46 FOCUS
constraints. Tese nuances inform the outcome as much as the initial brief itself, and require us to ask the right questions to tune the frequency and find the right harmonic to make a scheme come to life. Sometimes this process means stepping away from the obvious question and reframing the challenge entirely, asking ‘how do I not light this?’ rather than ‘how I light it’. While lighting innovations are essential to foster discovery, we run the risk of overcomplicating the design process if the introduction of ‘extras’ is not well considered and entirely justified. Refining our lighting concepts is how we ensure that every design adheres to a light ‘only when and where it is needed’ philosophy. Te iterative process is especially vital in lighting design because light is an intangible medium. Drawings and calculations will only take you so far. Te real ‘truth’ is added when we mock up our ideas and test them in the real world. It is the only way to really know that the lighting effect that you envisaged at the play phase will be realised in the final design.
Sadly, creativity is under threat. Te process of realising and refining creative ideas is becoming a luxury in today’s increasingly constrained project landscape. Reduced programmes are pushing designers to work faster and more efficiently. Tighter budgets require us to do more with less. All this means that creativity is being sidelined and what invariably follows is a more familiar and restrained design process, with less room to explore, question and iterate.
A logical response to working creatively under these pressures might be to turn to AI, as it has the potential to evolve from a tool that helps us streamline workflows into a valuable partner for ideation. However, AI arguably poses both an opportunity and a threat to creativity. While it can simplify our internal processes and free up more time for thinking, there is the risk that we might grow to rely on it and lose our innate critical thinking.
True creative thinking is something more – something more spiritual.
Te role of a lighting designer has changed considerably in recent years, partly due to the richness of scope that I referred to earlier. Emerging studies are reshaping our understanding of the health and wellness benefits of light on an almost weekly basis. To keep pace, we must remain open and engaged as our world spans a whole range of disciplines, including physiology, psychology, sociology and ecology.
We need the ability to think both broader and deeper to create meaningful work. ‘Knowing’ is an essential part of the realisation of a design – it encourages us to ask the questions others might not think to ask and bring a fresh lens to each design challenge.
Te more we inform our creativity, the more we listen and the more that we play, the greater our ability to try the untested and explore different directions. Feeding the creative spirit means sharing yourself with the bigger picture and absorbing as many disparate experiences as possible to add more flavours, influences and knowledge to the design process.
So are we losing the spirit of play in lighting design? Not entirely, but creativity is under greater pressure than ever before. Raising the bar is difficult because it is hard to define what ‘the bar’ is when there are so many disparate boxes to tick. What we cannot do as a discipline is allow self-justification to be tied to metrics and standards – no designer ever set out to achieve standard. We need lighting designers who are bold enough to stand up for creativity by asking for the things that help it materialise and flourish. Space to play, time to explore and a seat at the table early in the design process to question, test and evolve our ideas. When those things are allowed to happen, light will always show us the way.
Daniel Blaker is creative director of lighting consultant at Nulty
Right The Galeries Lafayette, Paris, scheme by Nulty features an intricate arrangement of white tube lights that replicates the lines of the Eiffel Tower and is magnified through the play of light in mirrored surfaces, creating the illusion of a double-height space
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