Reality check
Bali 21th February 2013
With the rain driving in nearly horizontally into our meeting room windows, straight out of the sea, it was kind of bonding us together inside…another day of design coordination meetings, they can be long dreaded, but are very important for the future success of the project. The stormy rain also brought our thoughts back to earth, the reality of resort life; it’s not always sunny with blue skies! We tend to dream away with our design creations and the simple rain storm made us realise that we need to design for real life…including heavy storms!
A reality check can only happen when you are on site, which is why these site meetings are so important. I have said it before and I am saying it again, we do not design from behind our desks, we need to go out there and feel real life in the surroundings of where our projects will emerge. I think we all know the beautiful renderings that we see to illustrate how it is all going to look like. Unfortunately in the process of doing so some creative liberties are taken to beautify the end result. Omission of surroundings in a rendering is a classic trick to allow everyone to focus on the actual design only. But the reality is that there is a surrounding, and it is not always pretty.
Light Watch 4-32: Here are two renderings, each one followed by the reality check from what the real view is from the purported rendering viewpoint…rather different don’t you think? In this part of the world most power grids are above ground so you have to deal with a spaghetti of wires weaving through the air from pole to pole…it is highly unlikely that we will be able to have that section of power cables go underground. The road itself is very narrow so we can’t really stand back that far and our view is obstructed by trees, signs and other building structures…dreams and reality…
Maintenance
Bali 20th February 2013
From Goa to Bali…guess there is worse in the world 🙂 … The thrills and spills of our profession. I am here to attend project coordination meetings and assess the current state of the adjacent project site that has serious exterior lighting and maintenance challenges. It is without a doubt that maintenance of any completed project is key to its longevity. I think we have all been there where we come back to a project a few years after its opening and hardly recognise it back. Only once you start looking around more carefully you see “remains” of the initial design. It happens all the time certainly in this part of the world where maintenance is a virtue!
This afternoon and evening I went through the property of which I am doing the adjacent hotel addition, to see how we could bring it back up to acceptable lighting standards. With the new lighting in the hotel extension it will be imperative to upgrade and upscale the existing lighting to match and make it one flowing property, visually speaking. The type of issues I came across are so typical, I could have commented on it without even seeing it! I did not design the original installation nor do I know the (budget) history but it was literally glaringly obvious that shortcuts had been taken in the procurement the light fitting and the implementation of the design. I am pretty sure the light fittings were not as specified or selected by non-lighting designers, probably engineering departments, possibly driven by local supplier input with as result; poor quality, poor performance, many not working or falling apart, with wrong locations resulting in poor light distributions. Overall the ambience was non-existent with no spatial definition, no visual guidance and the resulting appearance reflecting poorly on the hotels image!
Can it be rectified…probably. But with circuits tripping and a poor maintenance regime it will take more than replacing and redistributing the lights. As far as I am concerned we need to re-circuit and re-install the whole lighting installation as by now it is impossible to determine where the tripping is originating from, could be anywhere! Do it right from the start…but that will need a committed client ($$$) and a committed (and trained) maintenance team for the future well being of the lighting!
Light Watch 4-31: The pictures below from this afternoon are mostly self explanatory!
Sharing
Singapore 19th February 2013
This year is shaping up as an interesting year in regards to speaking engagements. As you grow older (and supposedly wiser) you have more experiences to share and being able to do so with your peers and the younger generation is an opportunity that I gladly take on. I use my blog as platform to share my daily life as a lighting designer, but public speaking engagements are another step up.
I am currently working with conference organisers in Doha, Qatar for a lighting design event to take place later in May. After a more or less disastrous experience last year I was originally rather reluctant to participate but with new people and a lesson learnt it seems we are on the right track to create an event that is not just a money making event for the organisers but a sincere attempt to create awareness of the benefit of better lighting design. I am certainly putting my few little cents worth of effort to achieve a good outcome for all.
