World Cup soccer
Shanghai 11th June 2010
Tonight will be the kick off of one of the biggest sporting events in the World, the 2010 World Cup soccer, probably attracting as much attention as the Olympic Games. Though the tournament is held in South Africa, soccer fever has hit towns all over the world, pubs and café’s are bracing themselves for long and rowdy nights, certainly in this part of the world where some of the matches only start at 2.30am in the morning. Retail outlets are cashing in with soccer themed promotions. This morning I saw a McDonalds delivery man with a soccer ball helmet on his head rushing past on his bike 🙂
What does this mean for lighting? From my point of view this is mainly an affair concerning the lighting manufacturers. They have been battling each other for the honor of supplying the lights for the sporting venues, many of them newly built or renovated for the purpose. Because of the enormous publicity and exposure surrounding the event, many of the manufacturers/ suppliers are pressured to go in as sponsors. From my Philips time I know however that such investment often largely pays off in spin off projects afterwards. However you need to have deep pockets to do so, hence you will see that sponsors are always big multi-national corporations such as Philips, GE, Thorn, Osram, Siemens, etc.
At our level as lighting designers it is a totally tough call as we are small practices which are heavily relying on cash flow. On top of that these projects are highly demanding and time consuming, subsidizing such projects is therefore a difficult business decision.
We encounter this at times with very high profile projects where the client plays on the public exposure and mileage you will get out of a project to bargain the fees down. I have such project right now which is likely to be an immediate financial burden. However the spin off opportunities and high profile exposure on completion are expected to open many doors in the future. What is wisdom? Time will tell….
As for the World Cup I will definitely be watching as and when I have the opportunity and will be rooting for Holland and Australia!….. Hup, Holland, Hup….Ozzie, Ozzie Ozzie…Oi Oi Oi!
Smart grid
Shanghai 10th June 2010
Is a smart power grid the way of the future? Many countries are gradually building a smart power grid structure that allows a 2-way channeling of power and information. Traditionally power is delivered to a building through the state owned power grid (though many countries have privatized the power generation companies to allow competitive pricing), with a meter at the off take point measuring the actual usage at location. Once a month or so a meter reader (most of the time by foot!) drops by to collect the buildings usage data, which is then translated at the head office into your monthly electricity bill. There is no real distinction between any appliances or systems that used the electricity. Your monthly bill generally just states the overall energy consumed within that period. There is in principle no way for you to know which of your appliances or systems consumed most energy.
No more so…the smart grid system is a two way system that feeds back information to the consumer about their usage and can alert you about power failures, leakages and actual user statistics. Reversely the power supply company gets useful statistics about user demands over time and seasons and can adjust supply accordingly. Failures can be signaled at base and maintenance staff can then be dispatched to repair any faults without user intervention.
But most of all with renewable energy systems becoming more and more popular and commercially interesting, consumers have the opportunity to sell back their “home-made” energy, such as solar energy, wind energy, etc. In a break through recently the West Australian government, in a move to encourage renewable home energy systems, announced that energy sold back to the grid would be paid nearly double the price of what consumers pay for power bought from the grid (so far it was mostly the other way around, which was not really stimulating the process). Calculations further showed that payback of the renewable systems would as a result be reduced to less than 10 years, which is far more interesting situtation!
So with smart grid systems coming of age the meter reader walking from door to door will gradually become a job from years gone by that our future generation will only read about in the history books!
First things first
Shanghai 9th June 2010
Working in China has its challenges; I have blogged about it before and will probably do so again. Why is it that so many clients have absolutely no concept of design, let alone lighting design? They explain the project to you and expect you to come up with the concept, lighting points and electrical loading a week later…I am not exaggerating…Today was a day as many others. A new client came to visit us in our office, briefed us about the project and then requests us to come up with the façade lighting concept, layout and loading schedule for stage one in the next week or so. Why the rush? But as we found out the building structure is already completed and cladding is in progress…..ouch! Of course they need the lighting input yesterday…somebody obviously did not understand the sequence of the design process….
