dimension. Windows should rouse our emotions and result with raw humanity.

Modern architecture, in my estimation, is far too obsessed with homogeneous light. In such circumstances, even if there is a visual order, we cannot feel the overwhelming will of the architect. Light, after all, is the only thing that can illuminate the hollowed out interior of architecture, carry it to buoyancy, and breath life into it. And darkness, which imparts to light its character and enhances its brilliance, is merely an aspect of that light."

2009-05-25T07:23:00.001-07:00

(Frame: Blade Runner, by Ridley Scott)

Boris Vian
Lecume des Jours, 1947

“Why don’t you put a light on?” Alise asked
“It’s dark in here”

“It’s already been dark for some time” said Chloe
“For quite a while. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. Try it and see for yourself”

Alise switched on the lamp and the bulb gave off a pale shimmer of light.

“The lamps are dying” said Chloe
“And the walls are shrinking. This window here is shrinking too…”

“How can that be?” Alise asked

“I don’t know” said Chloe.
“But look, there’s some light over there!”

The black-whiskered mouse had just come into the room, carrying a tiny splinter from one of the floor-tiles, which gave off a bright light.

“As soon as it gets dark, the mouse brings me a bit of light.” Chloe explained.
She fondly ruffled the fur of the little mouse as it laid its gift on the bedside table.

2009-05-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

Florence Nightingale ("The Lady with the Lamp")
1820 – 1910

“Direct sunlight, not only daylight, is necessary for speedy
recovery, except, perhaps, in certain ophthalmic and a small
number of other cases. Instances could be given, almost
endless, where, in dark wards or in wards with a northern
aspect, even when thoroughly warmed, or in wards with
borrowed light, even when thoroughly ventilated, the sick
could not by any means be made speedily to recover... All
hospital buildings in this climate should be erected so that
as great a surface as possible should receive direct sunlight
– a rule which has been observed in several of our best hos-
pitals, but, I am sorry to say, passed over in some of those
most recently constructed. Window-blinds can always mod-
erate the light of a light ward; but the gloom of a dark ward
is irremediable... The escape of heat may be diminished by
plate or double glass. But while we can generate warmth,
we cannot generate daylight, or the purifying and curative
effect of the sun’s rays.”

2009-05-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

Luis Barragán

"I think that the ideal space must contain elements of magic, serenity, sorcery and mystery."

"Don't ask me about this building or that one, don't look at what I do, see what I see."

http://www.barragan-foundation.org/

2009-04-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

Olafur Eliasson

"History is not external and objectified in a situation but is inside the spectator"

2009-03-28T08:33:00.000-07:00

Louis Sullivan

"It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,
Of all things physical and metaphysical,
Of all things human and all things super-human,
Of all true manifestations of the head,
Of the heart, of the soul,
That the life is recognizable in its expression,
That form ever follows function. This is the law."

It's about time for us to think differently than this 1896 dogma that follows an expression from sculpture Horatio Greenough (1805-1852).

2009-03-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

With all the solidarity to the Portuguese designer Rosa Cortesão Pomar.

Simply to your overview, and think for yourself:

http://www.inhabitots.com/2009/03/26/is-dutch-fashion-house-oilily-guilty-of-imitation/

http://whipup.net/2009/03/25/rosar-pomar-oilily-blatant-ripoff/

http://daddytypes.com/2009/03/22/oilily_aka_the_dutch_portuguese_indies_plundering_company.php

http://craftingagreenworld.com/2009/03/27/big-company-rips-off-indie-crafter-oilily-versus-rosar-pomar/

http://5dias.net/2009/03/27/rosa-pomar-a-ervilha-cor-de-rosa/

2009-03-03T13:33:00.001-08:00

Marshall Mc Luhan

"The answers are always inside the problem, not outside."

2009-02-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

St.Gallen - Switzerland

I leave my latest address to find Portugal welcoming my view over Architectural Lighting Design.

Hope to share it with you.

2009-01-28T07:38:00.000-08:00

Rem Koolhaas, “Whatever Happened to Urbanism?”

"Modernism's alchemistic promise – to transform quantity into quality through abstraction and repetition – has been a failure, a hoax: magic that didn't work. Its ideas, aesthetics, strategies are finished. Together, all attempts to make a new beginning have only discredited the idea of a new beginning. A collective shame in the wake of this fiasco has left a massive crater in our understanding of modernity and modernization."

2009-01-15T06:10:00.000-08:00

Kevin Lynch

"A city that invites the order is certainly better than an ordered city."

2008-12-03T03:46:00.001-08:00

Jørn Utzon

"We wanted to assess the enormous task of re-building Europe. We wanted to determine which values were right, to help provide people with the best conditions under which to live, whethere in the cities or in the country side. Alongside nature and eachother."

(April 10th. 1918 - Nov. 29th. 2008, was a Danish architect.)

http://www.utzoncenter.dk/en/

2008-11-11T04:10:00.000-08:00

Louis Kahn

“But the architects who are designing rooms today have lost faith in natural light. By becoming dependent on the light switch they are content with static light and forget about the endlessly changing character of natural light which transforms a room each second of the day.”

“The layout of a building should read like a harmonious whole made of space and light. Even the room that is meant to be dark should at least receive some light through a hidden opening, so that one knows how dark it is inside. Each room should be determined by its very own structure and by its own natural light.”

2008-10-06T05:23:00.000-07:00

Nam June Paik

"Our life is half natural and half technological. Half-and-half is good. You cannot deny that high-tech is progress. We need it for jobs. Yet if you make only high-tech you make war. So we must have a strong human element to keep modesty and natural life."

2008-09-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

Francis R. Upton, 1880

The electric Apotheosis

“The sunlight poured upon the rank vegetation of the carboniferous forests, was gathered and stored up, and has been waiting through the ages to be converted again into light.
The latent force accumulated during the primeval days, and garnered up in the coal beds, is converted, after passing in the steam-engine through the phases of chemical, molecular and mechanical force, into electricity, which only waits the touch of the inventor’s genius to flash out into a million domestic suns to illuminate a myriad homes.”