I am also pleased to have been selected as a speaker at the PLDC event in Copenhagen, Denmark late October, early November. It is a huge honour to have been selected as speaker for this event as above all this is a gathering of professional lighting designers from all over the world! I am excited and look forward to share my stories about the LED cowboys and other adventures! It is a sort of coming full circle as I started my studies as Industrial Designer in the Seventies (which eventually would lead me to my lighting design profession) with a trip to Copenhagen visiting the famous Danish design schools…
Finally I am also in discussion with a new event to take place sometimes in the second part of this year in India. It is still early days and details are still confidential and being developed, but on the back of my two participations in the Acetech events in Mumbai over the last few years I have been asked to be part of the advisory committee. It will be another big architectural lighting event by the looks of it…Keep you posted!
Light Watch 4-30: Sometimes we come across interesting creations…life is about surprises, interesting twists, the unexpected…that’s how our experience over life is build up! Here is an installation with a glass floor, opening up onto a wine cellar in the basement lit with blue LED at night…
Design and fashion
Singapore 18th February 2013
Back in Singapore after an interesting week in India. I got caught out with the weather travelling from Goa to Delhi not realising the weather in Delhi this time of the year is not the same as in Goa!! Arriving in Delhi with my summer shirt was not exactly the best of planning! I only realised it when the captain announced that the temperature on arrival was only 10 degrees! Luckily I had some extra T-shirts and the day temperatures crept up to the 20 degree, but still! I returned to Singapore yesterday with a solid head-ache, cold and flu-like symptoms and promptly spent the rest of the day in bed sleeping it away.
My last day in Delhi was spent visiting the Design India 2013 event, which primarily was aimed at architect, interior designers, artists and fashion people, reflected by the high profile attendance of the industry, including the likes of Marcel Wanders making his appearance. It was not a big show, in fact fairly small, but it had a couple of lighting or lighting related stands. I noticed the presence of Flos, Artemide, Lasvit, Vibhor Sogiani and Ochio in individual and integrated stands. Local lighting supplier Vis a Vis was present with a concept booth called “invisible visible lighting”. Not sure about the title, though I understand where Amit came from. I do agree that it is more important to transmit the concept of lighting rather than actual products.
The (lighting) design world is highly fashionable and the leading designers of this world like to make a statement by the way they behave and dress! Hey I am famous, so I dress the part, act the part, even if you don’t like it. I have blogged about arrogance of designers that have reached celebrity status. Sometimes you wonder why they are being paid to be a pain in the @#%! But it is not all negative. They are highly creative people and without being stubborn and arrogant, we may never have experienced some of the innovative and original designs that were created by them. Coincidently in my project in Goa the main adviser to the client is one of the leading fashion icons of India…I don’t know what he knows about lighting but he certainly has an opinion about it… 🙂
Light Watch 4-29: Some pictures of the Vis a Vis concept stand from Design India 2013…
and a small push for local artist Vibhor Sogiani…I really like his creations 🙂
The global LED tsunami
Delhi 15th February 2013
I am in Delhi today and tomorrow to catch up with our office here and to visit some existing and new prospective clients. It is amazing how nearly all discussions, presentations today seem to revolve around LED lighting. Some clients seem fairly well informed, for some it is a totally new and virgin terrain. It is hard to imagine that only a few years ago, we hardly talked about LED, it was just another lighting “technique”. Now anything else than LED seems to belong to the prehistoric ages. When you talk about incandescent, metal halide or fluorescent lighting you are looked at as being “retarded”. The new generation sales people do not seem to be aware that there ever was anything else than LED. And now even the new generation clients seem to assume that LED is the only viable source of lighting. It is only when I start to talk about cost benefit, return on investment and most of all about quality and performance criteria, installation issues and warranty that some start to realise that they are being brainwashed by the LED tsunami…I guess there will soon be a time that we have to educate today’s client about yesterday’s technology of lighting rather than the new (LED) technology…
Light Watch 4-27: My point is further reinforced by the recent announcement by furniture giant IKEA, that from 2016 onwards they will only sell LED lighting. IKEA was also one of the first in 2011 to stop selling incandescent lamps. OK. But in the process to (commercially) justify the full switch to LED, it is amazing to see how suddenly all the marketing talk (that used to be so favourable towards energy savers like CFL for instance) now has turned into denouncing the very same. What once was described as good is now suddenly bad. And while the LED sellers seem to focus on all the good points of the product, conveniently (or ignorantly) leaving out the bad ones, we see the same happening in reverse for the old technology. Suddenly IKEA is now denouncing CFL as bad with nothing good left, basically brainwashing you into accepting that LED is the only thing good left for your lighting. I am an IKEA user but I think it is a real shame….
