The week that was…February 2-6
Singapore, weekend 7th February 2015
Monday 2; Singapore: Moon lighting
Most of the times we assume that everybody in the project team understands what we are talking about. Everyone in the team, consultants, client reps, contractors are supposed to be professionals (maybe clients not always as that’s why they hire us) so we present our concepts, talk our technical talk and communicate with the rest of the team under the assumption they understand us and if not they will ask for clarification. Most of the times that is how it works and those who really don’t understand probably pretend they do. But sometimes they are caught out as we found out when we reviewed a landscape installation on site. We had described the lighting effect as “moonlighting” an often used description for a light mounted high up in the tree shining down to the ground to simulate moonlighting, hence “moonlighting”. To our bewilderment one of the contractors however interpreted the moonlighting as a light that had to shine to the moon! While the drawings clearly shows a mounting height of about 6-8m, he decided that they should be mounted at the base of the tree and shine up…quite hilarious actually. Too bad for him he has to redo the whole installation!
Tuesday 3; Singapore: The power of transformation
It is always gratifying to see when our lighting design really transforms a place, the before and after pictures. These renovation or upgrading projects basically start out with a poorly designed lighting installation in the first place. In our case we were called in to try and improve the lighting in a restaurant, pretty ok in its interior design, to more exciting and dramatic visual effects, in short to create some mood and ambience in an otherwise pretty dull looking lighting environment. When you know what to do it looks simple, but for an owner who knows it could be better but he does not know how to achieve it, it’s pretty magical stuff. We went from glary 45 degree beams to 10 degree focussed beams with elliptical spread lenses and antiglare honey-comb louvres and some clever re-aiming to transform the place into a visually totally new experience. Here is the B4 and After.
Wednesday 4, Singapore: Recommendations
After our trip to Kalgoorlie last week it was now time to put all our findings into a report that would give the client recommendations on what to do. What the client thought started of as a simple trip to certify the installed lighting installation, turned out to be a bit more…not only did the installation not comply, the whole set up was wrong in every possible way. The client who had walked with us on the night we did our measurements, knows what is coming, but to us now it comes down to formulate this in a way that is “politically correct” and professionally underscored. The contractor, who was initially present the earlier part of the assessment night on site, but left soon afterwards, assumingly to avoid nasty questions, probably knows what is coming and will be on sharp to deflect any possible directives to change. We have to be prepared for the “counter- attack” ) blaming each and everyone (including the lighting designer and except themselves) to avoid having to spent extra time and money rectifying the installation. So while we know what the reporting has to say, getting the wording and the professional / technical assessment and recommendations right is often a diplomatic and political master piece! I spent the day working on it .J This picture clearly shows how the two lower floodlights obscure the ones behind!
Thursday 5; Bandung; Getting it right
Today I flew to Bandung to meet with my client who intends to open his hotel project over the next few months (the target is June 2015), so we are reaching a stage where site presence of the key design consultants is becoming critical with the lighting now being finalised. In itself it is an interesting project. Originally designed without key consultants (lighting!) and to be run by a different operator, the client decided to change operator and in the process was convinced that hiring a lighting designer was a necessary “evil”. He engaged us last year for a few months to just “mark-up” the existing drawings and agreed to pay a monthly retainer. Over the last year however he has started to appreciate our input and while or initial contract was for a few months only we have silently continued to deliver our services since we are on a monthly retainer and he has kept paying us without complaints. It is nice to see this level of trust and respect between client and consultant. He knows he can call me any time (which he does when he needs something!) and that I am happy to come to site to give his local team direction in the design and installation. Getting it right is his priority and it is good to see the work now coming to fruition.
