In the summer of 2020, Sky Factory introduced the Aperture SkyCeiling, a new series of Luminous SkyCeilings, available in circular or elliptical openings, featuring a unique mechanical design.
The design team positioned the material layers in a way that would seduce our hardwired habits of perception into experiencing volumetric depth through a convincing bi-sensory (spatial and visual) illusion. For the first time, a Luminous SkyCeiling would physically separate the SkyTile (image tile) from the slightly lower perimeter trim and ceiling plane.
The emerging gap or interstice in Aperture’s circular and elliptical portals opens a unique perceptual door. The gap is small (less than 1/2 inch), yet consequential. Looking up from underneath its overhead perimeter, the Aperture’s interstice becomes a gap of indeterminate depth, one that the casual observer, at first glance, might even overlook.
However, this gap acts as a subtle yet powerful element in our focused and peripheral vision and, consequently, informs our pre-cognitive spatial awareness. The result is to detach the sky from the ceiling plane. Caught in this ambiguity, cognition provides the solution–deep vertical space.
The observer may not focus on the gap, but regardless, even a glimpse triggers this illusion of natural outdoor space and engages our hippocampal spatial maps, as well as our felt memories of embodied proximity of the sky.
This is deep biophilic engagement, which is experienced by the body-mind viscerally, reconnecting the observer to the vastness of the sky by the correspondence between the architectural illusion, our imagination, and memories of this universal spatial relationship.
The sleight of mind behind this architectural illusion lies in the fact that it galvanizes our spatial memories of similar sensory stimuli and we are suddenly able to experience what the artist turned illusionist conceived: placing our bodies elsewhere, in a sensed, fully embodied known space of the natural world.
The vastness of the sky is now…inside.
Interior Biophilic Oases
Aperture’s aesthetic trim, two styles of openings (circular and elliptical), and various sizes lend themselves for designing intuitive wayfinding patterns or attractive configurations.
Samantha Keeping, founder and the Principal Designer at Keeping Interiors, a full-service interior design studio based in Santa Barbara, CA, seized Aperture’s versatility to offer creative, signature configurations for her West Coast clientele.
Please contact one of our Sky Designers to discuss your project or application today.
Aperture SkyCeilings are available as circular portals in three diameters (3-ft, 4-ft, and 5-ft), and elliptical portals in two sizes (4’ X 6’) and 5’ X 8’).
