INNOVATION Boat House demonstrates lighting, material, and tectonic strategies working cohesively to produce a lighting machine. Here, the Wall - usually flat, opaque - becomes a vessel for light transfer. Porosity and reflection work to create a seemingly spacious, light drenched apartment interior through the manipulation of both electric and day-light. The layered Birch plywood members are held apart by stainless steel standoffs with integrated mirrored surfaces that slip behind the Birch slats, allowing light to break the surfaces apart. CREATIVITY An angled design reveals itself in plan; expanding and contracting to redirect light to all corners of the space. Voids are carved from the slatted system to form intimate moments of light, and create depth and angled reflections. Canting surfaces are in dialogue with the program, ensuring that spaces are lit both sufficiently and efficiently to enhance the lighting experience. Taking cues from Louis Kahn, the project’s material characteristics are used to enhance the sense of illumination in the space, allowing a dynamic lighting experience to maintain, even after dark. The design stresses the role that natural light plays in a small footprint by enhancing it though a multitude of mirrors, deliberately positioned behind slats as a strategy to move dynamic daylight through the space. By combination of light and form, the space is airy and dynamic and a great break from the conventions of a typical apartment interior. FUNCTIONALITY Both Boat House’s architectural and lighting strategies were designed to maximize the existing apartment’s narrow floor plate. This project rethinks the wall from a state of solid to one of porosity and reflection. Custom lighting seamlessly traces and intertwines with the interior. Functionally: storage, display, elements of privacy and access, are all bound together by the light machine. Storage components are camouflaged; nested behind layers of slats and mirror. Linear LED lights shift orientation to both conceal and reveal the functionality of the wall, framed lighting is positioned to direct the user to cavities and openings within the built-in cabinetry. SUSTAINABILITY This project makes the architectural element of the wall, the light. This approach drives at using the characteristics of porosity and reflection to minimize the need for electric light. Through this scheme, the application of the wall strategy translates architectural surfaces into the lighting strategy, optimizing a small electrical output for maximum gain. Low voltage LED lights build on the daylight strategy grazing the architectural surfaces to create optimal lighting effects with minimal electrical draw.