June 2016 - AWA Lighting Designers

Biophilia Essays: Sixth Crossing

When AWA Lighting Designers was brought on board to light what would be the longest-spanning arch bridge in the world, the Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Crossing or “Sixth Crossing” in Dubai, UAE, they would return once more to the universal appeal of the moon and its influence on life systems. Util..

Biophilia Essays: KAFD Parcel 4.11

KAFD Parcel 4.11 The proposed façade of the building on Parcel 4.11 of the King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is dramatically blanketed by a display of linear lights, which from a distance cohere into a single image. Considering the potential of the eight-storey feature, AWA p..

Zen and Jimotsu

In Japanese Buddhism, including Zen, and particularly in sculpture and painting, there exists an elaborate system of religious symbols known as jimotsu (or jibutsu). These symbols appear, often in the grasp of an associated deity, to signify different roles the deity may play in defending the Buddhi..

Biophilia Essays: Brigade Gateway

Brigade Gateway Complex In this integrated lifestyle enclave, one might expect a super-stimulatory artificial environment of advertisements and commercial infrastructure. Instead, the space is centered on water and trees, and it incorporates related imagery throughout. For the façade of the Ori..

Jung vs. Tanizaki

Light and dark possess powerful connotations for the figures of psychologist Carl Jung and novelist Jun’ichiro Tanizaki. Jung wrote that “the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being;” Tanizaki that “were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty...

Biophilia Essays: Tote

Biophilia means “love of living things” and is a term coined by German psychologist Erich Fromm in his book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973). It was subsequently made popular in Edward O. Wilson’s Biophilia (1984), in which Wilson proposed that humans’ fixation with living systems..