Illuminated Dimensions: Providing an Intellectual or Spiritual Enlightenment through Existence

Individuals go through a series of emotional experiences throughout the day when interacting with architecture, which can range from the normative or everyday to a complete spiritual awareness. These experiences can be shaped by the spaces they inhabit, and furthermore, by various qualities of light, providing a heightened awareness or shift in ones perception. By understanding four conditions the architect can begin to design with light. These conditions are; understanding the people that will interact with a space, understanding the task and emotions typically associated with it, understanding how people typically perceive qualities of light, and understanding how the architect is able to manipulate light physically. The architect uses texture, solids and voids, opacities, transparencies, and translucencies to modify light as well as lights characteristics, intensity, contrast (sharp or blurred), color shifts, and temperature to shift an emotional condition. Through an analysis of various precedent studies, using sacred, profane, and natural space, I have developed an understanding of the qualities of light that alter emotion. The programmatic choice for this thesis, a winery and vineyard, demonstrates the importance of light for both its daily and occasional users, where an outline of their activities gives an idea of the emotions they may go through. The quality of space and materiality are then defined by resolving what spaces are to be reserved for the specific articulation of light. These spaces are then designed around the four conditions that shape the light