On another of our projects, 4 floors of a hotel interiors, same story. Level one and level four are conceptually completed by the interior designer but level two and three are still in progress. Can we quickly give them the lighting design for those two levels first, including layout and loading schedules? Yes, next week please, we want to complete the project by year end! Hey…wait a moment…what about an integrated conceptual design approach for the whole project? What about some deeper thoughts, some time for creative explorations or better still, some due diligence? Do we really have to work in such hap-hazard way?
So first things first, let’s first get a more or less completed and integrated architectural or interior concept on the table that can serve as base for our lighting design. Then allow us some proper time to think things through and come up with a “plan”! It is easy to get carried away in these situations, which is oh, so common in Asia, so if we don’ t “hammer” this so important process into their minds right from day one, we will have a tough time redressing the situation later on and we will always be running behind the facts……
Incredible lighting tales
Shanghai 8th June 2010
Sometimes we hear some incredible, interesting or funny lighting stories. Some happen to us in the line of work, some we get to know through others in our field of work. They are generally shared over a drink when we meet or nowadays do the round on the internet.
In my Philips Lighting time there was this story about a senior manager who got caught with alcohol in his briefcase (a half empty bottle of whiskey as the story goes) as he was going through emigration I believe in Dubai. One should know that alcohol is mostly forbidden in the Middle East but as the country is fairly relaxed they just wanted to impound the bottle. Unfortunately the man was drunk and resisted the officers and did not want to let go of the bottle. He ended up in jail and had to be bailed out.
In another incident in the Middle East one of my former Philips colleagues was doing some testing and commissioning of floodlights for a stadium in an outside city location. Somehow bandits (on camels I supposed) entered the area from the desert and started shooting presumably with the aim to rob the site of valuable equipment. The next thing he knows the front glass of the floodlight next to him shatters by a stray bullet! Police rounded up all people on site and put them in custody for investigation. He was released after signing a statement and report of his witness account…
Our friendly representative of Flos/Antares in Singapore, related a story to me today of a different kind. Police in India recently arrested a 3m long track (you know the ones we use for spot lights). The track was send to a site in a taxi but police stopped the taxi for dangerous driving (assumingly because the track was sticking out of the window dangerously). Taxi driver and track were taken into custody at the local police headquarters. While the taxi driver was released, the track was kept “in jail” at the police station overnight. The next day the local agent had to walk the track personally from the police station to site. It was not clear whether a bail was posted for the track 🙂
If you have any stories to tell please do share….
Luminescence
Shanghai, 7th June 2010
Have you ever seen those “glow-in-the dark” insects? And those stick on cut outs of the moon and the stars you can paste on your ceiling and which glow after you switch of the light. Kids love it. Well, it seems that we as lighting designers may start to love it too. We have recently been researching alternative ways of doing pool lighting, to step away from standard pool lights, fiber optic or even LED pool lighting. I think we all know the challenges we face with underwater lighting, from water proofing to electrical safety and maintenance issues.
In our search we came across luminescent mosaic tiles. Tiles that look like ordinary tiles but that glow at night…using the technology of luminescence and fluorescence. I am not sure how they mixed the luminescent pigments into the tiles but we tested the tiles and they definitely glow all night. I would assume that the glow will gradually fade over the years, but the manufacturers claims it will work for many years! We need to do some further due diligence on this one, but this offers new opportunities and in our case we are now mooting the idea of applying this concept to an open air swimming pool…think of it…no wiring, no power supply required…no installation headaches! By arranging the tiles in decorative patterns and contrasting them with darker tiles as a frame, we can create something interesting to look at that can be seen by day as well as by night when it starts glowing!
This seems a more reliable application then luminescent paint of old days that glows under ultra-violet light. I ever used that in a building to create a starry night sky but the paint faded away fairly quickly. Some people have painted complete scenes from 1001 Arabian Nights on their bedroom wall. The paint looks white during the day but comes alive in many colors at night when the normal lights are switched off and UV is switched on. I must say it can be quite magical….
