Renee Zhan

Renee Zhan

In my sketches and observations of Newbury Street and the Prudential Center/Copley Mall, I was interested first and foremost in observing patterns of light and its effect on people’s movement and congregation. On my sketches, I tried to indicate areas of light and dark through value alone, but that was not enough to distinguish them clearly, so I used a light blue to indicate areas of light.It was a beautiful day when I went into Boston, 50 degrees and sunny, and I think that played a large role in the patterns of movement. On Newbury Street, people tended to walk in the light and avoid the shadows thrown by the buildings. In the Prudential Center, people tended to walk and sit in the areas of sunlight let into the building by the expansive glass ceiling.

I wondered if the ceiling in the Prudential Center was created in this manner in order to take advantage of the natural draw of brightly lit space. I found it interesting that so many architectural elements of the Prudential center, an indoor space, seemed to be intended to create a feeling of an outdoor space while many architectural elements of Newbury Street, an outdoor space, seem to be intended to give a feeling of an enclosed, mall space. The glass ceiling and the multitude of potted plants in Prudential and the multilayered stairways and flashy window displays of Newbury Street work to create these contrasting images. Attempting to draw attention to this juxtaposition, I set up both of my sketches in a similar composition and perspective, and included these elements which I found striking.