Friday 6; Bandung: Communicating with the site team
After yesterday’s intensive site inspection, area by area, drawing by drawing, installation by installation, reviewed again at night to assess the impact of the lighting when dark, we spent the morning “smudging” through the landscape taking advantage of a bit of sun and a dry spell. It rains a lot around this time and the site was rather soggy… J After that we sat down one on one with the principal site team members, electrical, architectural contractor, to go through with my findings and communicate to them how to move forward, all this with a client listening in (and putting in his far bit of comment) to make sure his team is on the “ball”. This process is critical to assure good progress will be made over the weeks to come before I get back to site. As I left to catch my plane back to Singapore a torrential downpour unleashed over the city. The road downhill was like a river! I was worried getting stuck and being flooded away but we manage to made it to the airport with some time to spare by which time the downpour had reduced to “normal” rain. The flight left with only little delay. I leave you with a picture of the pool deck and views to Bandung I managed to take without any site mess to be seen! Have a great weekend.
The week that was…
The week that was…26-30th January
Monday 26; Perth: Australia Day
As much as I have difficulty connecting with Singapore’s National Day (which is really for Singaporeans in celebration of their “home anniversary”), I do connect with Australia Day as it has been “my home” for the last 17 years. It is a day where every one relaxes and enjoys family time. The enjoyment is generally much more intense because it is smack in the middle of the summer holidays, hence many people are factually on holiday and schools have yet to restart. Traditionally the beach is therefore one of the busiest places in town with people enjoying their day with a swim, a BBQ in anticipation of the fireworks. In Fremantle the fireworks are launched from the Indian Ocean at Bathers Beach just after sunset, this year with our recently commissioned cliff lighting in the back ground. For the occasion and to validate the colourful fireworks spectacle the lighting of the cliff was kept to a simple neutral white.
Tuesday 27; Perth: Fee proposals
I always struggle to find logic in “seasons” if there is such thing, when it comes to a heightened activity from our clients in moving projects to a start. I am not sure if this is a good sign for the year to come, but there certainly was a flurry of fee proposal activity over the last couple of days with a number of them due this week; perhaps clients wanting to log in their consultants prior to Chinese New Year (which is just around the corner) to assure they can kick of their project in the new (Chinese) new year. We certainly do not complain. It had been very quiet towards the end of last year but this new year has restarted in good shape. What particularly pleases me is that the majority of our new proposals are to existing clients, in other words they have appreciated our services and deliveries and are happy to continue enlisting our team for their new projects. The old adagio that taking care of your existing clients is far more lucrative then continuously having to source for new clients, remains fully valid. Having said that we do look and actively search for new clients and opportunities, but our existing clients will always remain our key focus. Meanwhile I know there is a reason why I like this place… 🙂
Wednesday 28, Perth: Coming to life
Our enduring relationship with visual artist Rick Vermey, continues to enjoy us. While the projects are of a relatively small scale, they all end up being eye-catchers with great visual impact to the general public. Today I went to site to assist Rick with the testing and commissioning of his “artwork”. Similar to the Art Wall (the one that recently won an IES lighting design award), this is of similar scale and impact. The colourful screen separates the ground floor carpark from the street providing an exciting but subdued kaleidoscope of colours and light projections which will give the residential owners some measure of pride once completed. We had done some testing in the weeks passed on an actual sample of the glass (see one of my blogs last year), today was the day of truth where our lighting ideas were coming to life. We were certainly not disappointed…after some tweaking and aiming (with the glare control louvres still to be installed) we were excited with the results. Can’t wait for it to be completed.
Thursday 29; Kalgoorlie: Validating our lighting design
Today we travelled to Kalgoorlie, about an hour’s flight east of Perth. While heavy lightning and thunder storms delayed our flight and caused wide-spread power outage in and around Perth, we ultimately did reach Kalgoorlie albeit severely delayed. Ahhh…the joys of flying, but then, safety first! Our task for the day was the inspection of the lighting installation for compliance to our lighting design parameters. We inspected the physical state of the installation during the day, tested the lights to assure they were all working so that we could return at night with peace of mind knowing we could actually assess and measure the fully working installation (you don’t want to find that out at night, when there is no time to repair any malfunction!). The lighting installation is designed to switch in 3 stages an average of 100 lux for general large ball training, an average of 200 lux for large ball (rugby, soccer) play and an average of 300 lux for local completion cricket, all that with the stipulated standard uniformities. A total of 8 poles illuminate 2 playing fields (East and West) that can eventually be combined to one large soccer/rugby fields adding an extra challenge to the lighting distribution pattern and levels of play required. It turned out that our lighting measurements and visual assessments were not just a formality. Visual assessment had already given us the necessary doubts and formal lux level measurements confirmed that floodlights were wrongly aimed and focussed. Just a look at the way the shadows fall is already a good indicator. On top of that we noted that some floodlights were obstructing the light output of adjacent floodlights causing visually unacceptable and measurable dips in the lighting levels. While we will compiling our compliance report over the coming week, the message to the contractor was clear…go back to the drawing board and redo your home work! We could not sign this off to the client.
