The success of corporate design guidelines ends with holding on to past values while the environment has changed dramatically. Numerous retail brands de ne not only their furniture and materials but also their lighting. While the standards focus on good visibility, interior designers have recognised that lighting can be a powerful medium to communicate the core brand values. Focal glow, creating brilliance and drama helps to emphasise the exclusive and high-end character of a brand. In contrast, di use brightness of light lines underlines the equality. This warehouse look is typical for low budget supermarkets, where accent lighting could confuse the consumer’s expectation for a bargain.
Software-driven LED media façades provide new capabilities for projecting dynamic visualizations of data onto buildings as an integral part of the architecture and urban appearance. Although this trend with luminous facades including dynamic content is often linked with commercial signage and advertising, it has revived a longstanding critical debate about the roles of architectural ornamentation and iconicism. Yet media façades are becoming more than a canvas for static and repetitive brand displays. Some installations integrate sensors and interfaces to heighten their dynamism and social engagement. Using smart networks, their luminous performances are no longer restricted to a single building, but can include several buildings simultaneously. Furthermore, intelligent networks can link façades around the world. Due to these developments, designers, as well as users, need to gain experience in order to meet the challenges of connected cities, participatory models and visualization techniques. The spread of responsive surfaces will lead to new forms of urban communication. Their design will determine if we will encounter superficial monologues or long lasting memories. The following overview of sensor technology reveals the extent to which media façades react dynamically. In addition, this relatively new technique of visual light communication introduces LED light as a data transmitter.
Publication
Urban Data as Light – From Sensor-Driven Media Facades to Data Communication Through Visual Light. In: a +u (Architecture + Urbanism). 2014, 530, p.56-61.
The column “Light Matters” on ArchDaily explores the development of contemporary light patterns, technologies and visualisation techniques to detect historical influences and to critically discuss the progress of light and architecture. Since 2013 the articles have presented for example masters of light like Tadao Ando, Louis Kahn, Norman Foster or Zaha Hadid. Talking about sustainable approaches regarding daylight, illumination or outdoor lighting are an essential part of the column as well.
ArchDaily has become one of the 1,000 most visited websites on the Internet, according to the latest Alexa Internet ranking in 2020. More than 360,000 users visit the flagship English-speaking platform every day, which when combined with the network of Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese sites, creates a daily global audience of 650,000 people: the most visited architecture network in the world.
Klaus-Jürgen Maack, former CEO of ERCO, presented an impressive speech for his product designer Alois Dworschak, who retired after having worked for ERCO for more than three decades.
Klaus-Jürgen Maack was born 1938 in Lüdenscheid. He studied as printing engineer in Stuttgart. From 1965 till 2003 he was managing director of ERCO. He introduced ERCO´s maxim “We sell light, not luminaries” and introduced a paradigm shift for the company. His book “ERCO Lichtfabrik” offers a comprehensive overview of his corporate design and product design approach. With his visionary management the company received numerous awards for graphic and product design. He was awarded with the “Bundespreis für Förderer des Designs”. Maack was also chairman of the board of the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen. Mr Maack started originally an apprenticeship as industrial management assistant in a printing press in Bremen and studied printing in Stuttgart. In 1963, he started to work at ERCO in Lüdenscheid. With leading product designers he introduced innovative luminaire programs. In the mid of the 1970s he initiated the collaboration with the graphic designer Otl Aicher for defining the corporated identity for ERCO as a basis for the visual communication. Projects like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Louvre in Paris or the Reichstag in Berlin are illuminated by ERCO.
Germany-based essayists for the SuperLux book, and leading European light artists and lighting industry publishers and advocates, debated recent developments in the smart light cities movement, at an English-language symposium hosted by the Faculty of Architecture at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2016.
On a benign winter’s evening during the city’s Christmas celebrations, the faculty’s Acting Dean, Professor Hannelore Deubzer, welcomed speakers and delegates to its rooftop seminar centre, the Vorholzer Forum, then introduced Dr Thomas Schielke, a SuperLux essayist, light architecture columnist for ArchDaily, and a communications and education leader with ERCO, to conduct the presentations.
SuperLux speakers at sunset on the roof court of TUM’s Vorholzer Forum. From left: Alison Ritter, Marco Neuss, Richard Cervinka, Vesna Petresin, Thorsten Bauer, Thomas Schielke, Davina Jackson, Joachim Ritter, Nuno Galvao, Peter Droege, Lutz Harrer.
SuperLux essayists Schielke, Vesna Petresin, and the book’s editor, Davina Jackson, spoke about recent developments in urban light art. Another essayist, Peter Droege, clarified the beyond-urgent need to power cities only with renewable sources of energy, but noted that lighting amounted to only about two percent of the world’s total energy consumption.
