Monday, April 25, 2016

SHAMELESS THEATRICS: Taking A Cue From Movie Palace Lighting

Indirect lighting makes the ceiling vault appear to hover.
(Wiltern Theater, Los Angeles, 1931)
Remember the sumptuous and exotic interiors of the great Art Deco movie palaces of the Thirties? Their magic owes a great deal to a technology that was just beginning to mature during that era:  atmospheric lighting.

Today, sixty years on, we can still learn a lot from the innovative lighting techniques of these remarkable buildings.  
The heart of most Art Deco theater lighting was the indirect lighting fixture.  In “indirects” the light source was concealed, producing a soft, glowing light with no obvious source.  The lamp bulbs were often hidden behind frosted or etched glass diffusers, inside niches, or behind pierced metal screens or grilles.  Several different colors of lamp bulb were used in one fixture, and each was controlled by a rheostat (the predecessor of today’s dimmer).  By varying the intensity of each colored lamp, the theater’s atmosphere could be made “warmer” or “cooler”. 
Indirectly lit water fountain niche,
(Pantages Theater, Hollywood, 1930)

Another Art Deco lighting trick was to conceal fixtures in continuous recesses near the tops of walls or in stepped ceilings, producing a halo of light at the ceiling’s perimeter and making it appear to float.  Again, multicolored lamps controlled by dimmers were used to vary the atmosphere of the space.

Still other theater lighting used etched glass panels edge-lit by hidden lamps. Refraction caused the etched design to luminesce while the clear glass remained dark, producing an almost holographic effect.  

Due to its unnatural direction, indirect
uplighting creates an otherworldly effect.
(Egyptian Theater, Hollywood, 1929)
Another atmospheric trick used in these building is indirect uplighting. Since the shadows cast by upward-facing fixtures are the reverse of what we’re used to seeing in sunlight, the effect is eerie and highly atmospheric.  

Shamelessly theatrical?  Yes.  Too wild for residences?  Hmmm. . .

The aptly-named Fountain of Light consists of
frosted glass panels backlit with colored lamps.
(Paramount Theater, Oakland, 1932)
•  Indirect lighting is still one of the simplest and most effective lighting schemes.  The fixtures themselves can be inexpensive, since they’re often totally concealed in the architecture.  What's more, the advent of affordable LED (light emitting diode) lighting has vastly expanded the range of indirect lighting possibilities. For example, LED "tape", which contains rows of tiny lamps on a flexible backing, can be fit into tiny spaces that could never have accommodated incandescent or fluorescent fixtures.

Uplit buddha figure with glowing eyes.
(Fox Theater, Oakland, 1928)
• Since the real impact of indirect lighting depends on the way it’s incorporated into the architecture, try unusual locations like beneath cabinet toe spaces or stair risers to achieve a floating effect.  Staircases can be lit by strip lamps concealed beneath handrails. Use indirects LED lamps hidden behind the front edge of niches to light objects inside, rather than lighting them from above.  The objects themselves will appear to glow.

•  Dimmers, a longtime staple of theater lighting, are becoming much more popular in residential work as well. By having several types of dimmable fixtures in one room, you can produce an infinite range of moods to suit any occasion. High-end dimmer systems even feature programmed “scenes” which adjust the lamps to preset light levels at the touch of a button. 

•  Colored lighting, which fell out of favor by the end of the Art Deco period, was dealt another blow by none-too-subtle usage during the psychedelic era of the 1960s. But it still has its place. LED lighting is available in a range of colors and can also be programmed into"scenes". Subtly varying light color can have a remarkable effect on room ambience, just as it did in the days of the movie palaces. Combined with dimming, varying colors offers a tremendous range of lighting possibilities.
Indirects work outdoors, too. Exterior uplighting
create a dramatic gradation of light from bottom to top.
(Senator Theater, Baltimore, 1939)


Shameless theatrics? You bet.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

A GREEN GIANT

Author's note: Storybook Style, the 2001 book I co-authored with photographer Douglas Keister, is being republished by Schiffer in a renewed and expanded edition that will arrive next Spring. I've written on a number of the architects featured in the book, and in anticipation of its arrival, I'll reprint some of these essays in this blog from time to time. The following piece sketches the life of one of my favorite architects, Carr Jones.

If you think today’s “green” architects are pioneers, take a look at the work of Carr Jones.  An obscure engineer-builder, Jones clung stubbornly to environmental priniciples we’ve only lately come to cherish--and he started doing it back in the Teens.    

 Rear courtyard of the c. 1932 Hermans Residence
in Oakland, California. Jones both designed
and constructed his singular homes.
(Photograph by Douglas Keister)
Jones was born in Watsonville, California in 1885.  He attended the University of California at Berkeley and received a degree in mechanical engineering in 1911.  Around this time he designed and built a simple redwood cottage for his parents in Berkeley, kicking off a long and colorful career as what we’d nowadays call a “design-build contractor”. 

But Jones was ahead of his time in other ways.  He worked in large part with recycled materials--brick, slate, timber, scrap steel and bits of salvaged ornament--from which he managed to conjure lyrically beautiful homes that transcended their humble origins.  

Carr Jones homes were often wrapped around
an interior courtyard that provided a quiet
sanctuary from the street.
Jones’s houses are almost invariably built of roughly-laid bricks left unfinished to show their natural range of colors; many have a gently curving floor plan embracing a central courtyard.  His unmistakable elevations are graced by an array of turrets, dormers, and chimneys.

Interior walls in a Carr Jones home are of exposed brick as well, enlivened by a variety of arched openings.  Overhead, massive, exposed roof trusses of salvaged timber provide dignified drama.  The genius of these houses lies in their perfect balance of the familiar and the unexpected--on the sense of calm lent by an ancient palette of materials, played against the builder’s continual ability to surprise.  In a Jones house, every window frames a charming vista; every room is a spatial banquet; every corner holds architectural delight.

Jones combined salvaged timber and brick with
factory-sash windows and clay floors
to create a uniquely natural style.
(Photo by Douglas Keister)
Though Jones’s houses share many traits with the Storybook Style homes of the 1920s--aged appearance, serpentine curves, and whimsical details--in his hands these features are organic rather than superficial.  It’s a happy result of building in a true medieval vernacular, without undue concern for perfection or popularity.  Jones chose his materials and designs not because they were fashionable, but because he believed in their absolute fitness for domesticity. 

Just where someone trained as a mechanical engineer acquired these refined sensibilities, we may never know.   There’s no doubt, however, that Jones would have been quite comfortable working in today’s era of earth-friendly architecture.

In view of where green architecture is now headed,
Jones's designs are about as old as tomorrow.
Like many pioneers before him, building with an unwavering conscience brought Jones neither financial success nor even much recognition during his lifetime.  When Revival styles lost favor after World War II, the demand for his lovely and personal works became even more modest.  He completed a scattering of postwar commissions in the Bay Area and designed his final residence in 1966, dying on the morning that its foundations were being chalked out on the site.  Jones’s stepson, Doug Allinger, completed the project following his death, and has admirably carried on Jones’s building philosophy in his own work.

Alas, Jones didn’t live to see the birth of the ecology movement in the late 60s, nor the subsequent rise of green architecture--events grounded in the very ideas he’d been practicing for half a century.