LIGHTING SPECIAL RECOMMENDED CRITERIA
Top: Lighting at Grosvenor Hill, designed by Hoare Lea
Inset: The St Botolph Building in London, designed by Grimshaw as a spec offi ce development, with lighting by Speirs and Major
fi nishes of the space? Good quality lighting can then be delivered, provided attention is paid to context, fashion and opportunity. Context is important because what would
be considered attractive lighting for an offi ce seems unlikely to be so attractive in an intimate restaurant. Fashion is important because we often crave the new to provide interest and variety. There is no reason to suppose that lighting should be any different in this respect from most other aspects of life. As for opportunity, that is partly a matter of technology and partly a matter of being in the right place at the right time. And what is the right place? An eminent
lighting designer, JM Waldram, once said: ‘If there is nothing worth looking at, there is nothing worth lighting.’ So the right place is presumably a place that contains something worth looking at. Also, given that to be really good the lighting has to be matched in some way to the particular environment, each lighting solution would be specifi c and not generally applicable. This combination of fashion and specifi city suggests that the conditions necessary to produce good quality lighting are liable to change over time and space. At the moment, good quality lighting most frequently occurs when a talented architect and a creative lighting designer work together – neither
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given to slavishly following numerical lighting criteria. This should not be taken to mean that numerical lighting criteria is irrelevant. Its purpose is to act as a baseline so that bad lighting is eliminated. The interesting question then becomes whether or not lighting criteria can be developed to bridge the gap between eliminating the bad and creating the good, particularly where the amount of information, the time available for design and the budget are all limited. If common lighting practice is to advance, some thought will have to be given to answering this question. CJ
References
1 Bean AR and Bell RI (1992) The CSP Index: A Practical Measure of Offi ce Lighting Quality, LR&T 24, 215-225.
2 Cuttle C (2008) Lighting by Design, 2nd edition, Oxford, Architectural Press.
3 Loe DL and Rowlands E (1996) The art and science of lighting: a strategy for lighting design, LR&T 28, 153-164.
4 Veitch JA (2001a) Lighting quality considerations from biophysical processes, J Illumin Eng Soc 30, 3-16.
5 Veitch JA (2001b) Psychological processes infl uencing lighting quality, J Illumin Eng Soc 30, 124-140
6 Veitch JA and Newsham GR (1998) Determinants of lighting quality 1: State of the science, J Illumin Eng Soc 27, 92-106
7 The Society of Light and Lighting’s Code for Lighting,
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● Author and academic PETER BOYCE is the technical editor of Lighting Research and Technology
This inherent variability makes a single, universally applicable recipe for good quality lighting based on photometric quantities an unreal expectation
SLL PUBLISHES NEW GUIDE
The Society of Light and Lighting (SLL) has published its new SLL Guide to Limiting Obtrusive Light, which will be available later this month. While outdoor lighting is important for people’s work, safety and leisure, it can cause issues of sky glow, light trespass or glare, which can affect health if sleep is disturbed, and affect the visibility of the stars and the behaviour of fl ora and fauna. The guide provides further insight into the factors and considerations around obtrusive lighting. SLL’s accompanying Factfi le 7: Design and Assessment of Exterior Lighting Schemes, will also help designers consider if outdoor lighting is actually necessary. The guide is available at
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December 2012 CIBSE Journal 7
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