This crucial initiative for lighting master plan development enables stakeholders to define nighttime objectives. Here, watch the step-by-step process in Double Bay (Sydney, Australia) with mayors, councilors and local business owners participating in the three-hour module.
A research-based, prototype pilot, blossoms with citizen participation.
Skim to last image for 6-minute video
Urban design often neglects the nocturnal city.
It is time to recognize the changing character of public space after sundown. The practice of Nighttime Design is a critical response to the after-dark experience, proposing new lighting solutions based on the in-depth study, for example, of local mobility, spatial elements, and activities. Nighttime Design positively impacts public health: illuminated streets extend walking hours, increase the number of social encounters, and stimulate economic activity through after-dark cultural and retail offerings. It also improves general wellbeing and feelings of safety in the community through crime reduction.
Smart Everyday Nighttime Design an international, collaborative, research project led by Leni Schwendinger (with Arup), focused on innovative ways to improve the nighttime experience in Getsemaní, a UNESCO world-heritage district in Cartagena, Colombia undergoing rapid gentrification. While tourists are drawn to the area’s colorful authenticity, culture and nightlife, the neighborhood is becoming synonymous with deep inequality and division. As Schwendinger emphasizes, “Is it possible to build better communities with light?”
Nighttime Design values local design solutions. In the case of the Cartagena-sited project, workshops and social/technical research led to the development of a universal LED lantern customized and localized for the area’s streets. The project team had two overall ambitions: the first was to conduct research and develop a sustainable Nighttime Design concept and methodology; the second was to improve community connections and galvanize local stakeholders through the use of private property for public lighting. During a community work session, in July 2016, operational 3-D lantern sketches were created to show how a neutral, modern object could be localized according to a specific urban environment – its culture, values, and symbols. With its blend of old and new components, the lantern prototype accentuated the character of Getsemaní. Its collaborative methodology brought together the interests of residential and commercial actors.
Following the workshop, a “pop-up” prototype pilot installation was conducted on a commercial street. The one-day workshop and pilot were a point of departure for addressing critical issues of social/urban policy. The workshop included community stakeholders including politicians, artists, designers, cultural organizations and, most importantly, local residents. Historical preservation, infrastructure, heritage, tourism, mobility and visual effect were all discussed and debated. The project’s findings were captured on video by Plane-Site, a global agency specializing in full-cycle content strategy. This short documentary illustrates the research process, workshop and resulting prototype pilot – available to view in English and Spanish.
Beyond this, the future is glowing for Nighttime Design as an emerging discipline in city-making around the globe.
Further information Smart Everyday Nighttime Design offers new opportunities for improving economic conditions, public health, social life, security and safety in after-dark environments. The researchers are especially interested in the global south where emerging economies, urban after-dark enthusiasm, heat and time zone combine as a rich cultural area to study, test and implement innovative approaches. The team welcomes expressions of interest from urban-oriented organizations in regard to pilot-based research.
Contact: Research [at] nighttimedesign [dot] org
Credits: Don Slater, co-director, Configuring Light research group at the London School of Economics, Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Despacio: Carlos Pardo, iGuzzini, Findeter, Citelum, Arup: Joana Mendo, Christoph Gisel
The night has the power to invoke a myriad of emotions — from fear to romance, melancholy to excitement. Whatever your feelings, the fact remains that the nighttime consists of half of our time on this earth, and that means half of our time in our cities as well. What can we do to ensure that our cities are truly taking advantage of their 24-hour needs? What does it mean to design for nighttime?
In this episode we talk with Leni Schwendinger, an expert on nighttime design and Director of NightSeeing (and so much more!), on the many types of light, what to do on a light walk, and how to take a holistic look at our cities’ daily light cycles.
Here, a six minute audio lesson on nighttime design urbanism: an interview by Monocle: The Urbanist, while at reSITE, in Prague, June 2017. “We can look back to Guy Debord… The freedom to wander… looking for the ambience. Nighttime design is the broader discipline where urban lighting leads the way…”
Nighttime design and its concomitant Shades of Night analysis were born out of the NightSeeing™ Program
Charles Lane, light and shadow observations
During the dark hours, a nexus of walking and observing living city streets — at once intuitive and self activated — merged into a performative and philosophical practice.
