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Expo 2000 in Hanover: “There was only some subtle path lighting and a few islands of light. The clients soon overcame their initial skepticism about the concept when they saw that visitors actually liked these areas after the sensory overload at the Expo.”
Underpinning life in innumerable ways, sun- light influences the work of many lighting designers. Yet for German lighting designer Ulrike Brandi, daylight is “the starting point for all thinking about architecture and lighting design. Not only from a functional angle, but in a human-centred approach that places strong emphasis on the basic need for natural daylight.”
As for the technical aspects of lighting design, reducing it to just that is something Brandi strongly disagrees with. “Debate on energy issues does not go far enough in many cases. Light is like food,” she says, “and - staying with this analogy - only talk- ing about calories and nutritional value all the time is not enough. They are the tools we must have a good grasp of, but an excel- lent meal is created in a different way! It is essential to be creative with light and pro- duce values over and above the anticipated technical results.”
Growing up with a photographer mother and a great aunt, Brandi developed an ap- preciation for light early in life, and she is “fascinated by daylight and all its facets. Every place has its own specific light, and nature has an endless repertory of moods, ranging from early morning mist to dramatic cloud formations.”
From beyond the clouds, light from the stars and even the moons of Jupiter and the
rings of Saturn draws her admiring gaze. “I have been fascinated by astronomy from an early age,” she says.
She also admires the work of great physi- cists and astronomers, such as Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei, and their discoveries relating to light. Studying design under Dieter Rams (the influential German industrial designer, best known for his Ten Principles of Good Design) in Hamburg, Brandi designed a piece of work called Sun Luminaire, and in doing so discovered that she was “more interested in light than in design”.
This first student lighting project was a solar-inspired installation at the Folkwang- schule, now the Folkwang University of the Arts, in Essen in Germany. “A large ‘sun’,” says Brandi, “measuring 80 centimetres in diameter, travelled on a tee- ter board (a seesaw-like wooden board used in acrobatic displays) from east to west in a staircase. It took twelve hours to move six metres, which is about the length of daytime. At the time, the greatest technical challenge was to make it run at a consis- tently slow speed.”
It was this project that prompted Brandi to set up her own practice in Hamburg in the late ‘80s.
In 2008, Brandi opened another office in Munich for the design of a new satellite
terminal at Munich Airport. The firm is now working on other projects there, too. Since opening her first office, Brandi’s lighting portfolio includes the lighting of buildings and public spaces such as the British Museum in London, the Mercedes- Benz Museum in Stuttgart, the façade of the town hall in Hamburg, the town centre in Bremen, the lighting masterplan for Rotterdam, EXPO 2000 in Hanover and the International Airport Pudong, Phase II in Shanghai.
On the current state of the lighting design profession today, Brandi believes that “uni- versity education is often inadequate and unstructured”. Young designers that join her firm still need on-the-job teaching, despite having the academic qualifications. So, in response to university education’s short- comings, Brandi has set up a new lighting design institute. From next year, would-be lighting designers can study at the Brandi Institute for Light and Design in Hamburg. There, students will learn the ins and outs of lighting design on a practical level “free from manufacturers’ interests,” says Brandi, “in addition to cre- ative aspects of lighting design, which are sometimes neglected with all the technical specifications and requirements.” Brandi’s own approach to lighting design involves starting with natural light, the
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