Hi there down under. This is a zombie calling – just waking up from months of hibernating. Right now the world is bright. Not because of the long hours with sunlight, but because the sun is actually showing itself a little bit longer every day. And now, when everything is white, wrapped in pure snow, the eyes stings when faced with this unusual experience of brightness. Funny, how I forget this sudden abrupt pain every year.   Well, I do think this is the reason why Norwegians are so crazy about skiing. It is because we go out and drink light every February. The body, and mind I should add, is so starved, that it feels like taking a drug when you glide into Narnia in minus 10 Celsius.

Nothing makes me happier than the return of the daylight. Mind you, there are all kinds of light in the absence of the sun. The beautiful light is the natural cycles of blue hours, full moon and northern light. The northern Light is right now in a 11 year cycle peak with a lot of spectacular scenarios on the sky. This will happen for a few years, maybe even stronger next winter. So if you need a cooling experience next summer, take a trip to the north during January.  I am sure you will be tempted when you have checked out this link and this link.

The NOT so beautiful light is the artificial light in most of our urban spaces in Norway. I am not saying all, because there is some progression to notice. But not nearly as much as there should be in a country with such a long dark period. It is funny how we humans just accept how artificial lighting looks with very little ability to judge if it is good or bad. The human brain is simply not developed to consider the quality of the light that reveals our physical world. The brain needs to be trained in order to see what is the good quality and what is the poor. So this is what I do a lot during wintertime. I give lectures about the importance of master lighting plans. I feel like a religious preacher. And actually, quite a few are seeing the light, and are eager to start the work of city beautification with light.

I am a firm beliver in lighting masterplan for urban spaces. Only by better distribution of the light can we bring down the consumption of energy. When the whole scenario is addressed, perception of the overall picture can be improved. The darktime identity can be revealed. This means removing unnecessary blinding and glary sources that make the surroundings appear darker. It means making sure the users of the urban space is satisfied and feels safe? It means taking best advantage of the technology? It means preserving natural light and the cycle of it?

Another thing I am trying to salvage the Norwegians to try is a light festival during dark time. And this year things are starting to happen. This coming weekend is the Oslo Light Festival. Svolver is a small town up north in Lofoten and they will be arranging a festival next year.  All this is good news but there is a lot more salvation and teaching to be done. Norwegians are short sighted about the very special and beautiful natural light conditions of the arctic area. And they did not put the right glasses on in order to discover the great possibilities that artificial lighting design can offer. But one day maybe you Aussies will come to see both the natural and artificial light of the north. Meanwhile here are some photos of summer from the north and the winter in the south.

Kristin Bredal, Oslo, Norway 2011

Kristin Bredal is the design leader of Norwegian lighting design firm Zenisk

Early December afternoon in Oslo

Jostedal glacier, western Norway

Jostedal glacier, western Norway

Midnight summer sun, northern Norway

The Northern Lights, northern Norway

Brrrrr... winter in Oslo

The theme of the 2012 festival is ‘The Word’ – for more details and how to apply for the EOI click here.  Fed Square has pledged to  make a generous contribution towards the costs of constructing the sheds for the lucky entrants.  Get your skates on; EOIs close March 9.

Does this sound like the job for you? We hope so.  This is a fantastic opportunity to showcase Australian design in one of the most interesting lighting festivals on the planet.

I have just returned from an interesting trip to Chicago to visit the IALD (I sit on the membership committee). I am very pleased to report that I find the IALD in very good shape, which represents good news for our profession.

IALD’s Executive Vice President Marsha Turner’s presence and contribution is now starting to show real results. Under her leadership and with the support of volunteer committees and the board of directors, the Association moves into the unchartered waters of credentialing, a move that could lead to an improved status for the lighting designers. See this link for an excellent article on the subject by IALD’s new President Kevin Theobald.

Mr Theobold started his presidency this year for a two year term. He is an independent sole practitioner from the UK with a long association with the IALD. Kevin promises to bring a fresh perspective and we will watch with interest how his term plays out; we wish him all the very best in his endeavours.

Meanwhile, look out for a reinvigorated IALD in 2012. Not only are there new (and very nicely lit) headquarters, but additional staff are also planned to bring improved member benefits and services.

Could it be you?

You will be based in our Melbourne studio working on some of our fabulous projects which range from hospitality and gaming through to retail, high-end residential and university projects. Oh, and a hospital as well.

This position will not be advertised conventionally – we are looking for someone who follows us through our blog and social media channels and hence is in tune with who we are and what we’re all about. For background reading see our facebook and twitter pages.

Who should apply? Firstly, you should be a lighting enthusiast. The sort of person who never stops looking at, thinking about and messing around with light. The sort of person who talks about lighting at parties. You’ll need to be friendly, open-minded, collaborative, flexible, creative and not take life too seriously.  You should also be a proficient, independent user of AutoCAD, Photoshop, Indesign and one of the lighting analysis programs (we use AGI 32). Having good sketching and 3D CAD (we use revit) skills would be good. You’ll probably have about 5 year’s experience in lighting design.

While there is room for flexibility from our end, we would envisage a period of employment initially for 6 months, based in our Melbourne studio. For international candidates we will assess the visa situation but would not foresee any issues (we have had 2 x guest designers from the UK previously). Ideally, we would like to appoint the successful candidate as soon as possible.