Friday 30; Kalgoorlie-Perth: Professionalism rewarded
We had a debrief with the client and flew back to Perth without delays this time. We started collating our measurements and notes into a report that we will likely complete sometime next week. It is clear that we will need to go back one more round, but we have no doubt that the quantities and optical lighting system that we specified will be able to achieve the desired results, it’s just that the implementation on the head frames was all over the place. Meanwhile we had little time to breathe as we had an important appointment to attend, a internationally famed architects office had invited us to present our capabilities to their key project team management in view of putting us forward to the client. This came as a reward for our professional deliveries in another project in which we worked with them for the first time. They were duly impressed by our work and are keen to get us further involved in their projects. Like us they however struggle with the culture in (Western) Australia where most of the lighting designs are done by electrical engineers. Most electrical consultants here have a lighting design department catering for this, but what had set us apart were our creative approaches, renderings and methods of design, all that combined with our international track record. As one of their team directors said, in all these years I have never seen any of the lighting engineers we have worked with present this level of professionalism and creative lighting design in their presentations. I found that a very surprising comment not very flattering for the level of lighting design quality offered to them. What I thought was a basic professional standard of design delivery was obviously something they had never experienced before. The good news for us of course is that we struck a bond for future cooperation, which materialised immediately in a new feature project located prominently along the city’s skyline. We are now tasked to put together a presentation to help convince the client to engage us…the why-do-I-need-a- lighting-designer story.
The week that was…
The week that was: 19-23 January
Singapore, weekend 24th January 2015
Monday 19; Singapore: Traffic jam
I am slowly getting back in the groove; for some reason it really took me a while to get over my jetlag. This Monday was a busy day with many meetings, suppliers, project coordination, at one point of time we had about 15 visiting people scrambling around our office at the same time, including a furniture supplier delivering and putting together a new meeting table, badly needed. With our new and bigger office we can now much easier accommodate meetings, which we gladly initiate, the advantage being that we do not have to go out and minimise our time. The downside being that sometimes when timing is not well coordinated or people are late that it results in a bit of traffic jam as was the case today. We manage though and got a lot of things done…Matt also had come back from KL and had a beautiful areal shot from the top of our project building overlooking the KL skyline. The views from this building are going to be stunning.
Tuesday 20; Singapore: Expert opinion
Besides meeting another supplier and attending to some regular project design issues, my day was pretty much consumed in putting together my expert opinion in regards to a sports lighting project. Several years ago we developed a sports lighting master plan for this city council and have been involved ever since, off and on, in its implementation. This particular job is quite sensitive as it entices the assessment of a sports lighting installation put together by the main contractor. The city decided to only give out the performance brief and leave the design to the contractor. Now the submission is reviewed by us for compliance to de design brief and the required lighting standards. And therein lays the tricky part. Knowing that you can manipulate lighting calculations to provide the lighting results that you want, I needed to dissect these and look at the proposed installation not only for its calculation results (which not surprisingly seemed to comply with the applicable standards) but also on its qualitative and visual aspects. My assessment was pretty damning, basically sending the contractor and its manufacturer of choice back to the drawing board 🙂 .
