When the assignment was first distributed I intended to analytically explore density and sustainability, two topics related to interests I have had for the past few years. I could not find any images to illustrate the subcategories I organize these topics into, and got away from the point of the exploration which was investigating why I was interested in it in the first place.
Listening to music I had collected while visiting Istanbul motivated me to examine light and shadow, passage of time, and rhythm. I have always really liked natural light and its varying qualities: contrasting, ambient, colorful, etc.
Light and Shadow
During the trip I noticed a trend in the mosques we visited. For the most part, the light was evenly distributed and the mood inside was fairly formal. During our trip to Bursa we visited a burial tomb in which the light inside had a greenish tint to it. The inside felt somber and as if it were deteriorating, even though it was well preserved.
One mosque had a distinctly different mood than the others. On the inside, one of the domed bays was transparent to let light flood inside the space. It was active, with many people around it, and seemed to affect the space beyond that bay. You can see a child rolling around on the floor laughing in front of me, something you wouldn’t see in any of the other mosques.
Color/Pattern/Rhythm
The influential spaces we visited in Istanbul have strong geometries and are large spatially. Left unadorned and blank, these spaces and their surfaces appear to lose a human scale to them because the user is overwhelmed by the sheer size. However, many of these same spaces utilize color, pattern, and rhythm to help humanize it. Repeating smaller patterns more to our scale help us to visually relate it to our size.
Passage of Time/Informal Dwelling
Cities that have evolved over a long period of time, hundreds of years (maybe longer), have a mixture of new, older, historical buildings and ruins. The dynamic the relationships among these types was striking as someone who hadn’t been to a city where anything was over 350 years old. 2671 blows that out of the water (The Byzantines established the city around 660B.C.).