PLDC 2013 – Day 1
Copenhagen, 31st October 2013
It is with create expectation that I started the day, excited to listen to interesting lighting stories, excited to interact with colleagues and friends in the industry. Days like this start at breakfast and end generally with a drink late at night with in between the navigation between the various presentations that catch your personal interest. I have been told that more than 1400 participants have registered for this year, an increase of about 200 on the 1200 that attended PLDC in Madrid. I am not sure what the actual proportion of lighting designers is, but I would venture that it is probably one third, the rest being from the manufacturer industry and their country representatives including some design related participants with a keen interest in lighting such as architects.
In the format each half of the day is started with a keynote address generally from a non-lighting design background. Today’s morning proceedings were started Sahel Al Hiyari Architects from Jordania, leading us through middle-eastern architecture where light and the cultural context play a very important role. I followed that with a presentation about the use of colour in lighting design and specifically why blue has been so dominant also seen in the light on how we see and how the blue spectrum has different impacts on our human ways of perception and reaction. Other presentations touched on the impact of culture and climate on the way we design and select our lighting systems. The afternoon sessions started off with an outsider’s view on lighting by artist Mischa Kuball who uses light as a medium in his public projects. This was followed by the ever entertaining Emrah Baki who lead us through 19 short stories about light and lighting, myths, dreams and what we think we know about lighting.
Presentations very much depend on the person delivering the story and the entertainment and education level mostly depends on the ability of the presenter to captivate his or her audience. As always the content of the presentations was good, but the quality of the deliveries was a mixed bag of everything. With the get together night sponsored by XAL topping out the day, it was a very good first day and personally I look forward to tomorrow when I will deliver my presentation about the LED Cowboys!
Light Watch 4-185: Impressions from day 1…
PS: For those interested my book is available at the reception desk (see below 🙂 )
The long awaited book compilation of Martin's first year of blogging is available. Order now.
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