LIGHTING DESIGN
Lessons Learned: Big Picture Clarity Requires Small Detail Focus
Being able to see the beauty of the ‘big picture’ often requires focus on small details. This is especially true in architectural lighting, where successful projects are a collaborative integration of lighting into architecture, rather than lighting hardware applied to the built form. Hidden uplights, concealed cove fixtures, silhouetted planes, and lighted niches can... »
The Specification Conundrum
It’s a well-known fact that publicly sponsored, even some private or public/private construction projects demand a multi-name specification on equipment: everything from toilets and faucets, carpet and tile, to light fixtures and lamps. As lighting designers, we deal exclusively with the latter but this requirement applies to all products. On one side of the... »
“Less Or Else” is Becoming a Bore
Architectural lighting is poised for a dramatic transition into innovative new applications and approaches to sustainability. To summarize this transition, let’s look at architectural history through the lens of Mies van der Rohe’s famous quip “less is more”: More is more: classical architecture in an age with limited technical and material capability. Less is... »
Variety is the Spice of Architecture
Continuing on the topic of the well-balanced architectural diet and exploring the parallels between food and design (“In Defense of Design“), I come back to the notion of variety. Because of our very energy-intensive lifestyles, we can virtually have it all. Peaches in the winter, cheap beef year-round, and 72 degrees, 50% relative humidity,... »
Perception and Expectation
Light and color have historically been closely integrated with architecture and design, as they can completely change a viewer’s perception of form and space. Color around us is the simple consequence of reflected or transmitted light. It is not a characteristic of an object without light. In Monet’s study of the Rouen Cathedral, his... »
Quality Trumps Efficiency in the Lighting Game
Today, after decades of conspicuous energy and material consumption, escalating energy and construction costs and the desire to be more environmentally sustainable are forcing designers to rethink their strategies and to ask how we can do more with less. More stringent energy codes and LEED energy targets are among the most challenging of all... »
Achieving Transparency with “Solid” Materials
GKD Metal Fabrics is a manufacturer of interwoven metal meshes for large-scale architectural use. They have a great website with lots of project images that really show off the visual effects possible with woven or perforated surfaces. Woven metal fabrics offer a wonderful visual inversion: when the primary illumination is on the viewer’s side,... »
What’s “Efficient”?
Today we’re barraged by claims of “efficient lighting” or criticisms of “inefficient lighting”, but what does that actually mean, or what should we actually be concerned about as designers? In casual terms, we think of “efficient” lighting as using less energy to produce a given amount of light, or as producing more light for... »
LightSpotting: NeoCon 2009 Lighting Highlights
I had the opportunity to walk the many, many floors of Chicago’s gigantic Merchandise Mart for the recent NeoCon trade show. While definitely focused on furniture and fabrics, the show offered some stunning showrooms with lots of lighting inspiration. In general, it is really striking to see how modern office furniture has become so... »
In Defense of Design
Throughout my professional career I’ve always enjoyed making comparisons between good lighting and good food. We obviously need food to sustain our lives, as we need light to sustain our lives. But evaluating “good” lighting on simplistic numerical quantifications such as footcandles or lumens per watt is similar to evaluating a good meal on... »
