Restoring the Rothko Chapel Skylight to Achieve the Artist's Vision

In the Roscoe church, this is an annoying distraction. It faintly appears in the center of the octagonal room. There are 14 huge black paintings on the walls of the room. The artist Mark Roscoe created these specifically for this space. Paintings. The purpose is to provide visitors with a spiritual encounter with art. Commissioned by sponsors John and Dominique de Menil, the non-denominational church was originally designed by Philip Johnson; Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry of FAIA completed the project as architects. This 3,830 square foot sacred space is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and serves as a forum for social justice and human rights projects. After opening in 1971, it quickly became a respected cultural landmark, despite the poor performance of its skylights. First, the space is too bright. The Texas sunlight penetrated the original transparent skylight, blurring the view of the dark paintings brushed by soft sunlight, which the artist looked for before the chapel opened in 1970. Trying to remedy this situation is not enough. In 1974, administrators tried to control light by placing a translucent cloth "diaper" under the skylight; in 1976, they tested a deflector that deflected light. In 1999, the caretaker used a larger baffle to cover the skylight from below, making the room feel smaller and darker, reflecting the dazzling sunlight from the popcorn-shaped plaster ceiling. The skylight must be completely redesigned. On the occasion of the Chapel's 50th anniversary, the New York-based Office of Architectural Research and George Sexton Associates, a Washington, DC-based lighting design firm, cooperated as part of the current $ 30 million campus plan of ARO to restore and repair the When designing new skylights and diffuser components, the team finally realized Rothko's intentions for the interior of the church. "We're focused on using light to shape space," said Stephen Cassell, director of ARO at the American Institute of Architects. "Now visitors can focus on the paintings." The 's new entrance hall helps visitors adjust their eyes when entering the church from the tree-shaded path. The main hall is very dark, so the dim lighting in the chapel provides a relative improvement. The core of this meditation space is a modified octagonal eye. wide and 19.7 inches wide, the new skylight consists of an aluminum frame and three light diffusion layers. The exterior is an insulated glass enclosure with a weather resistant diffuser. Then there's the project's secret miracle: a finely tuned fixed shutter that focuses light on the church walls, illuminating the painting from top to bottom, even as the sun breaks through the sky. Each of the 280 reflective aluminum plates is divided into eight triangular wedges, which are individually inclined and spaced apart to ensure an even distribution of light below. "The blind system is a subtraction mechanism," said George S. Sexton III, founding director of GSA. "Let the light pass where you want it." In order to optimize the position and color of the grating, GSA uses digital and physical models. The sheets are painted white on the sunlight reflecting surface to maximize reflectivity, while the inward surface is painted light gray to blend with the surrounding gray sound-absorbing plaster ceiling and reflect enough light around the room , To create a peaceful environment. The third diffuser layer of the skylight is a translucent perforated plastic tarpaulin that can camouflage the entire assembly. For Adam Yarinsky, co-leader of Cassell and ARO, FAIA and the son of the artist Christopher Rothko immerse themselves in the history of painting and churches. The gauze reminds me of Rothko's parachute tied under her skylight like a self-made diffuser. New York Study, Church Paintings. In the afternoon of , the interior of the church is illuminated with an equally careful and well-calibrated system. Eight downward-facing digital projectors are hidden in the eye-ring wall, and the light cluster is projected onto the wall through the slanted mirror. To keep quiet, the projector's humming fan and cooling system are wrapped in soundproof material. "We want to hide anything that distracts people and make the space and the painting stand out," Yalinsky said. The tech ring around the skylight is also equipped with speakers, microphones, and security cameras. Rothko Chapel offers a strong private experience while being connected to community groups and surrounding settings around the world, including a sculpture site with Barnett Newman's broken obelisk and a new ARO-designed public building for campus architecture. and the landscape designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz will attract tens of thousands of visitors each year. Kassel said that even in a quiet church, "the light will change with the change of day." "Related to nature".