The PLDC is a biennial international convention for lighting design where speakers and attendees gather to discuss the latest in lighting design trends, technology and governance. This year’s event was held in Madrid from 19-22 October 2011.
The convention is organised by VIA Verlag, a German publishing house that publish the Professional Lighting Design magazine in conjunction with the PLDA. There were 76 speakers from around the world presenting papers across the following four streams: lighting application research, professional practice issues, Lighting design case studies and exterior lighting solutions. There was no over-arching theme linking the streams.
There were some interesting papers. Paul Marantz from the legendary New York lighting design firm Fisher Marantz Stone gave an interesting opening address where he proposes that the iPad may be the saviour of the incandescent lamp. Yes, they really are still talking about this issue stateside!
Paul Marantz
I enjoyed Prof Philip Gabriel’s paper discussing ethical issues in the profession. Is the traditional fee for design service model outdated? Is there a better way of providing value to our clients such as the turn-key approach to design and supply of equipment that is gaining traction in China and India? If so what are the implications for peak bodies such as the IALD and PLDA who’s professional membership predicates that professional designers must be independent of suppliers?
Kevan Shaw, as always, was thought provoking and interesting. Kevan asked if the only way to deliver sustainable outcomes for projects is through very tight regulatory control or is there a case for giving designers the latitude and flexibility required to deliver on energy efficiency?
Jim Benya proposed a strategy for achieving recognition for the lighting design profession and called for a uniting umbrella organisation that represents lighting design at the highest level. The manufacturers seem to have their house in order but we are still disparate and that leaves lighting design in a position of vulnerability.
I saw some other excellent papers. A favourite was Kristin Bredal from Zenisk Lysdesign, a Norwegian lighting designer who spends a couple of months a year without seeing the sun. This seems to provide her with the inspiration to design some beautiful public realm lighting, at the same time respecting the darkness and conserving power.
Kristin Bredal
We contributed to the conference by presenting two original papers. Rachel Burke gave an inspirational paper called ‘A healthy Light’ in which she explored contemporary thinking and research in the field of innovative design in the healthcare sector. She suggests a way of addressing the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of lighting design in healthcare settings. And I gave a paper on professional practice issues aimed at those practitioners who are interested in setting up in private practice.
The feedback that I heard the most was that the conference was somewhat mixed; some exceptional papers interspersed with others that could have been much better. Moreover, the venue and general planning of the event were less than ideal. There was little or no gap between sessions which were held of 4 floors without a decent lift. This meant traipsing up and down stairs all day without a moment to sip a glass of water (if you could find some, that is).
Having said that, a conference that is all about lighting design is a great idea and it was good to be part of it. I met some interesting new people, learned some things I didn’t know and got to check out the fabulous city which is Madrid. And for that I’m very grateful. For more on the conference check out our facebook page.
Guest blog post by Kevan Shaw
December 19th, 2011 by paulWe asked leading UK lighting Designer Kevan Shaw this question: How could lighting legislation be changed to bring about improved sustainability outcomes?
This is what he said…
So far lighting legislation has been all about energy use. It has also been written not from the perspective of how to actually reduce the energy actually used by lighting schemes but from the perspective of limiting things that are easy to measure and quantify. The result of this approach is extremely challenging when you are trying to design from the perspective of the users needs, to deliver quality of light rather than quantity.
What we have now is legislation that aims to make only “efficient” light sources and equipment available. This has resulted in the ban on incandescent lamps and the removal from the market, in Europe at least, of older fluorescent lamp technology, particularly T12 lamps and magnetic control gear. Is this effective? If you are looking at energy use holistically then definitely not. The mantra associated with this approach :
“If you increase the efficiency of a lamp you will create a consequent, demonstrable, equivalent saving in energy in use for every application”
From Light’s Labour’s Lost has often proven to be fatuous. How many times has a higher wattage ”efficient” lamp been needed to replace a lower wattage “inefficient” lamp because a suitable substitute was not available or because some aspects of the “efficient” technology have fallen short of the lighting requirements such as instant start up or dimmability? How about electronic control gear in extremely hot or cold environments; does this work? No! How about the cost and waste associated with having to replace an entire lighting system because some types of lamps are no longer available?
The other strand is limitations on lighting power density. Does this do any better? Not really. It places limitations on design for flexibility. It is often desirable to have distinctly different schemes for lighting at different times of day. Not just different lighting levels but different colour temperatures, different surfaces being lit, different patterns of light, you name it we all want to do it sometimes. A total limitation on power density very effectively prevents overlaid schemes with different fittings serving different purposes that are required at different times.
What are the factors that determine lighting energy use? Admittedly reasonable efficiency of equipment is one thing however the biggest factor is time, after all a light that is switched off is consuming no power. Is there a measure that could be used to factor time into energy use? Astonishingly there has been since 2007, enshrined in EN15193, and is called the Lighting Energy Numeric Indicator (LENI). Why is it not the basis forlighting legislation? Well hopefully it will become the basis for UK building regulations from 2013 however it is being heavily resisted by some interests who do not see it as a route to selling the latest (and most expensive!) lighting equipment and those who will actually have to consider lighting design in respect of how spaces are used rather than just a jumble of numbers in a spreadsheet.
LENI may be the first tentative step towards measuring energy that is actually used in lighting, however we probably have a bigger mountain to climb. We really need to measure the light that actually reaches our eyes rather than comes out of light fittings and lands on notional horizontal planes, however that is another discussion!
Kevan Shaw has over 30 years experience in lighting design and is the director of Kevan Shaw Lighting Design based in Edinburgh. (http://www.kevan-shaw.com/)
Kevan Shaw
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