Hyllie Square in Malmö/S

Text: Joachim Ritter

To non-Swedes the word Hyllie sounds like it could be an item of furniture from the local Ikea store.
Then again, any Swedish word sounds like something from the popular furniture store catalogue.
Hyllie is in fact a new urban district that has been developed in Malmö, expanding the Swedish coastal town in the direction of Copenhagen.
And since light quality is key to the exterior spaces in and around both Malmö and Copenhagen, the lighting for the new square in Hyllie could not get away with a conventional solution. It had to be something special.
And it is.

Footbridge over the River Aare in Windisch/CH

Text: Sandra Lindner, Joachim Ritter

Strict budget, sustainability, high utility value and Swiss clockwork precision: the lighting forthe Mülimatt footbridge over the Aare in the Swiss town of Windisch addresses all those aspects – and the LED lighting solution plays a substantial role in hitting target on all of them.
LEDs made it possible to generate some extraordinarily artful and original lighting effects.
Minimal energy consumption and as little spill light as possible demonstrate respect for the natural environment and were a key argument when developing the concept, but that is nothing new…

Light design – The Dark Art

Text: Chris Lowe, PLDA, Philip Rafael, PLDA

An understanding of darkness is essential for truly inspirational light design.
So, why is good use of darkness within architectural light design so rare?
Is darkness absent from the light designer’s palette?

Lighting design is an art

Text: Howard Brandston

I assume most of us reading this are educated, a member of a profession, have a university degree, which assumes we have certain tools – we can read, we can write, we can do some math, we can speak, we can communicate – we’ve learned the practices, codes and standards of our profession.
This is the bare minimum of what you should know. But so what? Beware of education – lest what you have received is training.
And beware articles which sometimes are mere advertising propaganda which may cause you to become brainwashed.

The aesthetic of lighting atmospheres

Text: Marco Ludwig

We are seeing increasingly more light used as a design element in the public realm.
Our towns and cities are becoming arenas for spectactularly lit architectural structures and spaces – buildings, bridges, squares, and even entire streetscapes.
One cannot fail to notice that the application of electric light in the hours after dark now goes far beyond the conventional task of providing orientation and a feeling of safety and security.

Urban environments under electric light

Text: Dennis Köhler, Raphael Sieber

We are observing more and more that designed lighting schemes are neglecting to address many aspects of the quality of a given urban environment.
Socio-spatial relations and therefore also the time-spent perspective issues are seldom addressed in lighting design schemes to date.
It is noticeable that designed lighting schemes not only mean an increase in the illumination of specific buildings or structures, but that the overall lit image of the town seldom appears to be criteriadriven, that is to say in line with how different groups of city dwellers and users use the various urban spaces during
the time when the electric lighting system is in operation.