038
DETAILS [lighting talk] COULD YOU TELL ME...
… how important lighting is to your designs? Essential. All our work has to do with time - so with the change of natural light through the day and the seasons. Our work is about catching, reflecting, filtering, dimming or excluding daylight. Simultaneously, electric (or what I call synthetic) light is a major part of all our designs, as the surfaces we clad or create in the interiors; the objects we position in exhibitions; and the gardens or public spaces we create outside need to be lit strategically as soon as daylight is not available, not permitted or insufficient. A good example here is the Rietveld Pavilion [1]
of the Venice Biennale
in 2012. We replaced the skylight windows with clear glass and strategically placed large mirrors on the rooftop to reflect and bring in the natural light into the pavilion.
… why spending time thinking about and working with light is important to you?
Everything is defined by light. Our state of being is connected to light. Mostly all that is living depends on light. Colour is light. We see nothing without it (unless one cannot see). Our sense of time exists through light. So thinking about light and working with light is like breathing.
… about the role lighting plays in the life of a city? Of course you know it makes the city into what it is. It paints the city. It is necessary for safety and direction, and is a commercial and communication tool. Everyone knows that red light stands for STOP or Sex and that flickering light means Alarm or a Feast. Depending on colour, size, intensity, rhythm and location, we know almost instinctively what it means.
There could be less of it, in my opinion – with all this light transmitted into the air we miss out on the universe, the moon and stars (and all else flying around) above us. GIardini di Porta Nuova [2]
room with hardly any light is also beautiful. With exhibitions especially, we like to choreograph the movement of the visitor; to lead him through a series of different environments, from one experience to the next. The right choice of light is essential to achieve this. All of it I like if well done. All of it can be devastating if not understood. In the exhibition ‘Snapshot’ [4]
that we designed for the Van Gogh
Museum in Amsterdam, light and perspective were the main focus as it was the use of an early camera by seven painters. The spaces of the Van Gogh Museum are optically enlarged and reduced. Light simulates daylight and creates intimate corners as well as ‘outside’ spaces.
… about the importance of shadows and the balance of darkness and light in your work? It’s very important. The right direction and intensity of a light source can emphasise the materiality, three-dimensionality and colour intensity of an object or plane, thanks to the play of light and shadow. Such as in the Tapestry wall [5] Amsterdam.
This issue we talk to interior and landscape designer Petra Blaisse of Inside Outside.
in Stedelijk Museum in
in Doha, Qatar we only low light the edge of the pavements and the plants are all lit up with small spotlights creating a soft play of light and dark.
Shadow and light create mystery and surprise: one moment it is there, the next it is gone! In the theatre darkness and light is an obvious tool. We use this technique in our landscape designs….if safety regulations allow a soft play of light and dark. In landscape gardens [6]
, a large public garden in the centre of Milan is a good example where we are forced to light every square metre of the paths upto a certain amount of flux deemed necessary for safety. In urban landscape where there is usually very little green we want to accentuate the green with light and not the hardscape such as pavements. In the Almere Swamp Garden [3]
project, a low lit
underground parking lot, the interplay of light and mist creates a mysterious effect.
… about the best and the worst illuminated places you have visited?
I dislike restaurants where the light falls straight onto the visitor from above, instead of on the table and food. I prefer museums when there is at least some daylight in an exhibition space. I love the Whitney Museum in Manhattan because of its large window and the horizontal light that flows into the entire space because of it. The Stedelijk Museum here in Amsterdam and its former New Wing (by Sandberg) used to have lots of daylight – large windows, not always covered with white cloth - before its renovation and before regulations got hysterical all over the world. Thank heavens the Hermitage in St Petersburg still has daylight (mixed with tube light!) in many of its rooms….with curtains! Beautiful double-layered windows through which one looks out over the snow-clad square and colourful buildings outside. A Malevich floating in front of a lively city square and wide sky is quite different from one hanging quietly on a white museum wall; obviously.
I just think the connection with the outside, with natural light and ‘things happening’ around an object or space is important. That you can breathe, escape. Of course an enclosed, silent and mystical
In almost all other contexts, we see to it that daylight can enter a space in one way or another (slits, cuts, holes, tiny perforations or wide open planes); or that light can flow outward from within during the night. The play of light and shadow, the shift of direction and the changes in the intensity of light throughout the day mark the time and cause a variety of effects, moods and experiences – as everyone knows. Our work in theatres and auditoriums differs from that in concert halls, museums or very transparent private houses; and again from that in landscaping, naturally. So we always search for the right balance - or for a lack of balance; because we want to introduce change, to trigger surprise, to introduce mystery and illusion. To suggest something that isn’t really there. To accentuate or erase something that is there. To transform reality into something else, where heavy becomes weightless; massive becomes transparent; colourful becomes colourless. A wall opens up; a thin fleece changes into a wall; an elegant figurine turns into a frightening Dracula; a poppy curtain into a deep dark forest; a dark corner in the garden into a sunny playground. This is what light and darkness can do, time and again.
www.insideoutside.nl
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