Wednesday 21, Singapore: The Chinese Lighting Design Association
Over the last year I have become increasingly involved with the CLDA, an association that was incorporate about 6 years ago in the wake of the ever expending PLDA activities in Asia in general and China in particular. In 2012 it signed MOU’s with both the PLDA and the IALD to work together in promoting better and sustainable lighting design and specifically between the PLDA and the CLDA, many initiatives were started. Now with the demise of the PLDA, the CLDA finds itself filling the void left behind by the PLDA with many of former PLDA members now part of the IAC, the International Advisory Council that overlooks and supports CLDA’s development and growth. It is for that reason the Lear Hsieh, it’s president visited me in Singapore to discuss the plans and exciting projects for the year ahead. CLDA aims to be platform for bilateral relationship between Chinese lighting designers and foreign lighting designers, active (or wanting to be active) in China. One of the key events for its promotion being the Declaration of Green (DOG) lighting design which is planned monthly throughout on location in China but now also over the border. Late last year we had the first such “overseas” DOG event at the Hong Kong Autumn lighting fair. It was very successful and more is to follow this year! Jo-Ann Alicia from Lighting Today magazine was on hand to interview us for a feature in a next issue of the magazine.
Thursday 22; Singapore: The meaning of Lux
What stood out today for me was the visual assessment of a nearly completed project; a renovation/ upgrading project of a corporate office here in Singapore. I blogged about it last week, specifically about how management want to see lux measurements to assure themselves that the design is up to scratch without really understanding how we see light and how meaningless (relatively speaking)
plotted lux levels on a piece of paper are. I had yet to go to site at night to “see” it for myself and today (before a review meeting planned tomorrow Friday) I thought I better go and have a look so I can provide my project manager with an informed opinion. I came a bit earlier so I could witness the last bit of daytime as well as the full night time and I was not disappointed. Considering the limitations, scope and brief I think it looked great and above expectation. The targets set out for the design, improved lighting levels (visual
brightness) on arrival and in the lobby, as well as an enhanced sense of arrival in the drop of area (cars and taxi’s come and go dropping off/picking up people all the time) through a better light up of the 3-dimensional space (artwork, walls, etc) came out as conceptualised. It showed me again that lux levels don’t tell much of the story, seeing is believing…
Friday 23; Singapore: The difficult client
A day where diplomacy and careful manoeuvring was required. On several project fronts we are dealing with difficult clients or project managers who, if not managed in terms of expectation and principles, could potentially turn our life to “hell”. It feels strange to say that as the company is known for its professional attitude and cooperation, but at times our serviceability is mistaken for gullibility and when that looks like happening I need to step in, as I had to do today. We are professionals, who are paid to deliver creative, qualitative and considerate solutions to our clients and in that process we want to be respected as such and not be taken for a ride because of other project members short comings. We need to stand our professional ground and front up accordingly. I had to deal subsequently with unreasonable travel demands, unacceptable alternative light fittings that were “imposed” into the project (budget of course) and contractors/suppliers not assuming their end-responsibility by misdirecting the client to manufacturers and consultants (including us); in fact taking their hands off (the ”it wasn’t us!” attitude). I personally cannot stand people who do not own up and hence had to come in action a few times today to “redirect” the clients attention where it is due. All that with diplomatic and considerate moves backed up with professional reasoning…oh the joys of running a professional practice!
I leave you with a proof print of the IGuzzini ad that will appear in the upcoming issue of Scoop magazine, featuring our award winning art wall…
The week that was…12-16 January 2015
Singapore, weekend 17tth January 2015
A new year and a new look for 2015.I had been a bit reluctant to restart my blogging now for a 6th season as I was also getting used again to not having to blog every day. Not that I don’t like it, but after blogging daily for 5 years in a row I feel it’s time to tep back a bit. Relieve myself of the daily “pressure” to upload my blog. I have many other interests and obviously 4 years of blogging materials that I wish to somehow convert into books 2 and 3. I have the first concepts in mind, they would be different then my first book but would draw on the same contents so tediously built up over the years. I will share this with you when my plans are bit more concrete. For now I have decided to step down a gear an blog on a weekly basis. No longer a day in the life of light, but the week that was, a reflection of the past working week, illustrated with one single picture a day that sort of sums up the mood or event of the day, so here we go!
