Can you believe it!
Jakarta, 3rd December 2014
Commissioning projects is an experience by itself. I am in Jakarta today and tomorrow to start the commissioning stage of a hotel that has taken more than 8 years (!) to finish and still we are far from being done and dusted so to speak. I started this project back in 2008 with a 2012 target in our contract for completion. We are now well over two years past due date and the end is still not in view. However the operator, already on the ground for several months in anticipation of December opening, is now pushing to have at least part of the hotel open for business by February. So I am here to start the programming process for those areas targeted for operational readiness. The ballroom was already commissioned to a useable degree a few months ago (under duress!) for a high profile VIP function with the missing parts finished over the last few months. The ballroom can operate separately from the hotel. Now the pre-function, main entrance lobby, reception, lift lobbies, bar, all day dining and “some” guestrooms are being prepared for an official opening.
It is specifically at this stage when everything is supposed to come together that you find out whether it actually does! This project has been dogged with so much “value engineering” that now all these imposed short-cuts in quality are coming to the fore visible to everyone to see. After all our warnings and predictions these past months/years, we are now in a stage of “I told you so!” One of the biggest warnings we had put forward was the inexperience of the selected dimmer manufacturer. They basically have nil experience in doing smart lighting controls for public areas in high end hotels and as a result are totally unprepared for the task of programming. As a matter of fact we are teaching them how to do it. The “programmer” confessed to me that they are still writing the software for the programming as they have at this stage no way in identifying in quick file ways which circuit are the down lights, which the wall sconces or the chandeliers or which ones are the cove lights. As a result we spent nearly 3 hours trying to program by trial and error the pre-function area which would normally have taken less than an hour, all utterly frustrating for everybody. Add to that that we are now finding out that many circuits can poorly or insufficiently be dimmed and you get our picture of disbelief…I sent them back home tonight to do their homework first.
Light Watch 5-206: Installation nightmares… cove lights still a mess; no proper hardwired connection for table/desk lamps; poorly finished flexible strip lights, some dropping out, poor/wrong colour, loose control panels, panels without any indicator lights, the programmers desperately trying to understand what is what!.
Phasing out the old lighting technologies
Singapore, 2nd December 2014
The big discussion these days is not only about the rapid progress of the LED lighting technology but also the rapid demise of the old conventional technologies. The IES ANZ (Illuminating and Engineering Society of Australia and New Zealand) sent its members a notice today about its intent to participate in the public debate started by the government about the future direction for the “old” lighting technologies, specifically incandescent (INC), halogen (HAL) and compact fluorescent (CFL) lighting. A committee, called E3, which consists of government representatives from different Australian and New Zealand jurisdictions, released a document and specific product profiles in support of the public debate on the regulation of these products in the future. Comments, suggestions and reactions can be submitted up until mid-February 2015. Public consultation sessions are planned in Auckland and Sydney in December to attract direct public feedback.
The main driver on which these technologies have been assessed over the years is the so called MEPS or Minimum Energy Performance Standards a standard as far as I can see is purely based on energy consumption and is practically devote of any human aspect. Something that has always been a major point of contention for me…we do not design for lux or energy meters, we design for people! While we all agree that energy saving is crucial in the strive to safeguard our resources and the future of our planet, we should never forget that this planet is inhabited by human beings and not just technologies and measuring equipment. As it appears members of the E3 committee are predominantly government institutions and energy regulators, I could not spot one that was remotely involved in lighting, and herein lies to me one of the biggest short comings. In my opinion organisations like the IES, the IALD etc, should be integral key members of this team, not just invited (are they actually invited?) to provide public feedback that may or may not be considered in the final decision making. Where are the key players in the lighting (design) industry; shouldn’t they be formally involved in this process? Particularly when energy comparisons are made one can wonder whether we are comparing apples with apples!
Australia and New Zealand have been leading the world in this process, perhaps they could now be leading by integrating lighting professionals in the future of this process!
Light Watch 5-205: Below some extracts from the product profile report issued in support of the debate, the whole report can be found at: http://www.energyrating.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/Energy_Rating_Documents/Product_Profiles/Lighting/Report_Incandescent-CFL-Product-Profile_25Nov2014.pdf
I am an (lighting) architect
Singapore, 1st December 2014
Sometimes you come across some Facebook or YouTube material that relates to our business and makes you smile in recognition. In this case I was sent links to some videos in which architects rap about their life as an architect and the battles they have with contractors and the like. Architects, or lighting architects like we are, face the same problems all over the world, so these caricature-like video’s about our lives as designers sort of helps put the issues we face on the map. I blog about it, but creating a rap video and using social media to circulate and create more awareness that is something new. Since when do (lighting) architects start rapping songs about their profession! It seems the first video has been around for a year or so already with part 2 and 3 issued over the months past. The first video has already clicked more than half a million views, not bad! I don’t know the origin of the video and who actually produced it, I was not able to find that out, but it is interesting to see how more and more the social media are taking over our lives.
