byINTERVIEW
Jill Entwistle
38 MARK HENSMAN
the basis? HopefullyI’m abit more insightful in that area. If someone earlyis because it’s abit of the brief.Ifyou don’t know the budget, it’s
saystome, ‘because it’s anice effect’, that’s not good enough. Ineed abit like not knowing what shape the room is.”
to know there’s asolid foundation to what we’re doing. So not entirelymellowed then.
“Veryoften with anew client I’ll warn them that for the first conceptual With seminal projects such as PowerGen, Coventryin 1994 -anearly
view of aproject, we’re not looking at light fittings and lighting effects. direct/indirect scheme waybefore it was fashionable -Hensman argu-
I’m trying to understand how the building works, how the space works, ablyhas been one of the lighting designers who has pushed forward
what their desires are and how theysee it working from an operational the qualityof lighting in the working environment. Everyone is now
point of view.Otherwise you’ve got no platform.” discussing the relationship of lighting with well-being,but Hensman
This rigour translates to all areas of the lighting design process, includ- argues that’s been his driver for nearlythree decades.
ing fighting tooth and nail for the lighting products that have been “I’m fascinated b ythe science of light. Ilove the idea that we can alter
specified. He see this as central to the role of alighting designer and the waypeople feel and the waypeople act, and make spaces safer or
reckons that in the whole of his career,hehas onlylost the battle once more enjoyable, and that it’s happening at asubconscious level. Idon’t
to save aspec. know where it turns over into art.
“If anyone breaks aGIA Equation spec, it will be down to us and no “I like it where the two are working together.”
one’s fault but ours. If we allow that to happen we are not fulfilling our
www.gia.uk.com
professional responsibilityto our client. Anyone out there who saysthey
couldn’t stop it from happening is just not close enough to the job at
those important points. It’s not
the contractor,not the client,
not the architect, it’s the lighting
designer.”
The process begins with estab-
lishing the right relationships, he
argues. “For astart, you engage
as much as you can with the
contractual team. Youturn it into
apositive situation. Youmake
sure that you’re not percieved as
an artyfarty,high-falluting light-
ing designer who turns up, waves
his arms around for abit then
goes off again. Youget under the
skin of the job, making yourself a
positive point of contact for that
team. If you tryto bring them
along theywill get in behind
you.”
The bottom line, saysHensman,
is that lighting designers owe it to
their clients to get it right and jus- BMW, Leipzig The Johnson Building, London
tifythe fee theyare being paid.
“Myview quite simplyis that
The Sage, Gatesheadyou’ve got achoice –you can go
to site and do the ball-breaking
bit, which is not pleasant, and we
do all we can to avoid that, or
you can sit on your computer and
do anice visual. Ithink too many
people in myprofession do the
nice visual.”
His other beef is with budgets.
‘Wedrive QS’s up the wall. We’ll
be on to the QS straight after
an appointment and work on
the budget. And we’ll want the
luminaire budget. And we’ll bring
it in on budget. The complaint
Iget all the time is that lighting
designers turn up and spend
thousands of pounds. The reason
we go after that budget cost so
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