The recent hurricane-induced blackout, and the loss of light — both in our homes and in our permanent street lighting system — plunged us into a chaotic and unpredictable environment. It was, at an emotional level, frightening, bewildering, and incredibly stressful. Indoors, it created inconvenience (where are my clothes? where are the kids’ toys?), danger (where are my pills?, how do I manage 18 flights of stairs in the dark?), and the disruption of habitual activities that focus our evenings (cooking, reading, playing games). Outdoors, the looming darkness escalated anxiety. We feared stumbling, bumping into walls; falling into manholes; that a car or cyclist might hit us; loss of orientation (what street am I on?). We feared strangers. And then there was the loss of what I call “glow.” It’s the social experience of light: I see you, you see me, look at everyone around us. “Glow” provides comfort and ease as we go about our nighttime routines amid the delights and enchantments a city offers, abuzz and alive after dark.
When a street lighting system goes down, we may not be able to replace each element, but we can look for useful and imaginative responses that might ease some of our very real ‘functional’ fears, and bring back some of the social dimensions of light. We might consider the blackout as a time machine transporting us back to a Dark Age before we were so dependent on technologies that we can’t personally control. We forget that, for all but a recent moment in human history, we have, as a species, lived without a state-supplied artificial light system. Yet at night we maneuvered around our homes, negotiated stairs, went outside and navigated pathways. We traveled across counties, indeed, entire countries, and explored all the continents available to explore, using the technologies we had at hand, harvesting the potential of starlight, the Milky Way, and the moon.
We need to mine this Dark Age technology, not just because another blackout might occur, but because it helps us to imagine other less electric alternatives for a future in which we may well want to use less light. So here are a few simple principles gleaned from a review of pre-industrial cutting edge technology.
Suzan Tillotson’s lighting design at the Lincoln Center, New York. Photo courtesy Suzan Tillotson Associates.
The work of lighting designer Suzan Tillotson is no doubt quite familiar to Metropolis readers. She collaborated with Rem Koolhaas, Josh Prince-Ramis, Petra Blaisse and the designers of OMA on the now seminal Seattle Central Library. She worked with Diller Scofidio + Renfro on the School of American Ballet, at Lincoln Center, and teamed with SANNA on the New Museum of Contemporary Art, in New York. Recently Barbara Eldredge spoke to her for our Leading Luminaries story. An edited version of their conversation follows. –Martin C. Pedersen
A while back Metropolis identified day lighting as the next big thing in the field. What is today’s next big thing?
It’s definitely LEDs and organic LEDs. I’ve just seen some promising lighting packages. Really small assemblies, with low wattage that can flood a whole ceiling with light.
Tell me a little more about organic LEDs.
I saw the first usable one at Light Fair in Philly last spring and to be honest with you I’ve been trying to use it ever since. It’s very difficult because I haven’t been able to get it on a job. The photometry has been slow. We’ve got it now, but we’re waiting for pricing. It’s not cost effective yet. It’s more expensive than the typical LED but it’s has a lot of promise.
About seven years ago James Benya, the Portland, Oregon-based lighting designer, introduced us to daylighting. Much to his chagrin, daylighting subsequently became one of the most popular and most commonly misapplied green building strategies. When we decided to interview leading lighting designers for our Leading Luminaries story, we knew the outspoken Benya would be one of our subjects. An edited version of his conversation with Derrick Mead follows.
–Martin C. Pedersen
About five years ago, you helped us identify daylighting as the next big thing in the field. What’s happening now?
More and more, we’re seeing every project come in with LEED aspirations. People are looking into daylighting. I got a call yesterday from a professor at the University of Texas Austin School of Architecture, who wanted me to give him a serious set of daylighting examples. I said, “OK, but you’ve got to understand, I’m not going to give you bad examples that have been spun into good ones. I’m going to give you projects that are simple, work fine, but may not be glamorous.” People in architecture and engineering tend to over glamorize projects, because of their aesthetics, and sweep the concerns surrounding energy efficiency and daylighting under the rug. I said, “These are genuine projects, but you’re not necessarily going to see a lot of them published. They’re everyday jobs.” We’re not going to fix energy problems in the world by turning edifice projects green with a whole of money and greenwashing. It’s going to be the other 10,000 projects where we’re going to make the biggest difference.