In the nineties I think Bill Gates said that those who would not be on the internet within the next 5 years would go out of business, how right he was…do we know any company now that has not a website and proper email address? No, because these companies virtually do not exist anymore, certainly not in the international professional industry. The same seems to happen with social media, you now need to be LinkedIn, have a Facebook, Twitter and or Instagram account to move your business! The problem for us being the older generation is that we struggle to keep up with this fast paced environment. I need to consult with the younger generation to keep up with it. Facebook has become essential to keep in touch with my kids even! To me the big downside is that no-one seem to be able to communicate normally anymore. You see people in restaurants face to face both bend over their mobile phone, they don’t talk. In the city you need to watch out for people moving while focussed on their mobile rather then the world around them! I am a lighting architect…yes, but try living my live more humanly if and when that is still possible…
Light Watch 5-204: See here the links to the YouTube video’s.
Part 1 – I am an architect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Uloc1iW-pgc
Part 2 – Architect versus contractor https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=k7V_zcwYNMc
Part 3 – Do the architect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A8Vk1FltNc&feature=player_detailpage
Improving the lighting of a restaurant…
Singapore, 28th November 2014
The interesting thing of our profession is that you get to do the expected and the unexpected, the pleasant and the unpleasant, never a dull moment, with the point being that our days are generally never the same. Today was one of those days that combined regular design work with meetings but topped up with a dinner at a local restaurant. It was however not an ordinary dinner, it was a work dinner…one of the restaurant owners in town called me in to help improve his lighting. The restaurant was opened recently but the overall mood and ambience is clearly lacking. I suggested coming on a busy night to get a feel of the activity and how people move around in the restaurant for a better understanding of the space usage, so I had my dinner like a normal guest, observed the comings and goings and made notes or where I feel improvements can and should be made.
My main approach will be two pronged. First I will refocus, reposition and reprogram the existing light to see what can be achieved with what he has, as my starting point is to make sure I get the most and the best with what he already has. It would be easy to just get rid of everything and start from scratch, but not very budget friendly! Once that is done I will get a good feel of the base from where to develop improvements further. The next step will then be to put together recommendations and propose some conceptual ideas for further improvements towards what I feel would be the optimal lighting design for the space. To make the decision process for the client easier I will work out a budget breakdown for each step of the proposed improvements so that a staged implementation can be selected according to available budget. This is a friendly approach that leaves the client in total control of his expenditure
While I lost a lot of weight over the last few months (of which I am very proud!), getting paid to go to a restaurant and have a meal is one of those pleasant perks of our job which I happily accepted!
Light Watch 5-203: The restaurant as it is now; it clearly lacks any definition of space and contrast with little balance of brightness and focal interest even though the material choices and interior design concepts are quite nice…a clear example how lighting can make and break an interior. Pictures of the improvements hopefully in one of the future blogs! Have a great weekend.
The Asian way…
Bali-Singapore, 27th November 2014
Doing business in Asia, even after all these years, remains interesting to say the least. Yesterday, on my way from the airport to site, which is not far from the airport in Kuta, the driver had to make a U-turn as his regular route was blocked off by a road block guarded by uniformed police. I did not take much notice until this morning when I found out the reason. By blocking of that road all traffic coming out of the airport has to pass via a new luxury shop recently opened further down. The owner of that shop according to what I understand is some very, very high ranked official in Bali! Wouldn’t you know! Then not far from the airport we are about to commission a new hotel. I enquired why it was still not opened and why the signage was still covered. The reason appears to be that the operations licence has not been granted yet. Why, I asked, since they got the building approval years ago? I was made to understand that this tactic (holding back on issuing the operational licence) was to possibly extract some extra’s; with the building being finished with proper approvals and ready to operate I leave to your imagination what that could be…The same uneasy feeling comes to you when you want to get in or out of Bali’s new airport, there is no way in or out without having to make a big meandering detour through duty free shopping…but I guess that is a tactic employed by practically every new airport design nowadays…
Anyhow we completed our testing last night and managed to determine what lights to be used where in terms of light output, beam spreads and locations, including related fixing and installation details. But even in the lighting supply we end up with this uneasy feeling that we are now tied up with the awarded supplier and suddenly some fittings are not exactly as anticipated in terms of performance (though the quality is ok) with some of the key fixtures not available for testing…I don’t want to be in a position where I have to approve “alternatives” because of time constraints. This card is being played often where your selected light fitting (generally the more expensive ones with little margins for the supplier) suddenly seems to have delivery problems and an alternative (assumingly with much better margins) is being offered to resolve the deadline problem. It won’t work with me…I know this Asian way of doing things!
