We were inspired by Carlo Scarpa’s geometries and his play on light and shadows in his architecture. You begin your journey in shadow with light bouncing and fragmenting off the stepping geometries of the walls, floors and ceiling. You think the light will guide you through the maze but you are unsure of where to move next. You hit the surrounding walls and enter dead corridors. When you finally think you figured out the space the floors collapse and you fall through the kaleidoscope – a transition space between light and shadow. Here you will experience a change in perception – perception of light, perception of location, perception of being. At the end of the kaleidoscope you fall through the floor and your reality shatters into pieces. In the light maze the lights will disorient you – you must follow the colors forming at the edges of the object to understand where is what.

This project was created by Simon Galecki and Claire Koh for the Virtual Architecture course at Columbia University. We used Rhino 7 to create the level design and then exported the 3d model to Unreal Engine. In unreal we experimented with material properties and animating objects like flickering lights.