The fundamental objective of great lighting design is to provoke an emotional response from the users of buildings and spaces. When generating an emotional reaction, lighting designers aim to offer an interpretation of a place. Lighting design is not just about displaying one’s technical proficiency but about giving the users of a building or space something to think about.
Lighting designers consider lighting design as: a way to tell a story, a communication tool or similar to creating music. The perception and emotional reaction of the end-user is assumed to depend on context and personal profile. No lighting designer has just one emotion he or she wants to express. Emotions differ per project.
This study represents an attempt to go beyond the functional role of lighting and understand the aesthetic and emotional aspects of light through the eyes of professionals who are passionate about improving the quality of lighting. It attempts to understand the challenges they face, the trends they see and anticipate, and the meanings they associate with what is happening around them.
Reference group
Forty-seven highly experienced lighting designers were interviewed in twelve countries. The countries selected for the study are those where the profession of lighting designer has been established as an independent practice for at least ten to fifteen years. The countries represented are Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom and United States of America.
The selected lighting designers are considered to be trendsetters and opinion leaders in different lighting fields: indoor, outdoor, art, stage and cinema. Most are active members of local or global lighting design associations, e.g. PLDA and IALD – the Professional Lighting Designers’ Association and the International Association of Lighting Designers.
Exploring lighting cultures
Synovate is an international market intelligence research company with a network covering over fifty countries. The methodology of the research as defined focuses on in-depth interviews with lighting designers in different parts of the world: Asia-Pacific, Europe and America. The focus of the study is on architectural projects. With regard to emotions little distinction was made between outdoor and indoor projects.
The research reveals certain trends. But the number of interviews conducted per country/continent is too small to support generic conclusions. The Synovate report focuses on the differences – and similarities – between lighting cultures. The results may be used to provide hypotheses for further research.
The overall Synovate report is presented in the first part of the book: ‘Research summary’. It speaks about topics in which cultural influences play a role in the approach of a lighting designer and how these can differ per lighting designer. The second part gives the Philips Lighting synthesis on the ‘Lighting parameters to achieve emotion’. This part is supported with quotes from the original face-to-face interviews. The final part ‘Conversations with lighting designers’ presents in-depth extracts from the full-length face-to-face interviews. These extracts concentrate on aspects which act as drivers and inspiration for lighting designers and their experiences in architectural lighting design projects. The conversations and the quotations extracted from them are based on the literal transcriptions of the face-to-face interview and have all been submitted to the lighting designers for approval prior to publication. The summary, main findings and the selection of the quotes are an independent interpretation of the interviews by Philips.
Light & Emotions
Conversations with 47 Lighting Designers
Authors
Roos Molendijk, Vincent Laganier, Jasmine van der Pol
Publisher
Philips Lighting (The Netherlands), October 2009, 380 pages, colour illustrations, hardcover
