Nasser Abulhasan and Joaquín Pérez-Goicoechea, Principals and Founding Partners of AGi architects, participated as speakers at two professional symposiums held at the Yale and Harvard Architecture Schools last week.
Under the global title “Material Light::Light Material”, the Yale symposium challenged the increasing normalization of homogeneous environments through an exploration of the behavior of light and its interaction with human perception. Light is at the nexus of the physical and the physiological, the material and the virtual, the formal and the phenomenal. How do we invert our normative approach and design what we see by designing what we can’t see?
Joaquín and Nasser had the opportunity to show the AGi architects’ work in the section “Perceptual Light”, sharing ideas and ways of working with two other panelists from Switzerland and the USA.
Credit One by AGi architects (image by Juan Roldán – www.apartamento22.com).
Some of the projects shared by the AGi architects’ team focused on the use of light as a structure, such as the Ali Mohammed T. Al-Ghanim Clinic and “La Ascensión del Señor” Church, while others addressed light from a perspective of depth: Three Gardens House, Credit One, Secret House. Finally, light as physical color was real in works such as Green Core and Hisham A. Alsager Cardiac Center.
On the other hand, the symposium held at Harvard University, After dark: nocturnal landscapes and public spaces in the Arabian Peninsula, explored typologies of nocturnal landscapes common in the Peninsula, and similar hot climates, and looked for responses to the question: how to design for life after dark?
Three Gardens House by AGi architects (image by Fernando Guerra FG+SG).
This time, Nasser and Joaquín participated in the panel discussion “Designing for Darkness”, showing the way in which AGi architects design their single-family homes in a desert climate, adapting their solutions to the local context and environment. The use of strategies to enjoy the outside space with quality, 365 days a year, is something present in projects like Nirvana House, Three Gardens House and Star House.
For further information:
Symposium “Material Light::Light Material”
Symposium After dark: nocturnal landscapes and public spaces in the Arabian Peninsula
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