INTO YOUR EYES | ART LIGHTING PROPOSAL

Posted on June 18, 2024July 1, 2024 by sla_main_admin

INTO YOUR EYES | ART LIGHTING PROPOSAL

“Into your eyes” is an innovative art installation that aims to spark conversations and inspire actions that mitigate the adverse effects of artificial light on our environment and well-being.

Through a captivating blend of interactive lighting scenarios and immersive soundscapes, this installation invites viewers to experience and reflect on the pervasive influence of artificial illumination in modern life.

By engaging the senses and emotions, we think it fosters a deeper understanding of the often-overlooked consequences of artificial lighting.

SOCIAL LIGHTING WORKSHOP IN BANGKOK

Our Creative Director has just returned from an intensive workshop in Bangkok’s old town. The workshop emphasized the importance of understanding the social context for challenging sites with a 100s-year history and complex user’s typology. This knowledge is crucial for integrating urban and landscape design, as well as lighting design. In a unique situation, we were able to quickly implement and present a lighting mockup to the local communities and government authorities, including the Governor of Bangkok. We hope that this successful workshop will open minds and provide valuable insights for future approaches to urban nightscape, where lighting design plays a significant role.

Light Up the City: Dien Hong Park and Its Innovative Lighting Design Solutions

Lighting design is an essential component of creating a comfortable and inviting atmosphere in any space. When it comes to designing public spaces such as parks, the lighting plays an even more critical role in creating an environment that encourages people to come and enjoy the surroundings. Recently, our team of lighting designers had the opportunity to work on a unique project in the heart of Hanoi – a public park that required not only improved aesthetics but also a focus on the overall night-time atmosphere and the comfort of the visitors. In this blog post, we will take you through our journey of developing the perfect lighting strategy for this project.

The park in question was situated in the heart of the city and had a beautiful, iconic fountain that the city’s inhabitants adored. Our challenge was to integrate the newly designed lighting elements into the existing urban design while also ensuring that the overall aesthetics and comfort of the park were not disturbed. We started analyzing the site and the architecture’s context, which allowed us to craft a lighting concept that would enhance both the heritage of the site and the new urban design.

Our team put on the ‘theatrical lighting’ hat, focusing on creating a sense of drama and emotion in every area of the park. The iconic fountain was at the heart of this strategy. The fountain’s significance was highlighted by providing an architectural lighting solution that best enhances its aesthetical features and creates a visual stage, inviting visitors to come up close and appreciate it. The sense of theatricality and drama that we created drew visitors into the park and encouraged them to spend more time exploring its unique nighttime atmosphere.

One of our primary objectives was to ensure people’s comfort. Visitors need to feel safe and relaxed in the park’s environment, which is why we designed a lighting system that provides ample light to allow people to see comfortably while also offering an intimate and tranquil atmosphere that invites them to relax, socialize, and engage in different recreational activities within the park after sunset. With that, our lighting design created a balance between functional and comforting lighting that brought the park to life at night.

To integrate the lighting elements seamlessly into the park’s overall design, we collaborated with the park’s architect from DESO Architects. Together, we developed a vision for the park that balanced its historic significance and modern design through the lighting’s use. We also worked closely with landscape designers to ensure that the lighting solutions we proposed were natural-looking and complemented the park’s aesthetic elements such as trees, shrubs, and flowers.

Our project was successful as it delivered a completely new experience for the park’s inhabitants that was unique, beautiful and inviting. The lighting design brought life to the park after dark, enhancing its ambiance and comfort for the visitors. Theatrical lighting added drama and a sense of vibrancy that made the park a destination worth exploring at night. Additionally, the lighting concept harmoniously integrated the new urban design elements into the park’s existing heritage, creating a cohesive and attractive atmosphere that visitors would remember.

The successful implementation of the project demonstrated how critical lighting design is in making public spaces more inviting and comfortable at night. Our team’s approach of implementing a theatrical lighting concept that focused on the overall welfare of visitors and harmoniously integrating it into the park’s existing architectural design proved successful and contributed immensely to the project’s overall success. We believe that every public space should focus on creating an inviting and comfortable atmosphere and that it can only be successful with an appropriate lighting strategy. With this project, we hope to inspire other design and development professionals to prioritize delivering high-quality, comfortable, and inviting environments in their projects through the effective integration of lighting solutions.