Three decades ago the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) Headquarters by Norman Foster emerged onto the architectural seen as an exemplary product of industrial design. The open layout with its exposed steel structure generated a powerful corporate identity for the bank. But the restrained atmosphere of white architectural lighting and the lack of distinctive façade lighting has lost its attractiveness after sunset. Now the colorful and dynamic relighting presents a remarkable example of how an architectural icon has shifted from a productivist ideology towards a scenographic image.
Bettina Pelz, curator for light festivals, explains the difference in light festivals within Europe and in a global context. She discusses the developments in cities like Sydney, Singapore, Lyon, Eindhoven, Berlin and Lüdenscheid. About Bettina Pelz: Focus of her exhibition practice is light as material and media in contemporary art, integrated design and digital media. Since 1999, and since 2001 partly in cooperation with Tom Groll, she developed various exhibition formats. She lives in the German Ruhr Region.
Luoxi Hao is a leading expert in China. She worked on the masterplan for the Shanghai Expo 2010. Luoxi Hao is vice chairman of China Illuminating Engineering Society (CIES), as well as Shanghai Illuminating Engineering Society (SIES). She is director of architectural physics branch, Architectural Society of China. She leads the China Illuminating Engineering Journal as Vice Editor-in-chief.
William M.C. Lam (1924-2012) was president of the lighting design office Lam Partners Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received his Bacholor of Architecture degree from MIT in 1949. He has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and MIT and served as a lighting design consultant on more than 1500 projects. His numerous articles have been used as lighting texts in schools of architecture, design, and engineering all over the world. He is the author of the books “Perception and Lighting as Formgivers for Architecture” (McGraw-Hill, 1977) and “Sunlighting as Formgiver for Architecture” (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1986) and published guidelines like “Approach to Design of the Luminous Environment” (State University Construction Fund, 1976). For “Architectural Record” he wrote articles like “Lighting for Architecture” (1963), “Lighting for Cities” (1965) and “North American office lighting over four decades” (1989). Some publication are available online at the website William M. C. Lam.
Interview
Richard Kelly
Communicating Lighting Concepts
Lighting Washington Metro
Lighting Streets
Lighting Restaurants
Decorative Lighting
Energy-efficient lighting
LED Lighting
The interview was done in 2007 in his home in Cambridge.
Howard Brandston shares his memories about the lighting design pioneer Stanley McCandless. Stanley McCandless (1897-1967) received a degree in architecture from Harvard, taught at the Yale School of Drama and became a leading stage lighting designer. His book „A Method of Lighting the Stage” has laid a foundation for modern stage lighting. The McCandless Method has been used widely. McCandless founded his studio in 1933. Howard Brandston, an award-winning lighting designer, has realised many high-profile projects from the Statue of Liberty to the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, explains what he has learned from the innovative stage lighting designer.
Lighting Design Pioneers included in the interview
Seymour Evans
Abe Feder
John Flynn
Richard Kelly
Stanley Mc Candless
Edison Price
Bill Richardson
Lewis Smith
Seymour Evans
Seymour Evens was a genius salesman for lighting in New York in the 1950s and 1960s, explains Howard Brandston. Howard Brandston, an award-winning lighting designer, has realised many high-profile projects from the Statue of Liberty to the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, has worked at Seymour Evans.
Abe Feder
Abe Feder (1910-1997) was a theatrical lighting designer and did architectural lighting design. He was involved in the lighting of 300 Broadway shows like “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot”. Abe Feder illuminated several architecture projects like offices, banks and concert halls and universities as well. Major lighting project were for example the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center and the Prometheus Fountain or the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. Joseph Wechsberg wrote in the The New Yorker about Abe Feder in 1960: „ Feder plays with light as a composer plays with sound.” Abe Feder was a founding member of the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) in 1969.
John Flynn
John Flynn was the conscious of good lighting, explains Howard Brandston. John E. Flynn (1930- ) is a co-author of “Architectural Lighting Graphics” (1962), a reference book for lighting design. Flynn and his research group have published influential papers on the psychological effects of lighting in the 1970s. He taught at Penn State University 1973-1980.
Richard Kelly and Edison Price
Richard Kelly (1910-1977) has been considered as a pioneer for architectural lighting. He founded Richard Kelly Lighting Design in 1950. His lighting projects include Kimball Museum of Fine Arts, the Yale Center at British Art and Studies and the Seagram Building. Edison Price Lighting has manufactured innovative lighting fixtures since 1952. Together they were a strong team for architectural lighting. Richard Kelly was a founding member of the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) in 1969.
Bill Richardson
Bill Richardson was famous for theatre and hotel lighting in the 1950s and 1960s.
Lewis Smith
Lewis Smith (1904-1987) had an incredible knowledge of historic restoration and lighting fixtures. He designed lighting for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York and the National Episcopal Cathedral in Washington as well as for several hotels. Lewis Smith Architectural Lighting was founded 1939. Lewis Smith was a founding member of the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) in 1969.
In this interview Howard Brandston talks about the lucky moments in his architectural lighting design career. He looks back to his two mentors: Gustav Blum, a theater director and teacher and Leon Freund, an artist and a teacher.
