Rain Lights from Within 4 Walls

Within 4 Walls, based in the UK, has an unusually creative array of light fixtures but I'm particularly intrigued by their new 'rain' series, "designed to capture the shimmering sparkle of raindrops frozen in descent".  Beautiful for church.

Unless you have a historic space with historic fixtures, consider putting some money into upgrading your lights.  It's one of the simplest ways to modernize the visual character of the space, and having actual fixtures instead of cheap fluorescent panels quickly signals 'this is a special place'. 

[via materialicious]

Sculptural Lighting by Josh Jakus

Well-designed lighting can be incredibly expensive...designer Josh Jakus simply provides a curly recycled plastic housing for a standard compact fluourescent bulb for a sculptural accent fixture.  Available for $35 (small) and $45 (large) at Fuz.  Very nice for a lobby or gathering space.

But can I call it stained glass?

The pendant light made from Campari soda bottles by Ingo Maurer. About $600 (for soda??) so make your own. Great for the youth room.

Chapel of St. Ignatius, Stephen Holl, 1997, Seattle, Washington

So, the post I meant to publish last week--before the Crisis in the Lab and the Wedding of the Brother intervened-- was about St. Ignatius, another chapel whose design and symbology centers around light.

Steven Holl describes the chapel as a stone box containing seven 'bottles' of light. Skylights and colored glass are used to create seven different qualities of light, corresponding to elements of the (Roman Catholic) liturgical progression:

1. Procession – natural sunlight 2. Narthex – natural sunlight 3. Nave – yellow field with blue lens (east); blue field with yellow lens (west) 4. Blessed Sacrament – orange field with purple lens 5. Choir – green field with red lens 6. Reconcilation Chapel – purple field with orange lens 7. Bell Tower and pond – projecting reflecting night light

The interior of the chapel flutters with patches of colored light, as if inside a very slow-turning kaleidoscope. It is frankly brilliant.

I do find the exterior disappointing; the stone bottles rising from the box seem awkward and piecey, uncohesive. Nevertheless, this is a building I would travel to see.

And having something of a background in optics I love the front door, which has seven lenses (repeating the seven bottles theme) set in at different angles to rotate light into the interior at different times of the evening.

Whether this style of building would suit your church or not, let it inspire you to carefully consider the power of not just the presence of light, but its nature (color, intensity), its progression (time of day and season), and its absence (shadows) as well.

Complete tour available at the Seattle University site.

The best photos of the chapel are by Liao Yusheng at figure-ground.

P.S. I wish I knew what the finish on the (concrete?) interior is, creating the slightly 'blotchy' pattern. Any help?

Church of the Light, Tadao Ando, 1989

Today, two churches that are uniquely centered around light...

The first is Tadao Ando's Church of the Light in Osaka Japan which is well-known in architectural circles but, paradoxically, not in church-y ones.

Though Ando certainly works in a minimalist fashion, the asceticism of this church was as much an issue of low budget as of aesthetics. The contractor donated the construction of the roof when funds ran out and the church pews and the floorboards are made of construction wood salvaged from concrete forms and scaffolding.

Ando is an architect by talent, not by training. He has no formal education in the field but nonetheless received architecture's highest award, the Pritzker Prize, in 1995.

Church of the Light is quite small, and its all-concrete construction has been described as claustrophobic by some. But it demonstrates well the power of light, the possibilities of negative space, and the wisdom of putting your money where it counts, in a strong, central focal point.

[Lovely images, above by Liao Yusheng. An excellent tour of the entire site, which gives some sense of the way the unique concrete forms of the church are experienced, is here. And of course, there is a Wiki on the Church of the Light.]

On Being Light, Having Light, Installing Light

If I had a limited budget with which to improve a church property I would spend it on two things: paint and lighting.

Given the prominence of light symbology in the Christian tradition, I wish churches paid more attention to it. Technology has made its opportunities boundless, and cheaper than ever.

Take a browse through one of my favorites, Tillett lighting, and be inspired.

Electronic Architecture: Immersive Worship Projections at Irving Bible Church

I've never liked the after-thought, aren't-we-modern-now additions of gargantuan projection screens to sanctuaries.

Perhaps they're effective...perhaps.

That's more open to debate than churches are willing to admit.

But they're just plain ugly.

The two giant squares dominate all other features in the room.

And most of us get quite enough face-time with a flickering screen already, thank you.

