PLDC Day 2
Madrid 21st October 2011
On my walk to the venue we walk straight into the rising sun. It is cold and chilly but it is compensated by the warm rays of the sun and a magical play of light and (long) shadows. Day two started with a key note address from Dr Alexander Rieck, one of the founding members of exciting architectural company LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture). Together with architect
Philippe Rahm’s keynote address in the afternoon they were easily the most exciting and thought-provoking talks of the day. Striking that the most interesting talks about lighting were delivered by non-lighting designers! Both architects showed great understanding of the role of lighting in the drive to create sustainable eco-environment. This was reinforced in the architect’s forum at the end of the day, where both agreed that for them the role of the lighting designer in their sustainable architectural approach is to bring something new to the table, not just providing down lights and engineered lux levels. I can’t agree more … that is where experience will be the key, understanding the limitations and opportunities of the latest lighting technologies and being able to think out of the box… creativity is the magic word here. A real shame that the forum with these top architects was attended by so little people!
It is always hard to predict the popularity and attraction of subjects and speakers and there was clearly some incompatibility in the process with some very popular talks held in the smaller venues on level 5 while the large crowd venues on levels 2 and 4 were at times nearly deserted. I wanted to attend Roger Narboni’s presentation on his Jerusalem city master plan but couldn’t even get in the door, so I moved to Craig Bernecker’s presentation on commissioning lighting with dynamic range photography. Unfortunately I felt he lost his way into too much theory (which like me I assume most of us already knew), with really the tail end of his presentation of real interest. Presentation is an art! The next speaker I attended was Kristin Bredal from Norway with an educational insight in a world little of us know, life above the arctic circle were the suns does not come up for 6 months in the winter ( and likewise does not go down for 6 months in the summer). Instead of developing a city lighting plan for the traditional 10-12 hour night, she had to develop a 24 hour scheme that simulated the various activities (and related brightness needs) during the “day”. Francesco Iannone’s Ascona project, where video capture of the climatic changes in the immediate environment of his lighting installation are used to drive the dynamic lighting of the trees, closed out the morning for me.
I listened partly to both Louis Clair’s and Florence Lam’s presentations in the afternoon, one on heritage lighting, the other on the
lighting of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens but found nothing of spectacular interest, nor were the presentations exciting. Colin Ball with his talk on the darkness of the unconscious at least was an interesting and unconventional detour of explaining light through the centuries by looking at the psychological responses and the meaning that humanity attaches to lighting. As usual many parties are going on at night organised by the various manufacturers.
In Light Watch some more pictures of the event snapped with my Iphone, reporter style, including some OLED’s from Philips.
Light Watch 187: PLDC Day 2
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