Roger Narboni
Lights in landscape. Lighting design in parks and public spaces
Design workshop. Milan, 7th – 11th May 2014
It is known that the perception of a site changes during the day and over the seasons. If observed with attention, places look always different; landscape is never the same. Mostly because of weather conditions and lighting variations, which often reveal unknown details or specific elements of reality usually unseen. Uncontrolled use of artificial lighting tends to flatten out these differences, causing lighting pollution and falsifying historic centres and landscapes. This happens because of the excessive use of light systems, which often are out of context and present themselves with fanciful designs. The new generation lighting technologies lead the project and design research to unexplored fields of spatial experimentations, in which it is possible to join visibility and safety needs with the free use of parks and public spaces during night time, without having to give up energetic efficiency and environmental respect. It is possible to design lighting of a site starting from the intrinsic nature of the specific space, highlighting its qualities and giving importance to light and shadow variations on it. Led lights, lighting volumes and interactive elements and site-specific installations are used to set up real perceptual experiences; they reinvent the space of the site, and join design approach to the most advanced environmental art experiences.