Happy endings
Goa-Delhi 14th February 2013
As I am waiting in the humble Goa domestic airport lounge for my flight to Delhi, I received pictures from a completed project. The project (a small art project in the remote Australian town of Karratha) was the brainchild of Perth visual artist Rick Vermey. We have worked together over the years and I have always enjoyed the challenge of his projects. Size to me is irrelevant. In fact small projects (this one uses only 4 floodlights!) are often more challenging than big ones as they generally come with small budgets as well. Yet the visual impact can be quite substantial. In this case we are talking about an artwork commissioned to be a landmark statement for the town, one that is to be seen by day as well as by night. Despite the relative simplicity there is more to it than meets the eye. The in ground (WEEF) floodlights were designed with special elliptical lenses to minimise spill light and maximise the light capture by the art object. This allowed to minimise the power requirements already designed with LED.
I share this with you also because the size and simplicity of the project. As lighting designers we tempt to get involved in large, big projects with a multitude of lighting challenges and levels of complexity and big budgets. Doing a project of such simplicity is refreshing and brings you down to earth. More than that, you really get to focus on the lighting performance and quality details…there were only four lights to focus on (with). 🙂
Light Watch 4-27: While the design and specification was done in coordination with Rick in Perth, I never got to go to site and all installation and contracting directions were done through Rick remotely. I was therefore pleased to receive some pictures of the finished project that I share with you below. Though there seem to be some room for fine tuning by refining the aiming angles, overall I am pleased with the visuals and the look…
Beginnings
Goa 13th February 2013
Happy Lunar New Year everyone! I did not get to celebrate much of Chinese New Year holidays this year, as I spent the public holidays mostly travelling. I had a one day stop-over in Singapore on my way to Goa yesterday, but at least I am now in a lovely resort environment. Our meetings are spent in a local resort in Goa’s trendy Candolim-Baga area. This time of the year is very pleasant, not too hot, nice and sunny…the pool (which I can see from the meeting room) looks very inviting!
One of the exciting and interesting parts of any lighting design project is its beginning. Visiting the bare site, still looking like a wilderness jungle, stirs our imagination. We have been looking at plans, renderings and have conceptualise how it will look like so we look around and imagine the hotel lobby, the ballroom, the pool deck, the villa’s. Not everyone is blessed with vivid imagination, but designers generally are! In this case going to the “virgin” site connects you with nature, sunrise, sunset, existing flora and fauna, its surroundings, even wildlife and birds. You imagine having breakfast on the (future) veranda, having a drink at sunset…you start filling in the “dots” in terms of lighting. How the driveway will linger up the hill with trees lit. How the look out at the top will have low level illumination to allow maximum enjoyment of the vista’s, the sea and the sunset at the horizon in the distance.
It’s a bit like birth…you are excited about this new life that you are going to shape for future generations to enjoy. Getting a feel for the place, the location is crucial. Your design will need to fit in and that cannot be done by designing from behind your desk! Look at how the sunrise or sunset light up the site, get a feel of the shadows and the speed of daybreak or dawn. It’s all part of a projects new beginnings…
Light Watch 4-26: Here are some site pictures to give you a feel of what we are looking at before the first stone is laid!
Perth International Arts Festival
Perth 9th February 2013
Perth has put in a lot of effort over the years to grow its annual arts festival into an international event of repute. I have missed recent years due to travel, but this year I am here and don’t want to miss the opportunity to attend some of the events.
But before I headed out to the Festival I had a rather “dull” day at the office where I spent most of my time preparing for our India trip next week…not much Chinese New Year holidays for me this time…we are off to Goa for a site visit and present some lighting concepts so we put the last hand to our PPT presentations. I place great importance to our presentations as they are the reflection of our professionalism. Specifically our renderings are a show piece showing the various layers of lighting we intend to apply. It’s all about visualising…one picture tells a thousand words as they say.
