Predicting the mood
Singapore, 11th June 2014
As part of our design services we develop dimming schedules or control matrixes that indicate to the electrical contractor and the dimming system programmer how we would like each of the lighting circuits that are addressable to be controlled. In general manual on-off switches are not that much of concern. It’s either on or off, but when lighting circuits can be addressed by a dimming system (in our case a professional system designed to program hundreds of circuits into pre-set scenes of different mood and ambiences) we need to give direction. That can at times be a daunting task as there are many variables in play that influence the final appreciation of a space such as the object or furniture placing, the amount of daylight to be taking into account, the colour scheme and material finishes of the architectural surroundings. And while we design our lighting layouts and control looping to be in consideration of the envisaged mood and ambience setting, including daylight control and energy saving options, predicting how the combined lighting will come together is predominantly a matter of experience. It requires a great understanding of how light distributes into space and interacts with its surrounding.
Today we had to prepare such dimming matrix for one of our projects to be commissioned soon and generally I am the one who gets to do that, at least conceptually. My guess is probably better than any ones ( 🙂 ), because of my years of experience and I know that once pre-programmed there will be something to see with a general feel of what the mood is to be, but I know also that we will still need to do a lot of fine-tuning to get it right, certainly as in this case also DMX colour programming is involved. Then purpose of this exercise is to get as much pre-programmed and as close to the desired end result as possible to minimise our time on site.
On top of that we know that by the time we get to site still many other elements will be missing such as furniture, loose FFE items and so on. It is always the same and time and again I find clients not understanding why I can’t finish the job! The mood and appreciation of a space is a total experience, it needs ALL the elements to be present so that the right balance can be created.
Light watch 5-98: Mood pictures, light and dark, focus versus diffuse, bright versus soft light, it is all part of setting the mood…
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