Anyhow it is a side step from our daily architectural lighting ways but certainly one that could become interesting over the years to come with all the pressure on us to reduce our carbon footprints…
Left brain – right brain lighting designers
Singapore- Shanghai, 6th June 2010
Our minds have a left and a right brain ‘hemisphere”, each contributing to our thinking process and decision making when we live our life. According to the experts left brain compared to right brain functions is logic versus feeling, or analytical versus creative. I have always been fascinated by the human brain; it is the most amazing part of our body as far as I am concerned. I was once told that the brain stores each and every image we see (whether in a split second or not), every sound we hear, every smell we smelled… yet we seem to only use a few percentage of our total brain capacity, can you imagine!
Some say we even store these sensory memories from a previous life. Haven’t we all not dreamed things “out of this world’, things we really can’t remember ever having experienced in this life. I certainly have. We also have at times that “déjà vu” feeling, when we are sure we have seen that before even if we haven’t. But the fact is that our creativity is directed by our brain and some of us are more creative then others, some are more organized and analytical then others… it is all to do with how we are wired. I have no idea how I am wired but I do know that in my design work both my left and right brain are providing input, possibly in a balanced way. I am creative but not a genius artist, I am quite organized with a good view on the overall picture, but not a genius business man. In the link provided below you will find a dancer that turns around left or right, apparently depending whether you have left or right brain input. I indeed can see her go both ways. Some only see her go one way only. You can check this story; let me know how you saw the dancer moving…
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/right-brain-v-left-brain/story-e6frf7jo-1111114603615
As lighting designers (running a practice) I believe we need both left and right brain functions, depending however on the strength of each function we turn out to be different designers with different levels of success in our business…
The yellow Ferrari
Singapore, 5th June 2010
What goes through your mind when your potential new client arrives in a yellow Ferrari sports car at the site? What if you have been to his house, sorry mansion, before and you further saw a green Lamborghini and were told these where not all the cars he owned…yes, obviously he likes (fast) cars!
This is what happened to me this week when I went out with my colleague to meet a potential new client for interview. You first think…ok…money shouldn’t be an issue, let’s see what kind of guy we are dealing with, see how we can make this work! We all like clients which have no apparent money problem, don’t we? However you may want to consider how they got rich in the first place! Some of them think they own the world, treat you as a servant and getting paid is often like extracting a tooth…painful!
I have no previous knowledge about this client who seems to be one of those quiet achievers. The architect working with him also cannot really enlighten us about his credit worthiness. So we will have to take a leap of faith if we get appointed … nice projects though, so we are definitely keen. However time will tell if he will turn out to be a great client and great paymaster…you never know. It is often a matter of whether we click as personalities. Our meeting was much about this…getting to know each other.
These kind of clients are willing to spend to be “unique” and have things that others don’t have. Not so much showing off to the general public (these people live quite secluded anyhow) but to impress their friends and business relations for sure. Not long ago I was summoned to the big boss in one of our India projects to present the façade lighting of his building. We were told we had 30 minutes and in that time the architect and the interior designer also had to present some of the latest design changes. I started but less then 10 minutes into my presentation his secretary came in with a file and the next thing we know we are all admiring his private jet and he is asking us about how to decorate the interior…
These people live in a different world……
Life on Mars
Singapore, 4th June 2010
You may wonder where I am going with the title of this blog…today I read in the newspaper that 6 men will be locked up for 520 days in isolation in a special module to simulate a space voyage to Mars and back to Earth. It is an experiment to study the psychological effects on men of a space mission to Mars. The “crew” will have to survive on limited food rations, limited opportunities to shower and all that in a very constraint space. They will only be able to communicate to the outside world through email and to simulate distances; there will be delays of up to 40 minutes in the communication. The isolation facility with an international crew is located near Moscow. Unless someone gets sick and is forced to pull out, the hatch of the module will only open again at the end of the experiment.