Monday 12; Singapore:
My first day back in the office after a really enjoyable holiday spent with my family and friends in Holland and France over Xmas end New Year. Having arrived back the day before I was obviously still jet-lagging but most of all still very much consumed with the events of the week before in Paris. As it happened I was only a few hundred meters away when the terrorists attack against the Charlie Hebdo magazine happened, having lunch in a restaurant near the Place de la Bastille. While we saw the police coming and going my daughter (who studies in Paris) assured me that it happened all the time so we did not really pay much attention as did no one else in the restaurant. Later we walked passed the blockades to our afternoon destination, the newly renovated Picasso Museum (beautiful by the way!) also just a few blocks away, again no-one seemed to know or care. Only later in the evening when we were back in the hotel and friends and family started to text us whether we were ok we switched on the TV to learn what was going on! The morale…while the whole world is glued to the TV following the dramatic events unfold, life just around the corner goes on as if nothing happened! As a blogger and someone who expresses my opinions publicly, this of course did affect me. Otherwise my first day in the office was mostly spent catching up with the team and bringing myself up to speed with all the latest project developments.
Tuesday 13, Wednesday 14, Jakarta:
Only a day in the office and off I had to go again this time to Jakarta. This was already planned before Xmas and one of the main reasons I was back in the office on Monday. This trip around all key consultants (interior, lighting and operator) were present to iron out all outstanding issues and set a target date for the soft opening. It has been a long and winding road this prestigious hotel project, that is for sure. Started in 2006 (!) we are now finally having the finish line in sight but with still quite some hurdles to take. We have passed the finger pointing stage and our now all pulling together to make the best out of it. Poor workmanship, shortcuts and unapproved “alternative” specifications have created quite a challenge for the team, but it is now what it is and we are all determined to use our individual expertise to make the best of it. There is no doubt that the end product will be impressive, but as designers we all know what it could have been and I think that is what bites us most. All in all the two days were spent constructively with agreed directions to pursue. Grace and I also managed to get some preliminary testing and programming done to give us a bit of confidence that we will be able to achieve something at the end.
Thursday 15; Singapore:
Back in the office it was mostly catching up with a big back log of emails and project matters laying on my table, waiting to be cleared. Besides that we also put in our efforts to issue our Jakarta meeting minutes to provide the project management team with our input for the work necessary in the weeks to come. Still some of the same ongoing issues that keep plaguing us, the inability of the dimming system and the lamps in the ballroom chandelier to achieve nice dimming levels, we keep testing different lamps, trailing edge, leading edge, it is becoming really frustrating as the lamps also show inconsistent dimming behaviour. We are at the point to throw out all the lamps and go with the lamps that the dimming specialist recommends so we can leave the tit-for-tat communication between them with an increasingly frustrated client and ourselves trying to mediate a solution. In this way the responsibility is narrowed down. The chandelier manufacturer should also not escape responsibility; in the end he is the one delivering the end product and he has the responsibility to make sure his product works. Hiding behind the consultants and the dimming and lamp manufacturers does not show a responsible attitude. It remains a tricky situation…and all that no doubt somehow initially fuelled by the LED cowboys….
