The week that was 12-16th June 2017

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The week that was 12-16th June 2017

Singapore, weekend 17-18^th June 2017

After a long but very satisfying week and weekend first in Yangshuo and later Guangzhou, I was back in Singapore this week, catching up with my team and our projects on hand. While I am still very much involved in all our projects I do try to stand back a bit with the aim to help my team develop as stronger individuals without me always taking the lead. The company is as strong as its weakest link and I have all interest in supporting the personal growth of each and every member of my team. We are currently engaged in a professional training program that involves the whole KLD team in Singapore to do just that and this week the team reported back to me with some ideas, initiatives and actions they will be working on…great to see the team so involved and committed. We will expand this training to include our other offices in time as well.

This week we have our second China team member blogging for us: Andy Yi. Andy is one of those guys who keeps his head down but puts in a tremendous amount and energy and good will to make things happen. Like Zhaolin, his support in China is crucial and Andy is therefore a crucial member of our team. While we use to communicate via “sign language” in the earlier days, I can now have an actual English language conversation with him. 🙂
Well done Andy, I know it’s not easy for you.

Before I leave the floor to Andy I would like to let everyone know that our blog is now listed (at nr.52) as one of the top 100 best lighting blogs in the world on the feedspot website (Top 100 Lighting Blogs). While I don’t know the value of that listing, it seems a nice recognition for all the efforts put into the blog! Thanks!

Introduction: Andy Yi

Hi, I’m Andy from KLD Shanghai office. I joined Martin’s team about seven years ago. In the beginning I was rather ignorant to lighting design but slowly followed Martin into this field, a mock up room, a villa, a hotel public area, a building facade, the entire landscape, the production concept, meeting reports…Although my English is not fluent making my communication with Martin a bit difficult at times, he can always understand my broken language, give me guidance and help me improve. I left the team some time in between, but after going around I finally came back here, because in here I find warmth, like Martin’s character.

Feelings

Lighting for a whole architectural building may seem only a small part, but also the most important part: without lights, the building in the dark night will be characterless. One of the most basic functions of light and good lighting design is that it can give visual guidance, provide defining contrast and atmosphere in a space, create an ambience and even enhance the performance of the building.

The final effect of the project may be quite different from the original design concept because of various factors, but I always hope that my design can be achieved as close as possible, so I will try to understand the ideas and the needs of the owners and then during the concept design stage we will attempt and compare and assess the different effects. In the design development stage we will consider the details and difficulty that it may create during the implementation stage. When it comes to the fixtures selection stage, I will need to take note of Client’s budget by balancing both cost and quality. Finally during construction stage we constantly supervise the construction site to check on the progress, help to resolve any technical issues, to ensure that the design can be truly implemented.

Every design created sitting at my desk, every travel to a project site or meeting, gives me a greater sense of achievement and my value. I love lighting design and hope to be able to keep doing better lighting design for more projects!

Andy

Below some of Andy’s project images. I left Andy’s original Chinese captions as the images pretty much speak for them selves 🙂