Does this sound like the job for you? If so please email our practice manager Elisha Howard elisha (at) electrolight.com.au with a cover letter telling us all about yourself and a CV and folio.

Community projects

2011 was by far our biggest year for community projects. In February we organised a fundraiser called Floodlight for victims if the QLD and VIC floods. We also got heavily involved with the Light in Winter festival at Fed Square, organising the Meaning of Light, Ready Steady Light and Fabulous Foyers and Facades. Then to cap it all off we orgaised another installment of LightCycle, a sustainable light fixture design competition as part of the State of Design Festival. These events we principally aimed at challenging people to think about light, perhaps in a different way and to continue the lighting conversation.

LightCycle 2011 opening party

Awards

We were very proud to collect a further 3 IESANZ design awards for Lonsdale Street, Victoria State Legislative Chamber and Westfield Sydney, bringing our practice’s tally to 14 gongs.

The lighting conversation

2011 saw us make a significant contribution to the online lighting conversation. We tweeted, we facebooked, we wrote blog posts, we asked and answered questions on LinkedIn. And we made some new friends in the process.

Our team

While it has been sad to bid farewell to some departing team members, in 2011 we were pleased to welcome some fabulous new faces to the team. We were joined by Jim Birch, Tina Atic and then Christopher Knowlton who all joined us for periods as a guest designer; all of whom made a significant contribution to our work and have provided new perspectives on our design thinking. We were also joined by Elisha Howard, our super practice manager.

Speaking engagements

Members of Electrolight’s team were invited to speak at a number of events in 2011. We gave papers at the Future of Light Summit in Melbourne as well as the PLDC conference in Madrid. In addition to that, our Dave Anderson co-organised the world’s first lighting Pecha Kucha which was incredibly well received.  Sharing ideas and hearing the ideas of others is a great source of inspiration for our practice.

We look forward to seeing what 2012 will bring.

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

So what does inspire us? And moreover, how do we communicate this for the world to see? When presented with great challenges such as this we did what we always do – made some tea and talked about it. At some length! We agreed that collaboration is the most important aspect of our approach to work and central to our inspiration. But how to communicate this?

We also wanted our response to be representative of where we’re from – Mondo Arc is an international publication after all and we are very proud Melbournians!

We eventually arrived at the old saying “many hands make light work” and knew that this was it; we had it. Next thing was to figure out how to express this. Someone said “with light, of course”. Next thing we had the gobo catalogue out, found a theatre projector, identified a location (just HAD  to be Melbourne’s world famous Hosier Lane), teed up one of Melbourne’s best photographers Matt Irwin, designed and had fabricated a neon sign, hired a generator and headed to site one evening, praying we wouldn’t fall foul of the weather or City of Melbourne by-laws inspectors (we had enough to organise without getting a permit to shoot as well!).

We were really pleased with the result – hope you like it too.  See the digital edition and go to page 178 to see it for yourself.

Many hands make light work

Setting up

Trials and tweaks

Revit seems to be gaining some considerable traction in our industry with more and more projects being documented in this program. We have done a few projects now in Revit and while there is a bit of a steep learning curve initially, there are some good benefits. For example, coordination between services is much better – the clashes between services (the ductwork clashing with the depth of a light fixture, for example) happen in the screen not on the site. And the new Elum Tools plug-in allows us to calculate the lighting levels within the Revit program, rather than having to export from CAD to a 3rd party calculation program (we use AGI 32), analyse, tweak and then re-draw in CAD to document. Now we are able to draw, calculate, tweak, recalculate and when we’re happy with it the documentation is already there because we did it all in Revit. Not only that, we can automatically see W/m2, schedule of luminaire totals and even a cost summary for the scheme.

One challenge that lies ahead is that most manufacturers do not produce ‘blocks’ to represent their fixtures yet. The block would comprise a 3D CAD drawing of the fixture as well as photometric information. Well done to Concord Sylvania and Eagle Lighting for giving us disks with this info. We’d be interested to hear from others who have this information or at least an update on when/if we can expect it.

Our CAD guru Tomas gave us a demonstration of the program’s capability at our weekly meeting and we felt that we’d just seen a glimpse of the future.  And it was exciting.

And the winners were (drum roll)…..

There were 2 excellence awards: MONA gallery fitout in Hobart by Vision Design and Shed One at Princes Wharf, also in Hobart by Point of View.  Both projects add a significant new contribution to the city of Hobart and are deserved winners of the award, highlighting the difference that specialist lighting design can make to a project.

MONA

There were 3 Commendations: The Botanical Restaurant (by NDY), The Victorian State Parliament Legislative Chamber, both in Melbourne and Lonsdale Street in Dandenong (both by Electrolight).

The IES awards process is open to anyone who wishes to enter. This year 18 projects were submitted and the judges went to visit each installation in person and heard a presentation by the designer who duly responded to their questions. The judges are all volunteers and they give their time because they care about lighting and understand how important it is to have discourse about lighting design. As entrants, we are very grateful to them for their generosity of time and spirit in making this happen.

The awards evening itself was themed for the 1930s to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the IES and it was great to see how many people got into the spirit of the occasion by dressing up.

Movember comes early for Tomas at Electrolight

Why the fuss? Check out this spectacularly beautiful movie of the northern lights, recorded over 6 months by Ole C. Salomonsen. And if you like that, be sure to check out his Flickr site too.