Friday 16th; Singapore:
While part of the team left yesterday for a lighting workshop in Thailand, I used the time with my key team members to look into the future. We have a distinct impression that work is slowing down with little new projects signed, though this is quite common in the lull period between Xmas and Chinese New Year. Nevertheless better not let our guards down and look ahead to potential new work. We had a great year past and certainly would like to maintain the momentum going into the new year.Key issue I dealt with on this Friday was the clients wish to see isolux plots of the actually installed installation. While we had provided these as part of our design with the manufacturers photometric data, providing these after installation based on the actual installation is a different thing all together. We generally provide spot check measurements in critical areas to check conformity of our installation with our design specifications. The spot measurements turned out fully satisfactory. However the client wanted us to execute these measurements as per our design calculation plot! After I stepped in we came to some sort of compromise with spot measurements (in an office lobby) every 2m or so; no isolux lines! I did give an explanation on how we do NOT see lux levels but reflections and that as such 100 lux on a mat black surface has a totally different appreciation then the same lux level on a glossy white surface. Add to that the fact that the human eye can hardly detect any lighting level change if the difference is less than 50-100 lux and you get the picture. We did our spot measurements at a slightly higher and more regular density which finally satisfied the client. I knocked off early with still jet lag in my body…
The week that was…
12.12.1212
Perth, 12th December 2014
It seems a fitting date to end season 5 of blogging, the 12th of the 12th after coincidentally 1212 blogs! As it happens todays blog is number 1212, quite a respectable number of what started as a challenge to myself 5 years ago in 2009! Ever since I arrived in Asia now many years ago I have been fascinated by things like Feng Shui and numerology, things I got introduced to in this part of the world, so on occasions like this, when the numbers are auspicious it is a good time for decisions or special occasions.
This year has zipped past it seems, Xmas is around the corner with 2015 looming as another exciting year ahead. In retrospect this year has seen me travel a lot for my guest speaking appearances from the middle east to the us and in between at a rate of about once a month. Quite a number of projects got successfully completed with a few more on the brink of being finished; one the recipient of an IES lighting design award. We moved to a new office in Singapore and Jakarta, expanded our staff base and restarted on the ground operations in China, with an office and a dedicated project team in Shanghai.
It is a good time to say thanks to everyone, specifically my loyal team that has supported me and the company in so many ways this year. While the company carries my name it is the dedicated support of my staff that makes it all happen. I noticed that sometimes they start to ignore me, which I guess is a good thing as they become more confident and self-assured in handling thingsJ. We now even have clients that have no need for me at all…this to me is a good sign, these clients seem to have faith in my team representing the company. Thanks to them as well, your confidence and trust in our services is greatly appreciated!
So to my teams in Singapore, Jakarta, Shanghai, Perth and Delhi, a big thank you for the year past, I have enjoyed the year and am proud of everyone’s achievements! The year ahead looks very promising and with the continued team spirit and attitude we will certainly enjoy the coming year even more. I wish everyone and all family and friends that have supported us in the background a Merry Xmas and a fantastic new year. Enjoy the year-end holidays it’s well deserved.
Light Watch 5-212: I leave you with a picture of the Tree of Light, ostensibly the largest holographic projection of a Xmas tree in the world designed by Studio Droog in The Netherlands, installed at the famous Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in celebration of Xmas. As I am off to Holland to celebrate Xmas with my family I thought this to be a fitting image to end Light Watch for this year. See you in the New Year, take care.
Finally here is also a link to a totally insane neighbourhood Xmas light up, worth a look, enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXieGSAdj4s#t=65
Lighting photography
Perth, 11th December 2014
With one more blog to go tomorrow before I call it a day (year), I received back a series of stunning photographs from our Fremantle project taken by professional photographer Ron Tan. He does fantastic work, his photo taking is really unparalleled when it comes to taking pictures of lighting installations. It is an absolute art and requires a lot of experience to achieve the depth and clarity that he achieves in his photo’s. It is something that I have always been sloppy at also because of the costs involved to have professional photo’s taken on site. The most difficult part in photographing lighting installations is the time of the day as the best results are achieved at dawn or dusk which in some countries like Singapore, close to the equator, leaves a very small window of time to use for photography as night comes in very quickly (less than 30 mins). The further away you are from the equator the larger the window of opportunity. For the Fremantle cliff project Ron had a about 1 hour to take his pictures and not surprisingly he had to come back to complete his series of photographs from different positions, different angles and different views and different lighting scenes.