Light Watch 5-202: Last night’s testing in pictures; note these are mobile phone snapshots so not very representative of the actual visual result…
Nothing beats being on site
Bali, 26th November 2014
It probably sounds like an open door statement, but nothing beats being on site to directly address site installation issues, specifically when we talk about landscape lighting. I have said it many times and say it again, we can’t design from just behind our desk! We can get the concept very close, the more experience, the closer you will be on what it ultimately will be, but the devil is in the details and therefore being onsite today and tomorrow with the engineering team as well as the lighting supplier (he finally received the his P.O!) allowed us to run through my design and specifications and understand what kind of challenges and hurdles we may face for the installation. I have to say that I love my Samsung Note for this type of work, you take a picture of the situation and you can use your stylus to mark up the installation requirements.
I am onsite at one of our hotel projects where we are upgrading the existing landscape lighting of the old wing and quite honestly it needs it! The current lighting is cheap, dodgy to say the least and there is a total unbalance of the lighting. The balance of brightness is wrong; there is no feeling a space, no visual guidance and basically no mood. Improving the lighting is not that difficult quite honestly, the difficulty was in educating the client about quality and the necessary steps required to improve the lighting environment. We went through that stage explained our thought process, the concept that ensued to improve the lighting and finally through several rounds of lighting specifications and budget and value engineering sessions to bring the implementation within a budget the client was happy to spent. Rather then cutting the quality of the fittings, already one of the key issues in the current landscape lighting, I opted for a quantity cut, maintaining the quality and pushing some lighting improvements of lesser importance to future implementation.
The purpose of this visit is to confirm lighting locations, installation details and do night time testing with the sample fixtures to make sure we have the right light output and light distribution. The thing with LED is that yesterday’s wattages and light distributions and performances have improved markedly, so retesting of what was specified more than a year ago is crucial. We will do that tonight…
Light Watch 5-201: Some of my Samsung Note 3 mark up notes…
Lighting Design Forum Singapore
Singapore, 25th November 2014
Maybe it’s just me but I have the impressions that lighting events are happening more and more these days. I just have to look at my own involvement over the past year where I was invited as speaker at least once a month from Copenhagen (PLDC 2013) to Las Vegas (Light Fair 2014) via Qatar, Singapore, India, China and Hong Kong just 2 weeks ago. With one more event to go this year (I had to decline two other invitations in December!) I have already 3 speaking engagements lined up for 2015! It is not that I don’t like it, on the contrary I do relish the opportunity to share my (practical) experience. But I am not one to ego trip on my own projects, I don’t see the point of that, I derive far more pleasure in actually sharing my experience (the good and the bad and how we overcame the difficult lighting challenges) with my audience. The response over the years has been enormously gratifying as many people, designers alike, find themselves back with similar challenges in their projects. If only one person comes up to me after a presentation to let me know they enjoyed it and learned something, I at least feel it was worth it and I have given something back from my life as a lighting designer.
The problem that we face as speakers is to remain actual and relevant as there is a big risk of repeat when we are asked to do similar presentations over and over again. I have done my LED Cowboys presentation several times now but every time I have to update and reconfigure the story to fit the actual audience and remain relevant. Yes there is an economy of scale by writing one presentation and repeating it a few times for different audiences, but then it really must be good and entertaining. Most of all it has to be (in my opinion) educational so that the audience goes away from the event with the feeling their invested time was not wasted…they learned something and took something away that they can use in their own practice or own life. Unfortunately many presenters, regardless their experience and standing, present badly and loose themselves in ego tripping, after which you leave wondering what it was all about…
Light Watch 5-200: Today’s presentations gave people a good insight in how lighting is achieved in historical places. Below are some impressions from today’s lighting design forum at the National Design Centre in Singapore. Speakers Louis and Emanuel Clair as well as Serena Tellini and Francesco Iannone enlightened the guests to their experiences in lighting historic art and monuments. The Clairs reviewed their presentation about the Mont St. Michel in France together with some other historic projects in France (Notre Dame) and the Middle East and Serena and Francesco reprised their PLDC presentation about how to illuminate historical and artistic spaces, as always highly entertaining and educational. This inaugural event is likely to be repeated next year.
Public support for lighting
Singapore, 24th November 2014
So last Saturday in Fremantle was the big launch event for the cliff up-lighting at Arthurs Head, also known as the Roundhouse Art Precinct or Bathers Beach. Whatever the name people know it by, the City of Fremantle has decided that this area is ideally suited to be developed as a social public events area. On the south-end restaurants, bars and shops are being completed in a new to open building right on the beach, the area lawn and beach on the site of it with the Kidogo Arthouse is the location for the weekend summer markets. In the summer beach lounge chairs will be installed free for the public to enjoy drinks at sunset and to the north-end the J-Shed will be developed as an artist bar and entertainment centre. Just to the north of the Shed is WA Maritime Museum. The round house and its little cottages are home to a history gallery and artists. One can easily see how lighting up the heritage listed cliff that serves as the background for this whole area is bringing new life to its use.
