Lighting design can revamp the trade and hospitality industry

Nobody in their right mind in the architectural lighting world would question the importance of 'good' lighting for humans and the environment. The fact is that exterior public spaces in our towns and cities are not used after dark and cannot compete with the visual stimuli, such as those offered by television when it comes to leisure.

It is a fact that lighting up public spaces with amenity lighting - spreading floodlights and placing poles randomly over refurbished historic places or new high rise - for the sake of saying that we have finished another lighting 'scheme' does nothing to promote the trade or the hospitality industry!

Planning city lighting is, in concept, similar to residential lighting. The streets of the city are common spaces used by all residents and tourists alike. As American historian Louis Mumford said: "A city exists, not for the passage of motorcars but for the care and culture of man".

And he was right! A city is the living room for our tourists - and should be welcoming - inviting and attractive enough to make them crave to be there just as much as we all dream of being in our living room while stuck in traffic after a day's work!

But what's taking place around Europe? A master plan gives way to a dynamic process, often divided into phases, that takes years rather than months - just as the image of a town develops in ten-year steps.

Most urban lighting projects that can be classified as functioning master plans are mostly found in France. They are a consequence of the Lyon Festival of Light, first staged in the early Nineties.

At the beginning of the last decade there were over 250 urban communities in France with lighting master plans! The rest of Europe only started giving serious thought to lighting master plans at the turn of the millennium: the UK is very dynamic in this regard and last month London hosted the "Switched on London" festival, featuring a few of the best works by lighting designers - a breath of fresh air and a real attraction.

Around 50 German cities are currently working on lighting master plans. Sweden is active too, and when I formed part of a group of lighting designers in Frederikshavn, Denmark, during a lighting design festival, I could clearly feel the pulse of the locals on their awareness on lighting design.

On the other hand, for a country with a wealth of cultural history, Italy is surprisingly slow to take off when it comes to urban lighting design. The night-time image of the design metropolis in Milan is a disaster. It is clear that the electrical engineer has the last word here. It gives buying in bulk a new dimension!

And where does Malta lie in this regard? Unfortunately, we are still in the phase of discovering what light and lighting design is and who is a lighting designer.

Every day I encounter people from different sectors of society who want to discover what my field of work is all about and how it affects everyday life. Lighting designers are neither electrical engineers nor interior designers, and although our work reveals and reinterprets an architect's vision of a building by night - lighting designers are not architects.

Yet a lighting designer's work is there to reveal the work of any of the mentioned professions. Lighting designers never get to lead a team in a project but they meticulously need to study what the other professions want to portray and interpret this by means of light as light reveals form and beauty!

So many efforts remain unnoticed, so much detail unrevealed and so many places are left undiscovered or badly interpreted just because of lack of light or due to flooding lighting pollution, in one way or another, by the misuse of light.

It needs to be understood that unless one is aware of the optics of the lamps, the lamp/luminaire combination, the texture of the background, its revealing and glare tolerances, to mention only a few, one cannot handle the responsibility of designing a lighting scheme for both interior and exterior.

To add to this, an exterior installation is even more delicate and needs great care and attention as the lighting scheme that is adopted on a particular building needs to reflect the street it's in and the ambience surrounded by it.

What I mean when I say that an exterior lighting scheme needs to be related is that before a scheme is implemented, say for an exterior lighting scheme of a hotel or department store or public garden, not only the adjacent buildings or surroundings need to be taken into consideration, but also the street lighting of that area.

To add to this the lighting scheme needs to be backed up by a concept, which very often needs to feel the pulse of the people who make use of the area. It irks me to see one of Malta's best five-star hotels in a prime location floodlit with a bunch of gathered floodlights which produces nothing more than glare in the windows of its front façade!

How can we allow such things on projects which are our bread and butter. Some buildings are probably also left in pitch darkness, with just amenity lighting at the top part, which go unnoticed just after sunset and lie dead till sunrise. What a pity!

A few months ago, driving along a promenade, I saw a façade dressed in blue lights. I tried to put myself in the shoes of who implemented this lighting scheme and make heads or tails of what was the intention.

That the scheme is striking, yes, I agree; that there might have been a connotation of tying up the lighting scheme of the building with the beauty of the sea I understand, but the combination of the lamp fittings and spill lighting spoilt it all and made it unbearable to look at.

As I took a closer look, I realised that a considerable amount of money had been spent on the light fittings. That's even a bigger failure, because the façade looked like a poor advert of a company that sells light fittings - the more you buy, the bigger discount you get!

A few weeks ago I was eagerly awaiting the opening of a public garden in the heart of a tourist area, as for years I remember it a dark spot where youngsters found out about alcohol! The garden is locked at night. What I cannot understand is that with so much ado about light pollution, this garden is, literally, jam- packed with light fixtures throwing light up in the air!

I realise that this garden lies in a high district brightness but I sincerely feel that instead of a place for relaxation, as one could see from a few metres away, it resembled a new light fixture showroom - with luminaries fixed in the floor and poles and lights. I even lost count - there were more lights than trees!

The sad thing is that these are just a few of the places which are unprofessionally lit; the list is endless and it's even more devastating when I realise that not only is there no lighting design master plans for main tourist areas in Malta, but it seems that proper lighting is not seen as part of a professional lighting design scheme.

Apart from the innumerable places left in pitch darkness at night, advertising Malta only by day comes as no surprise. As a lighting designer, working on a project overseas is a big thrill. Yet as a Maltese my great pride would be to get involved in a lighting design master plan for the enjoyment of locals and tourists alike.

A lighting design master plan will increase our well being and will also produce a real living room out of our night-time spaces, which will then make all of us feel safe and at ease while out after sunset!

oac@di-ve.com

Olivia-Ann Calleja, LET Dip. (Lond), ILE Dip. (Birmingham), has studied light and lighting design at South Bank University, London and at the Institute of Lighting Engineers in Birmingham. She is also a member of the European Lighting Designers Association and a fully qualified electrical technician.