With CNY holiday closures ahead we also had to make sure all our travel was finalised, issuing the fight tickets, international and domestic, airport pick-ups, hotel confirmations, meeting schedules…all in a day’s work :). All got neatly confirmed by the end of the day, so we are good to go, which gave me a relaxed feel at the end of the day when I left to enjoy the Festival. Perth’s nice balmy summer nights are famous and last night was the no different. While we are off to another scorcher (39) today, last night was nice and pleasant…thousands had flocked out to see the many events. My choice was the centenary celebrations of the UWA, where 10 multi-media projectors were used on its famous Winthrop Hall to relive its 100 year history. It was a good job by Iluminart.
Light Watch 4-25: Multi-media projection on UWA’s Winthrop Hall last night…there is definitely something magical about lighting!
Wishing all my friends and colleagues a happy and prosperous lunar new year of the Snake!
Beautiful light
Perth 7th February 2013
As I drove to site tonight where I was due to check out some visual lighting mock up I could not help marvelling at the wonderful skies we have in Perth. The transition from day to night in Perth can be pretty magical, certainly after another blue sky- sunny day. The light is so pure and crisp with wonderful blue, yellow and amber hues gradually fading over to darkness…beautiful…Nothing beats natural light. We do try our best to reproduce lighting artificially in our projects but nothing beats purity.
Interestingly my VMU inspection was one I had requested to prove that LED lighting is not always the best solution as nearly everyone seems to be promoting. I had the LED linear lights set up in comparison with new generation long life T5 and it was an easy test. T5 came out in front on all points; cost being just one of them! Performance and durability were some of the other points. The light distribution of the 5 was pleasant and just the kind of soft wash I wanted. The LED was too pronounced and not as performing. Key elements such as power consumption and lifespan, the key selling points of LED most of the time, did not come out with a big advantage. Yes the wattage was slightly less for the LED (21W to 26W) which in the long run does not really provide such big energy advantage. In fact we would need slightly less T5 tubes to cover the required area. Life time of T5 is nowadays rated at a min of 20,000hrs, while LED (if properly quality controlled) is rated at around 35,000 hrs. The issue here being that the LED proposed was of an untraceable China make…, wich brings me to the warranty…no issues with the T5, but serious questions for the LED! How will it be enforced…In the end it was a no brainer for me. We are going in with the T5, a simple installation, saving the client not only a lot of money but also a lot of headache!
Light Watch 4-24: Perth is currently enjoying the Perth Arts Festival, one of the installations is called “Scattered Lights” by Jim Cambell, currently on display at King Park.
Naturally organic
Perth 6th February 2013
I don’t know about you, but most of those email forwards you get from “friends” are a waste of time. Some of them even urge you to pass it on to 10 others within 24 hours or bad luck will come over you…the pressure! They normally go straight in the bin. But once in a while I get some that are out of left field (literally in this case :)) and just totally blow you away…specifically if they have a very strong relation to our lighting design profession. I was forwarded an email of a “house” called the Nautilus, build in Mexico City (also doing a hoax round as being Sachin Tendulkar’s new house in Mumbai). What amazes me is that the whole thought and concept of the house is not only original (naturally organic) but also in terms of lighting very creative and “natural”.
It takes courage and some vision to develop and create something like this (like it or not), or even live in it! The story mentions Javier Senosiain as the architect who’s idea it was and who came up with the concept, but it does not state how the lighting design was conceptualised to harmoniously fit with the overall approach. Nowhere is there an actual light source to be seen (love it, my kind of approach!) yet all lights, night or day, seem to emanate from the building itself, from niches, wholes, openings or through transparency. Colours and pure natural finishes make the whole feeling extremely organic. Admittedly I had a little “Hobbit” feeling when I first saw it but it sort of grows on you.
The natural lighting flow may make it a very pleasant and relaxing space and I wouldn’t be surprised it is a very “healing” place to be, simply because the natural daylight intake and the organic way (the artificial) lighting has been integrated in the overall concept. I think it can be a great inspiration for lighting design…
Light Watch 4-23: If you have not seen it before here are some pictures of this “shell” ….
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