Lighting designer Dean Skira, founder of the Skira studio, came to Moscow at the invitation of Delta Light and on September 28 gave a lecture “Concrete, Steel, Light and Emotions”. You can watch the recording of the lecture here.
You have extensive experience in lighting design for a wide variety of urban environments. What is the main difference between lighting design for modern and historical areas?
- Most of my Moscow lecture is devoted to cities, mainly to their public space, since I believe that today public areas require a complete rethinking in terms of a more humane use of space, the creation of a more “humane” environment. I think that modern architecture may have moved somewhat away from this idea. Cities are in a state of uncertainty because even if planners continue to work, they may have lost influence, and private investors, on the contrary, have gained it.
When it comes to lighting, I don't think there is a difference between modern and traditional buildings. Good lighting creates a visual impression for a person, regardless of the style of architecture. Another thing is that in cities people live among "visual noise". We illuminate most spaces too brightly, and recently the phenomenon of the media facade has appeared, which is extremely bright and intrusive.
Due to the biological structure of the eye in most urban areas, at night we cannot truly perceive space, horizontal and vertical surfaces in the same way as we do during the day. It doesn't have to be the same experience, but at least in the dark it should be as comfortable as in the sun. But now we have street lighting, window lights, facades, media facades - all these components confuse the viewer. And the biggest difficulty is that people are not aware of this problem, because the lighting culture is still at a very low level in most countries of the world.
Moscow is well aware of the problem of excessive lighting: we know that our city as a whole is much brighter at night than New York or Western European capitals. But there are other important issues related to this, such as security - or feelings of security. How to find a balance between functionality and visual comfort?
- I would put the question like this: is it a utopia or a convenient opportunity? Because finding a balance between the private and public spheres is very difficult these days. The regulations are not strict enough that we can control both of these areas at the same time, and this is where the conflict begins. Lighting in cities is primarily a safety measure and a means for orientation in space, but we add so much that we end up with too much light.
There is a solution for this. For example, in the center of the city there is a park where no one wants to go after sunset, because they do not feel safe there. The park is completely immersed in darkness, with all kinds of city lighting around it. How can we make this park attractive for mothers to walk there with small children? For lovers to sit on a bench? For tourists for whom this attraction is a botanical garden? This is an opportunity to create balance using a simple methodology: defining new architectural types created by light and the connective tissue between them (paths, roads, streets).
I understand that this sounds "philosophical", but it really works in practice. In one of our Croatian projects, we have implemented all these elements - with a successful result. This is a very difficult problem, but I hope that our cities will not always look like the scenery from a sci-fi movie - as they do now. And the day will come when the comfort of residents will be more important than the income of a company illuminating an entire facade or block.
One of your projects has already attracted attention in Russia: these are cranes in the harbor of the Croatian city of Pula, because less than a year ago similar cranes were dismantled at Strelka in Nizhny Novgorod, where the historical buildings of the river port are being demolished before the 2018 World Cup, despite public protests. Your project shows that such industrial structures can be shown with the help of light as very interesting and valuable objects. Who was the initiator of the Pula project? How was it implemented?
- This idea came to me twenty years ago. I have lived in Pula almost all my life, and as a child I was engaged in rowing. The rowing club was located next to the shipyard, and every day I walked past these huge cranes. Some time ago, politicians and the public began to discuss whether it is worth leaving the shipyard in the center of our city, or whether it is possible to move it to another place, and instead build shopping centers, etc.
I proposed the idea of a "night theater" in this industrial area to the city council, to other people - but no one was interested in it. But then a hotel chain owner who saw my project wanted to invest in the idea. That is, the project was started with private money, but the Pula Tourism Board saw its potential when the city decided to host the first festival of light, Visualia. It took seven months to implement, because the shipyard was and remains operational, this is not industrial archeology, these cranes work every day. Therefore, at night, with illumination, we can see how they are holding parts of the ships.
We didn't want it to be just "aesthetic" lighting, we tried to make it alive. It is a dynamic, changing light that was turned on for 15 minutes every hour. Then the townspeople began to ask us to leave him longer - for half an hour. But then the requests began - given the popularity of the project - to turn it on for the whole night. As a result, in the summer, when there are many tourists, the taps are illuminated until two in the morning. We turn them off early in the winter. This project really made Pula more attractive to tourists: on the night of its first show, 15,000 viewers gathered, which no one expected. Every year for the festival of light, we compose new music and synchronize the lighting with it.
So the cranes, which were "unwanted" industrial objects, suddenly became loved by everyone, became a real theater for the city, since they are located in the very center, and every night people gather to watch them. This area suddenly became attractive for business, I was told that apartments and offices overlooking the cranes are more expensive than others.
This is very interesting, since Pula is 3000 years old, there is a beautiful Roman amphitheater, but it was the cranes that attracted a lot of tourists there - from Austria, Italy, Slovenia, and other countries, especially during the festival of light, when everyone is going to see what kind of music and the light we came up with this year. Perhaps this is my favorite project, because it is in my city and people love it very much. This is a living organism, the taps continue to work during the day. And if suddenly lightning strikes them, and the light is cut off, then the journalists immediately call us: "The cranes have turned off, what is happening?" - panic begins. For me, the love of the townspeople for this project is the greatest compliment.