The reason the best pictures are taken at sunset (or sunrise) is that the low brightness sky provides an ambient light just right to give shape and form to the surrounding architecture and landscape which otherwise in full darkness would not or hardly be seen or in full daylight would kill any light effect. The sometimes deep blue sunset sky provides a great background canvas to outline buildings or landscapes part of the illuminated scene. You just have to look at some of the pictures below to understand what I mean. By being able to see the sky the rocky limestone cliff is well defined while it’s illuminated face nicely contrasts and shows off. It gives depth and proportion to a picture as well as a certain mood associated with sunset! Great pictures, thanks Ron!
Light Watch 5-211: The illuminated cliff at Arthurs Head near Bathers Beach in Fremantle, the lighting is on daily from 7pm…The definition of the lighting becomes different as it gets darker! Note that I reduced the resolution for this blog to about 250 KB from the original 10 MB as that would take long to load…
Heritage lighting in practice
Perth, 10th December 2014
Today I presented a paper on the challenges of lighting heritage buildings, an event sponsored by Heritage Perth and the Town Planning Group (TPG) under the banner of Heritage in Practice where experts from various backgrounds share their conservation skills and techniques to the public in small scale seminars. Today’s event had lighting as the main topic. I decided to review my more than thirty years of project experience and pick out projects along the way that had specific heritage challenges and relevance. My heritage lighting experience really started back in the nineties with the famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore, one of the 3 hotels build by the Sarkies brothers, I had the opportunity to light up. Besides the Raffles Hotel in Singapore I also designed the lighting for the Majapahit Hotel in Surabaya, Indonesia and the E&O Hotel in Penang Malaysia. The main challenges in these hotels were to reconstitute period like lighting but with modern lighting technology. We did not have LED technology at the time so it was an even bigger challenge using compact fluorescent lighting then the energy saving technology of choice.
Specifically the heritage projects in Australia (compared to Asia) are subject to very stringent guidelines in protection of the architectural fabric of the buildings. Cabling and fixing to the building fabric is practically not allowed and hence alternative ways for power provision and installation have to be found. Creative design solutions making use of what is possible and available as compared as what you would like to do in the ideal world form the basic challenge for the lighting designer, but one that is exciting and rewarding in the end. One by one I have enjoyed all my heritage projects and seeing them come alive in “new” light has been a great reward for the tireless efforts put in to make it work. Preserving our heritage is important and lighting design can certainly contribute to its enjoyment well after sunset.
Light Watch 5-210: It is always interesting to take a trip down memory lane and look at time gone by. In my research for history in these projects I came across some interesting pictures. See here some from the past and the present; Raffles Hotel (2), Majapahit Hotel, Old Perth Boys School, St Bartholomews Chapel in East Perth, His Majesty’s Theatre and the Palace Hotel as well as a snapshot of the event.
Majapahit Hotel:
Old Perth Boys School
St Bartholomews Chapel
His Majesty’s Theatre
Palace Hotel
The gathering tonight
Alarm bells…
Perth, 9th December 2014
You can really sense that the year is coming to a close, some of my clients, business relations and project colleagues are already partially switched off probably planning their year-end holidays, others are rushing to finish up loose ends before the end of the year. It is really a countdown even though for most there are at least another two solid weeks of work ahead! The LED problems still remain the same…the quality and performance are definitely getting better and more and more new players are popping up in this cut-throat market. Budgets remain the single most challenging issue to resolve in all (of my) projects. Today again the client could still not get himself to sign off on the purchase of light fittings even though we had done several rounds of value engineering, checked and double checked samples for compliance to basic quality and performance and most off all had brought down the costs to within striking distance of his budget. What happened? Some new (Chinese) lighting supplier managed to squeeze his foot in the door with an offer that my clients think he can’t refuse; it is less than half the price!… Really!?!?…Are we going to start the whole exercise again? To overpower the client’s mind the supplier sent copies of all the awards and quality certificates they have been receiving over the last few years. As most are in Chinese I can’t decipher what they are for, but I know from experience that these kind of documents do not mean much…some of them you can just buy on line! I am not saying that is what they did, but if prices are less than half of my already super value engineered solution, my alarm bells start ringing. I discarded all the certificates and asked the client to request the supplier to do the same due diligence as we did previously; all alternative light fittings to be provided with proper and detailed cut sheets and working samples. Once I have been able to review and verify the quality and performance and we indeed are comparing apples with apples, we can start to consider this supplier. Ring, ring…
Light Watch 5-209: Decorative lighting manufacturers like chandelier makers are another breed of manufacturers who have still to learn about how to use LED technology! While the fittings may look beautiful many of them have major LED lighting issues, too bright, too many points, not dimmable…; here are some close ups of the chandeliers in my Jakarta project that look impressive but all had some lighting issue one way or another…
Visual confirmation
Perth, 8th December 2014
Yes I missed my blog on Friday, I know, came back late, had friends over during the weekend, just did not get to it. This week I am back in Perth and this will be my last week of blogging for the year.