You’ve been critical of a lot high profile projects that have used daylighting. Why?
Because you’ve got to get the window-to-wall ratio down to a practical percentage. Take the New York Times Building. Here’s an overglazed building, where it’s very difficult for people to work near the windows, because there’s so much light. In order to control it, they had to put in shades, which defeats the purpose of the daylight. The Aria hotel, in Las Vegas, has an almost 100% window-wall ratio, with many of the facades facing the sun. And that’s in the desert! Not a good idea. Of course they employed fritting and other technologies to reduce the impact, but the fact of the matter is you can’t have that much glass without having thermal gain problems. You can underglaze a building, in which case not much happens. It’s an insulated box. But you can overglaze a building, so any savings you achieve by turning off lights are more than eaten up by the solar gain. There is a balance or plateau in most projects, where you can make tradeoffs. But that plateau has a rather limited range. It’s between 25 and 40 percent window-to-wall ratio. At 25 percent you get less daylight but better insulation; at 40 percent you get more daylight but less insulation. They’re both reasonable tradeoffs. You go to a 100% window to wall ratio, and you’re in trouble. That message doesn’t really get out. We’ve got to encourage the community to seek that technical balance. You must design buildings from the ground up with that balance being part of the thinking. It can’t be something that someone tries to fix or fit into the project after the architecture is determined. The New York Times building is a great example, I think, where specific architecture was determined, and they brought in a daylighting expert to try to make it work. In that regard, it’s not a very good building.
For our Leading Luminaries story, Barbara Eldredge and Derrick Mead interviewed eight of our top lighting designers. To create the article that appeared in our December issue, we pulled together all of their interviews and edited them into a group conversation. I think it represents a kind of state-of-the-union for the discipline. The following is an edited version of Eldredge’s lively conversation with Hervé Descottes, the founder of L’Observatoire International. –Martin C. Pedersen
About five years ago, we identified day lighting as the next big thing in the field. So what’ today’s next big thing?
It’s LESS. (laughs)
Less?
Less is definitely a lot more.
What do you mean?
Less color, less uniformity. Be more customized. It’s about precision. I think lighting hasn’t been very precise. It’s been a lot about quantity and light level and making lots of surfaces of light and using the technology at the maximum of the extravagance of the technology.
So it’s about subtlety and form?
Yes. And it’s about time! It’s about time the lighting designer gets the place they deserve.
Do you think that lighting designers have been under-acclaimed?
No. Over-acclaimed.
You think so?
Absolutely. I think every lighting designer thinks they are much more important than they are. Many lighting designers think they’re the architects. I think its good with this recession that everyone is little bit more appropriate in their roles. Design is a team sport. Everybody has an important role. And I think for a long time lighting designers got so excited by this technology construct that they give themselves a little bit more importance than they really were in the course of the project. Lighting is important, but so is subtlety, refinement , and respect for the architecture . Thinking that we’re artists when we’re only lighting designers is not important.
Jennifer Tipton’s lighting design for “Spectral Scriabin” at the Lincoln Center in November 2011. Photo: Ruby Washington/The New York Times
If you talk to lighting designers about new technology—as we did recently—it’s hard not to conclude that the incandescent bulb is headed for almost certain extinction. The reasons seem obvious: LEDs are a lot more energy efficient and much (much) longer lasting. What’s not to like? Well, for now, price. But once economics of scale are achieved and the cost of LEDs come down, then it’s simply a matter of time before the incandescent—at one time, a radical breakthrough in its own right—shuffles off into obsolescence. And that has Jennifer Tipton, the legendary theatrical lighting designer, worried:
“My biggest concern is that the incandescent lamp will completely disappear, and with it the spectrum that it brings,” she told our Barbara Eldredge recently. “This means that all of the color that has been devised over my lifetime will no longer be the color that my eye recognizes. LEDs are great—they add to the toolbox. But if you look at the spectrum of an LED and the spectrum of an incandescent, they’re just fundamentally different. LEDs don’t produce that warm candlelight glow of the incandescent bulb at a low reading. Unfortunately, this has happened throughout the history of lighting. Each new lamp has been colder than the one before it. Lighting today is very, very cold, tilting almost to the inhuman. So I guess I’m old fashioned, like the people who complained about missing the glow of gaslights when electricity came in. But I do feel very strongly that the toolbox should be complete, and that you shouldn’t entirely give up one thing just to have another.”