LIGHTING POLLUTION IN WATERFRONT CONTEXT

As creative lighting designers, we extremely concern about the nighttime environment context, which is very variable from one site to another, particularly when we are involved in seaside projects. The seaside night environment is not uniform; therefore, it can split into at least three zones, from the last point of view on the water until the waterfront, the contact point with a large horizon, and the great spot to enjoy the sunset and starry night. Thus, as lighting designers, we aim to preserve these feelings, while we have to deal with the legibility and safety constraints, and also be aware of lighting pollution.

Less than 100 years ago, everyone could look up and see a spectacular starry night sky, but now, in our modern world, most of us will never have the chance to experiment with the Milky Way. So, today, as a consequence of living in light-polluted cities, people tend to choose peaceful areas to enjoy moments of relaxation, comfort, and the experience of watching the sky along the waterfront is part of this moment. However, it is not easy to fully feel that emotion as artificial light increases and spreads widely which directly impairs our view of the universe and negatively affects our environment, humans, animals, and plants’ health. Most of us are familiar with air, water, and land pollution, but light pollution is being overlooked. The inappropriate or excessive use of artificial light is known as light pollution. Components of light pollution include:

Skyglow – brightening of the night sky over inhabited areas
Light trespass – light falling where it is not intended or needed
Clutter – bright, confusing, and excessive groupings of light sources

A night starry sky

Human and environmental impact of uncontrolled lighting.

Artificial lighting allows us to engage in nighttime activities along the waterfront that would be impossible or unsafe under normal nighttime conditions. Whether it is for allowing us to get from one point to another, security, or simply making a property more attractive at night, our enjoyment of the night will be enhanced by artificial lighting’s usage. At the same time, our lakes or beach at night provide a quiet open dark space that gives us privacy and the opportunity to enjoy the heavens. Imagine you are sitting on a dock during a crystal clear summer night, the water as flat as glass, the dark surface mirroring the sky, the stars shining brightly above, a falling star tracing a path across the heavens. Unfortunately, this precious part of our heritage is often obscured by the glare from a distant source of light across the water or by light trespass from a nearby property.

But it should not be this way. In most cases, making a few simple adjustments to existing lights will make them darker and sky-friendly and easily be able to solve the problem of light trespass that blinds us from our view of the night sky. The goal of sensitive waterfront lighting is to balance the ability to see at night with the desire to preserve the beauty of the night.

As lighting designer practitioners in Vietnam, our mission is to face multiple situations where lighting contexts are not considered carefully, such as the size and rate of lighting, human moving time, human vision, or the fixtures of lighting. Also, the fact is that much outdoor lighting used at night is inefficient, overly bright, poorly targeted, improperly shielded, and, in many cases, completely unnecessary. This light, and the electricity used to create it, is being wasted by spilling it into the sky, rather than focusing it on the actual objects and areas that people want to illuminate. Vietnam is facing increasing outdoor light pollution, according to local experts, and artificial light from coastal buildings affects coastal creatures, disrupts the World’s Ecosystems, and leads the baby sea turtles to their demise, birds and insects, in fact, a full ecosystem.

Human and environmental impact of uncontrolled lighting.

The good news is that light pollution, unlike many other forms of pollution, is reversible and each one of us can make a difference, and as lighting designers, we are on the front row to explain and give answers to action by:

Balancing minimal energy consumption with efficient use of lighting. Especially landscape lighting, outdoor lighting or facade lighting.
Applying timer and dimmer solution to adapt the quantity of light through the night, from sun until sunrise.
Minimizing glare and light with specific luminaires and smarter directional lighting.
Creating a clearly legible nighttime environment considering the functions of the space.
Using the absence of light as a design tool, a lack of light can be used to guide behavior or to protect the natural environment.

A suitable lighting design for the waterfront is aim to make this unique area a destination by night, a special place, playing a key role in special events. This has to be combined with a very attentive analysis and strategy to preserve the natural sky night environment. This dual approach is, in fact, one of the best occasions for a lighting designer to express their art of combining light with shadows, because it requires high preciseness in terms of implementations, light intensities, and general atmosphere concept. Therefore, this is also our role to raise awareness among our partners and clients because the waterfront is a valuable place for commercial. It can be in contradiction with the will to make this place similar to a city zone, both urban planners and architects have a big part of the responsibility, and we are glad to share your point of view from the preliminary strategic lighting master plan to fulfill our goal to preserve the night sky.

INTO YOUR EYES | ART LIGHTING PROPOSAL

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