Tonight I went out for a final round of testing for the lighting of His Majesty’s Theatre as we need to log in all light fixtures before Xmas to keep to the time schedule. From my files I had seen that the last time we visually tested the lights was more than 2 years ago, so a visual retest was necessary as the light fittings we had previously specified had been superseded by the latest generation LED upgrades. Not surprisingly wattage and light output were improved! On top of that the light fittings have now additional lens options and beam configurations, so todays re-test was timely and very much needed. I am glad I did as I regained a lot of confidence that the project will turn out magical!
Doing a visual test like we did tonight requires quite a lot off experience and understanding as well as the ability to visualise the whole picture of all lights combined. Of course we cannot test the final and complete lighting installation so we test the lights individually in key representative areas of building architecture. Understanding the light and shadow balance, how lights from different locations and positions will interact and combine together is crucial in this visual assessment. I found that moving the lights slightly forward or backwards could make the difference of seeing an architrave outlined or covered in a shadow and that leaving some parts of the façade in the dark would reinforce the building structure much stronger.
Most of all the brightness was the key issue to address. While the lighting effect may look nice individually, one needs to “feel” the full effect through mentally visually the effect repeated over the whole of the façade. I did like the individual brightness, I thought that was spot on, but I feel that the repeated effect may become overpowering. The light fittings that we have chosen however have an “on board” output regulator, so we can adjust the driver to provide different outputs. With that knowledge I have the peace of mind that we will have the ability to balance the brightness once we get to the final programming, testing and commissioning. In needed tonight’s visual confirmation to move forward in ordering the lights confidently…
Light Watch 5-208: Here are some mobile phone snapshots of tonight’s testing:
Before and after
Jakarta, 4th December 2014
You learn the most from seeing the end result from all your efforts. Seeing is believing as they say and therefore going to site to see the fruits of your (years of) labour is extremely instructive. I would nearly like to state that that is where you learn the fine ropes of lighting and that is how you form yourself to be a good lighting designer. We can’t design from just behind our desk, we need to have a full understanding of the potential issues we are or may be faced with on site. Only when you have gone through a few full circles from design to completion you can call yourself a relatively experienced lighting designer. Generally this cycles takes at least 5 years; I am still learning after more than 30 years (but that is mostly because the learning curves with LED lighting)!
Today I would like to share some before and after pictures from some of the areas we were working on these last two days. Compare all the beautiful renderings (call them dreams if you want 🙂 ) with how it looks today close to commissioning… We worked the renderings (which were provided to us by the ID) to a level that was representative of our concept and then over time coordinated as good as reasonably possible with the design, project and contractor teams to get it realised; in the process clearing hurdles such as distance and time, cultural and language barriers, budgets and product availability, site limitations and workmanship; each of them potentially an issue by itself. Now, at the end of the rainbow we slowly see everything coming to life, we look back, think about where started to take different turns, what we could or could not have avoided or changed…Before and after, we learn so much from it…
Light Watch 5-207: Here are some of the “before and after” areas (or call it dream and reality) we reviewed the last few days, the restaurant, the lobby, the bar, the meeting rooms, the corridors; some are getting close to the concept, some are (still) way off…work in progress, but interesting to see how things change over time no thanks to value engineering!
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