So I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the approach of Irving Bible Church near Dallas, Texas, where the screens are merely a part of an 'immersive' electronic projection system that forms an aesthetically pleasing whole across the entire front of the sanctuary. Rather than 2-D boxes that flatten the space, the illusory architecture of the projections extends and enlarges it, drawing the eye into the center in classic perspectival tradition that hasn't changed since the Renaissance.

Interesting, then, that they have chosen very traditional architectural motifs for their projections. It's an inexpensive way to glimpse the grand, soaring effects of the great cathedrals, whose craftmanship is no longer accessible or economical for most congregations. And an expression of how much these ancient forms still resonate, how much they 'feel' like church.

For those of you blessed with Gothic or Gothick or Medieval or Victorian buildings already, imagine this sort of effect overlaying the existing architecture...wow.

Photos by Paul. Story at Religious Product News.

UPDATE: This is the work of Camron Ware, www.visualworshiper.com.

Natural light everywhere

Instead of installing a solar cell to collect sunlight, convert it to electricity, and then light an interior lightbulb, why not just bring the sunlight in? The parans system uses a combination of optical collectors and cables to transmit natural light deep into building interiors. Great solution for updating, or preventing, gloomy rooms. Information and photos of installations on their website.

Great Design from Cheap Materials - 3

Though these light fixtures (fancy London restaurant) are by Tom Dixon (fancy London designer), I think they're really big stainless steel salad bowls. Perhaps Mr. Dixon has a sense of humor.

Available at a restaurant supply house near you. Or perhaps already in the church kitchen. Drill a hole, paint the inside gold (or not...I'm thinking not), add a single bulb socket fixture and you're away.

P.S. Note the impact that comes from a simple form when it is dramatically oversized and repeated. Just pointing it out in case you're not a designer sort of person.

Church Furnishings for Cheap (or free!)

www.usedpews.org is a clearing house for more than just pews....all sorts of used church furnishings are on offer, including baptisteries, light fixtures, stained glass, and theatre-style seating, at prices greatly reduced from new. There are even free items! It is searchable by region as most items must be picked up. Return the favor...if your church is getting rid of furnishings be sure to offer them to another congregation. Some of the items currently on offer are above.

Cumulus lights by Steven Haulenbeek

From the designer's statement:

This lighting concept utilizes photographer’s translucent shoot-through umbrellas as modular components to create a scalable light canopy. The accumulation of these umbrellas, hung upside down, creates a cloud form. The umbrella is an object that all people can identify with. In my lighting application, the object is recontextualized to create playful light rather than reference the dark and dreary day. The Cumulus Light Canopy can be made to fit the scale of almost any space just by adding or subtracting its modular elements. It can be broken down to a fraction of its size and can be installed and de-installed almost effortlessly.

A beautiful and innovative concept...you could try DIY but Steven lists these at just $300 for a six piece unit (he'll do custom sizes as well), which is amazingly reasonable for a designer's work and cheaper than loads of far less interesting fixtures.

Fluorescent Lights Done Right

I usually hate industrial fluorescent lighting: unflattering, uninspiring, just blah. So I was impressed by this innovative design that varies the length and color temperature of the tubes and their placement along the ceiling to create an interesting and appealing lighting scheme. Cheap, efficient, and relatively easy to accomplish (lights like this just have one ballast, which could be installed along the ceiling in conventional fashion while the lightbox itself is shifted to fit into the staggered pattern). From Klein-Dytham again, they of the water bottles below.

Inspiration in Glass

Most of the posts are intended to be more inspirational than literal...to provide churches with new ideas and thinking about exteriors, interiors, landscapes, furnishings, and building usage.

For example, here are some of this year's shortlisted winners from the Bombay Sapphire prize (also shown on dezeen), which gives awards for the innovative use of glass. Each of these concepts are profoundly meditative, and could be stunning additions to a church setting.

From top to bottom, "No 091138-05" by Yoav Reches, Zik Group- imagine this sort of stacked sculpture in a window frame as an alternative to stained glass; it looks as though it is assembled from commercial glass of different formulations (thus the different shades of blue-green), and I especially like the quilt-like nature of the block pattern, which would fit my midwestern setting especially well. "Attracted to light" by Geoffrey Mann would be a stunning ecclesiastical light fixture, and picture something like "Singing Water" by Eva Mendez over the altar...wow.