International Lecture: Dean Hawkes - Reflections on light

KADK are very pleased to be able invite everyone to the open public lecture "Reflections on light" by the English architect and professor Dean Hawkes.

 "I only wish that the first really worthwhile discovery of science would be that it recognised that the unmeasureable is what they’re really fighting to understand, and that the measureable is only the servant of the unmeasureable, that everything that man makes must be fundamentally unmeasureable." - Louis I. Kahn

Light in architecture is a matter of both science and art.  The key question, as posed by Louis Kahn, is how these two discourses may be brought together.  This lecture draws upon fifty years of work in research and practice to suggest how the measureable of building science serves the unmeasureable of architecture.  This is illustrated by studies of a sequence of designs for houses built in England in the late 20th century.

About Dean Hawkes
Dean Hawkes is an architect and teacher.  He is emeritus professor of architectural design at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University and an emeritus fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge   His research is in the field of environmental design in architecture.  His books include, The Environmental Tradition (1996), The Environmental Imagination (2008, 2nd edition 2019) and Architecture and Climate (2012).  His buildings have won four RIBA Architecture Awards and have been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale

The lecture is a part of the series of lectures title, The ordinary daylight and focuses on architects that work consciously and qualitatively with the effects of daylight in architecture. 

The series of lectures has included:
Light is a Moving Material by the Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi

Sverre Fehn:  Structure in Search of its Light by the Norwegian architect and author Per Olaf Fjeld

Informal Delight by the Chile-based practice Pezo von Ellrichshausen 
..Where the Light Gets In,   Intentions, Realities, Paradoxes, by the Swedish architect Johan Celsing

A lightness of touch, by the English architect, Stephen Bates from Sergison & Bates Architects

The lectures are organized by the The Light Lab at KADK and is kindly supported by VELUX Denmark.