Celestial Pillars
Owen Lee
DESIGNERS | Owen Lee
LOCATION | Jolimont-MCG Station, Melbourne
TYPE | Public space / Interior Design
SOFTWARE | 3ds Max 2021
YEAR | 30.10.23
This design research aims to explore how phenomena of light and temporality can engage the context of a train station utilizing its existing site conditions. This study is communicated through the making of interventions; the bridge between the celestial body and site, an experience that engages our visual perception.
These interventions situate at the Jolimont-MCG station. The reason why I chose this station is because of the similar behaviour it has to the sun. Orientation of the train tracks both go towards east and west such as how the sun rises from east to west. They both function in a very repetitious, mundane, and controlled background as both depend on the consistency of time; for example, fixed schedules, peak hours, and their individual paths/orbits/routes they follow.
Their curved form, orientation and azimuth position takes inspiration from the transitory and natural arc of the sun’s journey, the diurnal cycle of seasons in Melbourne and the Hassall Sun Chart. The tip of the pillars is slightly angled as they follow the respective peak altitude of the sun, at 1pm (refer to Sun's Diurnal Cycle page).
From the beginning of October to April, there is a sudden difference of the height of the celestial movement due to what we call daylight savings as the sun takes longer time to set and from April to oct the sun sets faster as it is demonstrated on the sun graph that I made, taller in the beginning of the year and shortens mid-year as it reverses towards the end.
This all started when I had interest in the intangible and temporal qualities of natural and artificial light in the past. It was an exploration of the concept of thresholds, how the passage of time affected the ephemeral shifts in an interior, how artificial light/natural light manipulated the perception of a space, exemplifying textures of surfaces. These explorations led me to a curiosity and interest to the celestial body.
That is when I came across Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, a site specific concrete installation and Jantar Mantar, an architecture celestial instrument in India as I gained an interest in celestial movements and its phenomenon as our planet trace its path around the sun. These scientific precedents also amalgamated and led me to other precedents such as Louis Kahn Institute of Management in India and Tadao Ando’s Koshino House.
