Sacrificial lamps

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Singapore, 27^th January 2014

In one of my meetings today I had an interesting discussion with the interior designer of one of our projects in regards to what or what not to specify in regards to the expected client’s budget, quite an important discussion considering today’s mind set of clients when it gets to money and getting things done. We all know how our clients always want more for less (do you know of any that want less for more?). So it is fairly rare that a client will agree with your proposed budget, regardless how intensely you try to convince them about the quality, durability or sustainability of your proposed lighting systems. There is this perception that we tend to overdo it and rightly so, we are probably partly to blame for it. You can argue who was there first the chicken or the egg, but the fact is budgets are always being squeezed, or reversely design specifications rarely meet the budget!

It is therefore not surprising that as a designer, in order to meet your minimum design quality targets, you over specify a bit with the knowledge that the client will ask you to “value engineer” it down to a certain budget. You know it is going to come and therefore in anticipation we do at times insert or add some sacrificial “lamps”. Lamps that we know enhances the overall quality but which are not critical and we could proverbially sacrifice them…

This requires quite some thought as we don’t just add them for the sake of adding, making them a visible surplus, these are thoughtful additions that genuinely add to the overall end result but if sacrificed would not affect the final quality and end result.

Light Watch 5-11: In the coming weeks I will use this space to show some lighting themes or applications just for inspiration and where possible related to the blog subject. As we are talking about sacrificial lamps I dug out a series of industrial themed lamps, not sure what the relationship is, but anyhow…