It was particularly interesting to follow the (social) media like Facebook, Twitter and various city event blogs in the amount of interest and support it generated. There has always been this long standing rivalry between Perth and Fremantle, not in the least because of the two biggest AFL Footie clubs, so having a one up on the City of Perth certainly finds lots of support in Fremantle! The main reason however is that the local community seems to be really supportive of the developments and not surprisingly sees the lighting of the cliff as an urban improvement bringing more quality of life and more public safety and enjoyment to the area. In the past this dark area at night used to be the home of vandalism and sinister characters, so to speak. Comments and feedback on the media were lauding the effort of the City and to everyone’s satisfaction people came in out in big numbers to witness the switch on of the lights as part of the first summer market of the year. The lighting will now be on every day of the year.
Light Watch 5-199: Here are some impressions of the sunset and night including the flyer that was circulated in the city some social media feedback and some mood pictures…for now we will run one colour a day, for 6 days a week, with on Saturday nights (market night) the full colour run…
Testing our concept
Perth, 21st November 2014
How do you test a piece of glass that is 3m high and nearly a meter wide and weights too heavy to even think lifting it…well you use a trolley and execute everything horizontally instead of vertically…That is what we did tonight when we went to a glass factory in an industrial zone to test out the lighting effect and determine the best relationship between the lights location and the resulting effects. In this residential project that will “see the light” early in the next year we are backlighting artwork glass that serves as divider between the building’s integrated covered car park and the actual street. Light from inside is supposed the project to treated double laminated coloured glass that have decorative artwork patterns embedded in them. Not only are we intending to bring out the patterns with the lighting, the position needs to be such that the patterns also project onto the walkway alongside the building; all this without causing disturbing glare while maximising the visual effect.
It looks quite straight forward on paper and in our design concept we already indicated the type of light, its required light distribution and its approximate position to achieve the desired effect but between conceptualising and actually achieving the effect generally lays a world apart! So while we were executing the tests horizontally projecting light on a wall rather than on a floor we were able to establish the probable position for the light fitting in relation to the panel. This was important as the electrician on site has to install the conduits and junction boxes and waterproof the whole well before we get to the point of installing the lights. It was interesting to find out that we had the right lens optics, but that the anticipated distance away needed some correction, in this case further away to achieve a better effect bringing out the patterns and projection. Our concern remains the potential glare but we believe that with a proper louvre we will be able to resolve that issue.
We can now instruct the contractor for the cabling but I am sure that once we can test the lights again on site and in position we will want to adjust the lighting position again…I would be surprised we got it 100% right from just this testing…
Light Watch 5-198: Below some impressions from our preliminary glass factory testing tonight. We had to improvise a bit as we had little space and could only move the heavy glass on a trolley…
Light fitting responsibilities on site
Perth, 19-20th November 2014
Yesterday was a special day, my son’s birthday, and as a result I spent most of my late afternoon and evening at his home first helping out preparing then later mingling with the guest to his BBQ party. Just one of those things you appreciate and need to take time out for. We all live busy lives but making an effort to be there on special days important…I missed too much of those in the past! I was back late and in no frame of mind to write my blog…
As I am going out testing lights on site tonight, I better write my blog now as I have no idea by what time I will be back…
Today I would like to share a subject that may not seem to be so relevant but still is very crucial in the success of a project; light fitting responsibilities on site. Our responsibility as a lighting designer in regards to the light fittings generally include the specifications made suitable for tender or other ways of procurement. We advise the client about the suitability of the compliance of alternative selections to our design performance and quality intent. The client negotiates the final costs, sometimes aided by us, and orders the fittings which the supplier then at one point of time delivers to site. That is where the responsibility part becomes interesting. Someone from the client’s side needs to take receipt of the light fittings and sign off on it. We may or may not be (we should as a principle, but are often not) involved in certifying that the delivered light fittings are as per specifications. Once the delivery is signed off, the installation contractor generally, becomes responsible for the “wellbeing of the fittings, which then still have to be installed. The points is that if hundreds of lights are being delivered, not everyone box will be opened and checked. So any breakage or malfunctioning may only be discovered on opening the box at time of installation. You can see that any breakage can be refuted by a supplier as being careless handling by the contractor and how a careless contractor can turn around and say that the light fitting was delivered that way…
Continuing on the same train of thoughts, malfunctioning lights could be caused by factory faults or be the result of incorrect wiring and installation…does any contractor actually read the installation manuals that comes with each light? From experience I know that most don’t, but their first reaction will always be that it is the light fitting…It is a sensitive responsibility issue between supplier and contractor that can affect the outcome greatly!
Light Watch 5-197: Installation woes…
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