It is early morning, and I am sat at a desk that enjoys a view of one of the most beautiful late-medieval chapels in England. As I write, the shape of the building seems to grow out of the darkness, followed by the details.

A rare treat anywhere and one that is certainly out of the question in Malta, for reasons that have nothing to do with the history of architecture. There is scarcely a public building anywhere in the country that is not lit up every single night of the year. Architectural illumination and floodlighting have become an obsession that is part bad taste, part profitable business, part belief that light is progress.

I live in Cottonera, possibly among the most progressive in this department. The waterfront now has three kinds of street lighting – illuminated bollards, normal street lamps, and floodlights. The combined effect makes the place look like a Christmas tree in an airport car park, and very garish indeed.

The value of floodlighting street lamps that in turn light up bollards that have lights in them escapes me, but it may have something to do with spotlighting (quite literally) the great proġetti and greater greatness of their makers. I’ve actually overheard people talk about lighting on the Cottonera waterfront as a function of political accomplishment.

Nor is the affliction restricted to the waterfront, because there is a growing fad to uplight churches and public buildings. For example, there is a particularly charming corner of Vittoriosa that is a kind of triple parvis and has steps that lead from the square to the waterfront past three churches. Some of the old flagstones were recently ripped out to make way for spotlights and what look like neon tubes. Damage aside, the place was robbed of its atmosphere.

The fortifications, too, suffer an excess of lighting. A couple of years ago massive floodlights were installed along the Kalkara waterfront. Not happy with that, someone saw fit to install uplighting in the embrasures that line the walls.

Last September, the street lights in Reykjavik were turned off as part of an ongoing experiment that aims to give people back their night sky

There are two problems with this latter-day enlightenment. First, a good part of architectural illumination appears to be the work of incompetents whose sole interest is to install as much lighting as possible and thus increase their profit.

I am aware that this is a specialised field. Still, it doesn’t take much to figure that there is something very odd and wrong about the way public buildings are being uplit. Many of them end up reminding me of the ‘flashlight faces’ we made as children by holding torches to our faces. The point is that the kind of uplighting that is in vogue makes a caricature of architectural form.

The incompetents behind this also appear not to distinguish between two very different kinds of architectural illumination. The first is associated for obvious reasons with modern buildings and has to do with lighting, and what the building looks like lit up, as an essential part of the design. The best example I can think of is that of the Chrysler building in New York.

The second kind involves historic buildings that were never designed to be lit up at night. If they are to be lit up at all, they require a completely different approach, and one that does not banalise their lines and form. This fundamental difference seems quite lost on the people who apply the Chrysler model wholesale to auberges, churches, fortifications, and so on.

The first problem, then, is with the quality of lighting which, as is, is obviously well below standard. The second and more complicated problem is based on the question of whether or not historic buildings should be lit up at all.

Thing is, one needn’t live in a castle in Transylvania to make a case for darkness. Darkness is not just about the absence of light. Rather, it has a presence of its own that can be essential to what the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor calls the ‘atmosphere’ of a building. Put briefly, it is about the feeling that a good building evokes, and that links its inhabitants to it.

In any case places are seldom in pitch darkness. The shape of buildings can usually be made out, even in the darkest of places. The overlap of presence and absence is not a sign of lack of progress. On the contrary, it shows a sophisticated understanding of how good buildings work with light, or its absence, to evoke atmosphere.

A dark sky is part of that atmosphere. Last September, the street lights in Reykjavik were turned off as part of an ongoing experiment that aims to give people back their night sky. There is a growing sense that uplighting in particular puts a big dent in people’s experience of the value of a dark night sky.

It clearly is not a case of all or nothing. The point is that good lighting complements, rather than does away with, darkness. Clearly an alien concept to the people sowing spotlights all over the place and getting very rich in the process.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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