Sparking a creative approach to lighting public spaces
Established in 2004 by Philips Lumec and aimed at young designers, the Fondation Concept Lumière Urbaine aims to spark a more creative approach to lighting exterior public spaces. Its design competition provides the focus. As the winners of the most recent Socialight awards demonstrate, concepts can veer from the feasible to the apparently fanciful but all are rooted in existing technology and proven principles
Crowd Darkening
Sabine De Schutter, jack be nimble with What Would Harry Do
What Would Harry Do is a multidisciplinary group of individuals who occasionally get together to work on specific design projects. Their focus is people and their well-being. Their winning concept looks at how street lighting could be used to achieve that.
The lighting in their theoretical park is both people-activated and people-powered. The intensity of the illumination, the height of the light sources and the colour temperature of the light corresponds to the time of day (going from neutral to warmer white), the number of people in the park and their location. As someone enters the park it activates a change in the light level.
'On the one hand, there is more illumination when there are fewer people, giving a greater feeling of security through optimum visibility of the surroundings,' explains Sabine De Schutter, co-founder of Berlin-based lighting design studio jack be nimble, and winner of the SLL's 2012 Young Lighter of the Year. 'On the other hand, you need less light when you are with a group of friends. A low-level, cosy lighting creates a pleasant setting to socialise in.' All light fittings would use LEDs, a combination of pole-mounted luminaires with neutral white light and in-ground luminaires with warmer white light. 'We see glow-in-the-dark pavement as a possible addition, to reduce the amount of in-ground luminaires,' adds De Schutter.
Light is only provided where it is needed, therefore increasing efficiency, but the scheme goes one step further by generating its own energy through human activity. Using kinetic principles, an electric current is generated when people make contact with the park's soil. Piezoelectric elements are placed at the areas of high circulation to harvest energy through pressure. 'Visitors to the park fuel their own illumination, making public lighting more sustainable,' says De Schutter.
The concept could be realised today, she adds. 'We designed Crowd Darkening solely with technology that is already on the market. Our proposal minimises light pollution and energy usage. And we hope that this could persuade governments to look beyond the initial cost, and appreciate a social lighting scheme.'
Judges' verdict: 'This was chosen by the jury as the winner because of its interventions at a human scale. It takes into account the security of the users as well as bringing a poetic and intimate dimension to the lighting'
Light Fall
David Sasaki with Son Van Huynh and Chris Mudiappahpillai
Sasaki's Light Fall concept addresses the problem of diminished daylight in environments dominated by tall buildings, especially at ground level. 'As vertical forms of future urban centres continue to grow both in height and concentration they prevent direct sunlight from reaching the ground plane and cast the dwellers below into perpetual shadow,' says Sasaki, a project architect at the Toronto-based architecture practice ARK.
'The idea is to harvest, transport and distribute daylight to urban inhabitants living within vertical concentrations. Greater access to light and (re)connecting the urban population to the rhythms of the sun will ultimately provide a healthier living environment.'
Light would be collected both from the roofs of buildings and partially from facades that receive direct sunlight (the tallest of the high-rises) and transferred to the inhabitants below. It would then be bent or channelled around the buildings, enabling them to defeat their own shadows. This could be accomplished by various methods such as light pipes, fibre optics, flowing water, or as light travels from one medium to another, suggests Sasaki.
'The major hurdle is the transmission loss that occurs as the light travels through the light pipe to its destination,' he says. 'This, of course, leads to other interesting questions and ideas such as light amplification and light storage.'
Distribution points would be located at various levels, not only delivering light to people on the streets below, but also increasing access to sunlight for those living and working in the constantly shaded surrounding high buildings. 'By channelling sunlight, this intervention reduces the need for artificial illumination and energy consumption and returns the temporal qualities of the sun,' says Sasaki.
10577 Rays in Helsinki
Roque Peña Pidal
Daylight deprivation was also the theme of a concept by Roque Peña Pidal, a recent graduate in architecture from Madrid and co-founder of ExArchitects, specialising in parametrical design and digital fabrication.
Pidal's concern was the prolonged hours of darkness in far northern regions, specifically Helsinki, and the resultant depression experienced by many of the people there. His idea involves using heliostats so that light levels would be the same at the winter solstice as the summer solstice. 'It creates uplifting, bright public spaces in the winter, bringing people together through the manipulation of light,' says Pidal.
The scheme uses 6,838 parabolic-shaped forms that reflect and concentrate light to a focal space. These are strategically located over the adjacent surroundings with an area 20 times as big as the focal space. The infrastructure, made of fibre-glass with a mirror finish, incorporates 10,577 reflectors which rotate in one axis to direct the light under its 11600 sq m canopy. Like conventional heliostats, computerised control allows the reflectors to automatically track the sunlight to maximise the light available.
'It's an ambitious project that wouldn't be cheap but whose benefits for the inhabitants of Helsinki would be well worth it,' says Pidal. 'In my opinion it is very important to invest in public spaces in the cities.'