What intrigues me most from a lighting point of view is how they have resolved the lighting for such trip. There is obviously no daylight so the artificial lighting would have to provide all the needs we have as a human to survive. I hope they have a lighting expert involved in this experiment…We all need full spectrum daylight, so I can only assume that the artificial lighting “on board” has been developed for this purpose. I read that they will have normal 24 hour days divided in 8 hours sleep, 8 hours work and 8 hours leisure.
How is the power generation? Will they work on solar power? Will they have some training in energy management? In order to simulate daylight I would think that they would have to create day lighting levels of at least 2500 lux or more (this being the threshold level for the secretion of melatonin, our sleep hormone). Will they create varying colour temperatures during the day to simulate the progress of daylight?
Many questions….besides the human psychological aspect in general it seems an unique opportunity to study human behavior under artificial lighting specifically. Productivity, motivation, mood and wellbeing amongst others are influenced by light…I will keep an eye on this experiment and try find out more.
The interior designer
Singapore, 3rd June 2010
Today I had a project meeting with a reputable interior designer, which prompted me to write this blog…
Meeting interior designers is always interesting for various reasons depending their experience and knowledge in the field of lighting. The reputable and experienced interior designers have generally a good feel of lighting and how to integrate lighting effects into the overall interior concept. It is part of their job to understand lighting and the impact of lighting to their interior design concept. But they simply do not have the time nor sufficient up to date knowledge on how to actually achieve the lighting effects. Accepting their own limitations, they appreciate our specialist input and welcome our expertise. There is an ambiance of mutual respect for each other’s expertise and conceptual design discussions therefore are motivated and very solution driven. These interior designers are generally a pleasure to work with and the end results satisfying to all. Work coordination and cooperation is efficient and supportive.
Then there is the group who do not want to admit their limited knowledge in lighting (for whatever reason) and treat the lighting designer as a subordinate with little respect. They always seem to know better and have a hard time to take our advice on board. Discussions are far more difficult and unless you follow their “directions” the general working relationship is uncooperative and strenuous to say the least.
The end result of the last type is mostly unsatisfying for all parties. Lighting details come out wrong, material selections and finishes do not consider possible reflective glare, integrated lights cannot be accessed for maintenance or lighting locations do not match the interior architectural rhythms. The list goes on. The sad thing is that often these interior designers don’t take ownership of the end result and find 1001 reasons to blame the other consultants and contractors.
Good interior designers understand that lighting can make or break an interior…their interior! Those who respect professional expertise and can leave their ego’s aside are the ones which in the end achieve the greatest results with lighting!
Today was a good meeting…. 🙂
Saving money by keeping the street lights on?
Singapore, 2nd June 2010
With the World Cup soccer just around the corner we find more and more stories about the host country South Africa preparing itself for the influx of visitors and wanting to show off their country to the world in the best possible way. We saw that most recently in China (Beijing and Shanghai for the Olympics and World Expo respectively) and it is now happening in South Africa (for the World Cup) and Singapore (Youth Olympic Games later in August). But the story that caught my eye today was a report about the city of Cape Town deciding to leave most of their 320,000 streetlights on during the day.
As it turns out drug addicts steal the electrical cables in their pursuit to sustain their drug habits’. Test carried out by the city on a stretch of 10 street lights showed that keeping the lights burning (with I assume the life high voltage being the deterrent) was massively cheaper than the cost of replacing the stolen cables. Hmmm…interesting approach, but not sure if this is the way, there must be other methods?
It is true that cars in many countries are required to drive their cars during the day with their head lights on. The obvious reason being safety and reduction of accidents. The difference is that cars have their own power generating capacity and thus do not waste actual energy. It is also true that lighting deters crime and anti social behavior, but this is generally applicable at night or in areas with no or starkly reduced day light.
Of course there are much deeper underlying social-cultural issues behind the occurrence of vandalism and theft. Lighting certainly has a role to play in deterring it, but whether keeping the streetlights on during the day is the solution remains to be seen. It feels to me like the reasoning and calculations behind this case are somehow flawed…
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