It's a great story
- Yes, and it continues, because the cranes are “live” all the time. The shipyard workers who helped install the lighting system on them, and my staff and I worked on this project for free every night for seven months. The workers were skeptical at first: why spend money on a socially insignificant project during a crisis? They did not understand the real value of such a project, but as they went on, their enthusiasm grew. And in the end, I, my team and the people from the shipyard who helped install the lighting received an award from the city of Pula for raising the consciousness of residents and attracting tourists.
And that's all - by means of lighting design! This is an interesting topic because I often think about how many cities are transformed for the better at night - thanks to the lighting that makes them more interesting. This is indeed -
- Additional effect. One of the key elements of lighting is emotion. I compare light with music: in music, the main thing is not notes, but pauses, silence between them. It's the same with lighting: shadow is just as important as light, and light comes in many forms. That is, we can directly influence the emotions of the viewer, because lighting is not important for architecture, lighting is important for people. Brick or concrete doesn't care whether it is lit or not, it is the person looking at the building that is not indifferent to how it looks.
Eliciting the right emotion with lighting is not easy because you need to place the illuminated object in the context of its environment. If the taps in Pula were surrounded by skyscrapers with dazzling lighting, the effect would be completely different.
If you want to create a "wow effect" for a building, square, street or room when the sun sets, only light affects our emotions, and we can control this effect with it. If there is no light, we will not see anything, and fear will be the only emotion.
You also work on such complex buildings as skyscrapers. For example, over the Evolution tower in Moscow City
- Exactly. This is a very difficult case, since this tower is surrounded by other skyscrapers, and they are all illuminated: they have a blinding interior light that is visible from the outside, and there is also external lighting. For Evolution I want to take a completely new approach, which complicates the task; for this I need the latest LED fixtures and lighting technology. But we cannot illuminate interiors without thinking about the exterior. Whatever we do on the outside will be affected by the light from within, and this is -
Two parts of a whole
- But they must be one. In the interior, I use an optical system, thanks to which the rooms will be illuminated, but the source of this light is not visible. We also offer a shaded ambient light control system that we can also use to make facades completely dark at night, so that outside lights are clearly visible.
And I don't "deform" the tower; deformation, it seems to me, is the biggest mistake in lighting design. I only emphasize the real shape of the skyscraper, because it is beautiful and unique. I had an idea how to make it visually taller than it actually is, but it didn't work out because of the safety rules for aviation flights. I hope that by next summer we will see the result of our work as we intended it.
We use very unusual lighting fixtures in the interior, since the complexity of the project also lies in the fact that there are no rectangular rooms in the tower due to its shape in the form of a DNA molecule. There is only a rectangular base, and then each floor is rotated relative to the previous by two degrees, so all the spaces in the tower are different.
What will happen outside?
- Outside I will emphasize the volume of the tower. The everyday lighting scheme will be completely white with no color: the horizontal lines of the facade and the curvature of the shape will be shown. During the holidays, the tower will become almost like an RGB pixel screen, but not a media façade: there will be all sorts of "playful" colors, and even white will become magnetic, not static.
Will Evolution be lost with such a restrained scheme against the background of brightly lit skyscrapers around?
- You will definitely be able to notice the Evolution Tower against the background of other skyscrapers, because the illumination will follow its shape, constantly emphasizing its unusual spiral shape.
We estimate that even without a control system, we will save 30% in electricity compared to a standard European office building. With the control system and the daylight control system, I think we will be using up to 80% less electricity than is usually required for lighting. This means savings of the order of 4–5 million euros over five years. And the luminaires will not need to be changed for 10-15 years, which means that operating costs will be negligible.
Most recently, you developed Polesano's modular street lighting system for Delta Light: I think you used all your experience to create a truly new lighting system for the city
- If you look at a typical case, then 99% of them are a basic, utilitarian street lamp, the products of this or that company, fixed on a simple support made by no one knows who. The second problem with such objects is that you cannot control the lighting. In the case of Polesano, my idea is that the pole and the street light do not have to be ugly, they can be aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time "timeless", so this is not an object that looks great at first, but after a few years. when the fashion has changed, it already seems repulsive.
Therefore, its shape is very simple: it is a square support with a rectangular luminaire, and up to six luminaires can be added to one support. Each of them can have their own optical system, so Polesano can be used in parks, squares, streets, highways - anywhere. Delta Light will now manufacture it up to six meters in height, but we also designed another version, much larger and more powerful, suitable for larger spaces. We looked at different optics, so if you put the Polesano in a square where you want to illuminate a paving, a façade, then maybe a fountain, you can do it all with one support.
“There are also plans to add other options to the Polesano system besides lighting at a later date?”
- In the future, every street lamp will receive a Wi-Fi repeater, a video camera, different sensors and the like, but all these devices will have to be attached to one support, which will look terrible in the end. And in the case of Polesano, all these components of the "Internet of Things" will fit into a single body, so from an aesthetic point of view, the system will not suffer. And since it is possible to rotate all these devices and fixtures in any direction without visible connections and screws, Polesano will always look like a small sculpture.
