The week that was 1-5th May 2017
France, weekend 6 – 7th May 2017
As I prepare this week’s blog entry from my retreat in the South, France is going to the polls to elect their new president, a choice between Marine Le Pen (a nationalist) and Emanuel Macron a youth full pro-Europe centrist. For the first time none of the main stream parties made it to the final round and whatever the outcome tonight there will be a new wind blowing in French politics. Somehow there is always something going on with the French presidents and their wives and Macron kept it going with when we got to know that he fell in love at 17 and subsequently married his former teacher, who is 25 years his senior, quite a love story! If elected at 39 he will be the youngest ever French president. This morning as I went to the local bakery I already found a buzzing activity at “la Mairie”, the town house used for the voting. While Macron has a healthy lead (about 60%-40%) we cannot exclude a surprise a la Trump! Fingers crossed!
From this week we have passed the baton to our Jakarta team who will be taking care of the blogging. It is with great pleasure that I introduce Galih, my long standing colleague and business partner in Jakarta. Since Galih left our team in Singapore to set up KLD in Jakarta he has steadily been growing the business and has been doing a great job establishing our brand in Indonesia.
Introduction
At first, I would like to thank Martin, my mentor in lighting, who has always had faith in me and has kept encouraging me to become a better person in life and work. More than 10 years ago now… wow time runs fast. Early 2007 he opened the door for me, carried my luggage and let me stay with him for a while before I found my own apartment. I was lucky, travelling from Germany after finishing my study in lighting at HS Wismar to join his friendly team. It is easy to tell good stories but here I would like to say that whenever I “fell”, Martin always give hand to get back up. Amongst our team, we have slogan: don’t worry be happy (keep working… 🙂 ). As with all other team members, I don’t see Martin as a boss… I see him as a leader, he guides me and let me learn from my own mistake. He is my teacher, I have a huge appreciation to him. I would like to take this opportunity to say happy birthday Martin (3rd May)! May GOD bless you with Health, Wealth and Prosperity in your life!
Projects
Now I will share my experience through our projects. Let me start from the last part of the project stage, the supervision. It is not less important than the other project stages as supervision is the part where we as the lighting designer have to make sure our design is implemented correctly. Sometime we find condition that needs modification on site in order to meet our concept. First, we have to make sure the fitting supplied is as per specification and that the colour matches with architectural material. This does not always go as per plan, for example:
The fitting colour here is supposed to be same red as the column, but in reality it is not really a match!.
Installation of linear lights
Installation details are also an important part, see image below. Linear lights under steps for instance need to be concealed properly and supported by metal profile, which will hold and keep the linear light firmly in place and help to absorb the heat.
The effect we want to achieve is that of a soft glow on each step. To assure that this is indeed achieved a mock-up is needed (see photo below).
In this example it turned out the linear light was not as per our specification, there is no milky acrylic cover, which resulted in the LED’s being reflected as dots on the floor when wet.
Part of the supervision is also to adjust the light to desired areas, like in this project where the adjustable downlights are to cover the whole area evenly.
this is one of our latest projects called QBig, a commercial building with a huge park located at BSD Serpong (picture taken by a friend).
More to follow in the blogs from our team in the coming weeks! Thanks again for opportunity.
Galih, Director KLD Jakarta
The long awaited book compilation of Martin's first year of blogging is available. Order now.
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