Noreile Breen

Light is a free resource and for me, the most important building material of architecture. In the development of my work, I focus on it by making large scale physical models. I use them to explore beyond ideas of space, to its experience.
Luis Barragán is a master of light. He creates spaces shaped by light with surfaces that contain and alter it. I have visited Mexico to gain a deeper understanding of these spaces and what I found was a rich and compelling human spatial experience.
The model in the Exhibition is a personal translation of this experience of a number of his houses, specifically the hallway at Casa Luis Barragán. It captures the character of light I found there. It considers the source and its geometry; aperture detail and their orientation; surfaces and their reflectance; their texture and my relationship to them. Its light – ambient and direct – is filtered, reflected and coloured within a series of interconnecting spaces.
This is an instrument for looking, training the eye to see. Its exterior is secondary and inconsequential, essential only to suspend the interior. A second translation occurs between the light of Mexico and the light of Venice. This model becomes a device, a register of two places, orientations and times.
Noreile Breen