FOCUS 061
Experience and thought
In a new, limited-edition book, the team at lighting consultant Lux Populi reflect on the emotional and perceptive possibilities of lighting – and take a retrospective look at an early project, a Chicago food pantry, that exemplified the potential of light in this respect to be a tool of social influence
HOW WE EXPERIENCE SPACE is defined by how we perceive it – not just with vision, but with all our senses. Light is a particularly impactful sense in our understanding of the world – half our brain is involved in processing vision. Having clarity as to the perceptual tools at our disposal is key.
An architect may seek to make a space feel taller, more generous, simply by uplighting a ceiling. A visual merchandiser will make a dress seem more desirable by accenting it, making it brighter than the adjustment of the eye expects, so it becomes featured, more vividly coloured, more dynamically textured.
Humans are driven by emotion. We love emotional experience; it draws us into spaces, we seek it out. We’re drawn to places by how we feel in them, by how that feeling fits with who we are, what we want to be, what we want to
share. Vivid emotion defines our memories and our desires. Subtle emotion defines our rest, our recovery, our learning and our interactions.
Light itself is a direct mediator of basic emotions – our alertness and happiness driven by the light of a candle or a sunny day, our sense of dislocation by glary lighting, our ambivalence under a cloudy sky (or those wretched LED panels). Our most basic emotions are heavily mediated by light.
More sophisticated emotions are equally manipulated by light – from the tribalism of dance lighting to our total emotional engagement in a rock singer dazzling at the centre of an arc of inbound light through haze, to the sense of elegance and self-esteem from dining in a classy restaurant with spotlights on each table. Tese emotional design experiences are relatively widely understood, but there are others too.
Te clients of a food pantry are often in a hard place in life, self-esteem hammered by the challenges they face. But being invited as clients to an environment that brings the cues of a chic cafe communicates that they are valued, welcomed, that the space wants them. Lakeview Pantry, now known as Nourishing Hope, is a Chicago-based social services organisation founded in 1970, providing food – a diverse range of groceries – mental wellness counselling and other social services, such as job and housing assistance.
Below Rather than cheap, ubiquitous, utilitarian 600 x 600mm recessed fittings, the graphic, suspended luminaires create a more visually interesting feature and imply that the lighting has been given design consideration
Te ethos of the organisation is summed up in a significant small gesture – a bunch of flowers is given to each client on each visit. Tey go home not just with the necessities, but with a sense of brightness and renewal that they can display in their apartments, a pleasure and luxury. Taking the cue from this emotional element in the service design, the lighting design in turn emphasises the quality of food, and the welcome of the volunteers’ faces – faces with whom weekly interactions build towards trust and intimacy over time. Tose emotions are the key drivers of behaviour – behaviour that fulfils the goals of a food pantry.
Lux Populi is an international lighting consultant, founded in 2005, and has studios in Mexico City and Oxford. Tis is an edited extract from its recently produced book, published as a limited edition and not yet available for widespread distribution
ALL IMAGES: TOM HARRIS
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