Recently I read an article about the most beautifully colored berry I have ever seen. At first I thought it was fake, one of those plastic berries you see in a sci-fi movie, the type of berry offered to the star ship captain by the scantily garbed alien, and as tasty as they are psychosomatic.

Pollia condensata Berries, a little gooey around the edges, but what a brilliant color!
Photos from Wired Science.

The article explained that the Pollia berry was such a brilliant color because the membrane around the berry had a structural color, which was reported in a study conducted by the National Academy of Sciences.

We normally understand color in terms of pigments; materials that reflect back a certain wavelength of the spectrum of light. So remember, a red dye turns things red because the material absorbs all the colors of the color spectrum except for red. This is great for our cardigan sweaters and Valentine’s day cookies, but keep in mind, most dyes and pigments are toxic (bad cookie!) and fade over time due to the exposure to light (and a few too many washings).

So if pigment is how we normally create color, what is structural color? Read more…

We at Metropolis have a longstanding interest in lighting design for obvious reasons. Without lighting excellence—be it subtle, dramatic, tech-savvy, or just plain old fashioned, depending on what’s being lit and for what purpose—our appreciation of the built environment would be primitive indeed. From the urban street to the building’s form and facade to the interior—and all details and scales in between—expert lighting is always at play, yet its importance to the designed environment is often ignored, though its subjects like great architectural form or a seductive interior, are celebrated. As the industry’s annual trade show/conference is about set up shop at the Las Vegas Convention Center (May 7-11), I consulted one expert, Kevin Theobald, who runs a lighting design practice in the UK and is the current president of International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD), an organization whose vision statement promises things like “leadership and excellence” and an “appreciation of the power of light in human life.” And when I saw that the Lightfair keynotes plan to explore technology, entertainment, and energy efficiency, I emailed my questions to Kevin in London to learn more about his views on lighting design in 2012. What follows are his decidedly low-key, refreshingly modest, observations.

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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.

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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.

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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.