Lighting for the Yale Repertory Theater’s recently-produced ‘Autumn Sonata’, designed by Jennifer Tipton. Photo: T. Charles Erickson/Yale Repertory Theatre
Related: In Leading Luminaries, we spoke to seven of our top lighting designers about new tools, new technologies, new challenges, and the way forward.
Jennifer Tipton is an award-winning lighting designer, internationally renowned for redefining the relationship between lighting and performance. She has collaborated for five decades with a veritable who’s who of the stage, with such companies as the New York City Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre, Twyla Tharp Dance, and the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and venues such as the Metropolitan Opera. Tipton has won two Tony awards, two Drama desk awards, and was awarded The Dorothy and Lilian Gish Prize. Since 1991, she has served as an adjunct professor of lighting design at the Yale University School of Drama. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2008.
At last month’s NeoCon World’s Trade Fair, in Chicago, Metropolis’s Susan Szenasy and Paul Makovsky captured a handful of key designs—and design conversations—on digital video. Above: Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and the author of The Design of Business, speaks with Makovsky at an event at the Steelcase showroom in the Merchandise Mart supported by the Consulate General of Canada in Chicago.
In the June issue of the magazine, David Sokol writes briefly about the lighting manufacturer iGuzzini’s new U.S. showroom. Below is an expanded version of Sokol’s text, with more details on the company’s history and products.
Even if you’re not yet familiar with the iGuzzini name, you know its work. The Italian lighting brand manufactures Piero Castiglioni and Gae Aulenti’s 1993 Cestello design, which company president Adolfo Guzzini says is “the most copied light fixture ever, for sure!” iGuzzini also partners with that other great Italian architect, Renzo Piano, notably on the California Academy of Sciences.
Guzzini partly credits celebrity collaborators like Piano for his own company’s success. “Architects and designers are always on the move, they ‘pollinate’ different continents,” he says. Not only have global nomads taken iGuzzini products along for the ride, but also they have inspired specifiers in those places to emulate the visiting design dignitary, spelling far-flung orders.
When iGuzzini launched in 1958 as Harvey Creazioni, architectural and decorative lighting was but an afterthought. Quickly the company redirected its efforts, from copper objects and lighting parts to luminaires. A willingness to experiment has defined iGuzzini ever since. Much of the company’s stock was originally conceived as one-offs for architects. Work with Piano yielded the products Lingotto and Le Perroquet, for instance. Moreover, iGuzzini places importance on the science of lighting: “Some of our research activities have led to specific products, such as SIVRA, the first biodynamic light system,” Guzzini says. “Another important issue is the effect of artificial light in museum lighting—on color perception or the shape of the exhibits. Read more…
This ICFF weekend, design lovers making the pilgrimage to the corner of Greene and Houston Streets, in New York’s Soho neighborhood, may experience a brief moment of panic: the storefront that has long been home to prominent displays of Moss’s inimitable wares recently changed ownership. Not to worry, though: Moss still occupies the large retail space next door, and its new neighbor is a worthy heir to the corner showroom. Read more…
Another enticing Expo design that has received less notice so far: the Shanghai Corporate Pavilion, an immersive, collaborative environment dubbed the Dream Cube by its creators at ESI Design. Here’s a video of the 40,000-square-foot Cube in action: Read more…
All-nighters and design school go hand in hand, but the night before graduation? Really? Shin Cho and Stuart Helo—two ‘09 Harvard GSD graduates and the partners of Cho+Helo—spent the early-morning hours before their big day on the last-minute assemblage of their first project as architecture professionals: a jagged aluminum pavilion hovering over the lawn outside the GSD’s main building.
First envisioned last September, after Cho+Helo received a grant from the Korean Ministry of Knowledge Economy, the pavilion took nine months to go from rendering to reality. Recently, I spoke to Helo (full disclosure: he is a friend and former classmate) about the logistics of the project. Read more…
Even if you’re not yet familiar with the 
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