The phenomenological – reflections and sparkle – glint as figures of found light against the background of mono-typical fields of sodium yellow streetlighting, and more recently as a blinkingly, blindingly white-grey saturation.
82nd Street NightSeeing™/Envisioning 2012
How long does it take to synthesize disparate focuses — lighting, city life, community engagement — into a meaningful body of work? Three years, five years? A decade?
Near future vision: nighttime design teams composed of urbanists and city activators will form bespoke core consultant groups for specific urban regeneration projects. For example, those agencies, developers, associations revitalizing the nighttime economy in one district may need, along with urban lighting, public health and retail consultation.
Another neighborhood might benefit from urban and landscape designers, policy experts and sustainability consultants. Perhaps night visibility, traffic and pedestrian conflicts are a primary concern. What about addressing the district’s upgrade to LED streetlighting along with a digital platform for seasonal lighting transformations, or for a cultural nighttime district where tourism and branding awareness is important…there is a team for that!
Sydney nighttime strategy
Cities and districts may desire to create broad nighttime guidelines such as the excellent OPEN Sydney Strategy and Action Plan (pdf). It addresses nighttime economy, tourism, and diversity, among other important issues for international cities.
London’s Night Tube and Night Time initiative
Another current exampleis the concerted effort by the London Mayor’s office and Transport for London. Transport rolled out the spectacular “Night Tube” campaign in August 2016, followed by the inauguration of a Night Time Commission which resides in the Mayor’s office.
Here, I have shared the process of envisioning a practice and the lurching tiny, and grand, steps that must be made in service of growth. A new understanding of illumination combined with urban design is becoming official, ensconced in city governance, which for theorists and practitioners alike establishes a context for the varied ways to improve lives — in our turbulently urbanizing world.
In 2001, for their 20th anniversary issue Metropolis magazine’s back page featured several architects’ and designers’ quick visions for future designs or objects.
Then, much public space was built as a result of private developer incentives – and meanly edged with serrated metal bars and spikes. Those were the days when benches were removed from subway stations.
Now, in the age of Google Streetview and a increasingly laser-like focus on pedestrianization, my vision of a “mapping device” that identifies “negative spaces” such as forecourts, sidewalks and parking lots – which was not all that exciting or commonly shared value then — seems prescient.
Next, connecting up atmospheres and activities through electronic controls. A scenography of public light and life.
It was cold, it was dark…normal site study conditions.
Arup staff and I braved the night with cameras, illuminance meters, laser measurement tools and paper plans to parse the high-pressure sodium nighttime environment. Here, an informal outcome, a 61-second video of the monumental Gowanus Expressway intersection, Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Marvel at the many illuminated phenomena – the blinks, the blurs, the limited color range…industrial building lantern effect, crosswalk retro-reflectivity, the glare of under-bridge fixtures and hazy baby-aspirin colored blanket of light…everywhere.
… and imagine, if you dare, the future of this site, a pilot project to allow humanity to explore, with pleasure, perhaps fascination, the monstrous forms above and street level destinations that may develop through the taming process of light, green infrastructure and urban design.
Nightwalking, A Nocturnal History of London, by Matthew Beaumont.
The book arrived bedside and surely it “…shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers…”(from the publishers, Verso Books).
In the 484-page tome the writer investigates the intrigues of night culture from the renaissance to mid-19th century or in authorial time — from Chaucer to Dickens.
With his own poetic voice, Mr. Beaumont examines the darkness of penury and ‘houselessness’, the roguish elite — ramblers, wanderers and vagrants — and introduces the reader to the “noctambulant and the noctivagant, or common nightwalker”.
He ends the book with a quote from Edgar Allan Poe that starts many of my talks, which I now share with you.
Then we sallied forth into the streets, arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.
Guy Debord’sTheory of the Dérive has been instrumental for my life as a citizen-walker. From the Bureau of Public Secrets, “… dérive, a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.
An assembly of posts highlighting a facet of 21st century night walking – and passage:
Here, this list is for you: publications on urban design, historical light, stories of sleep, nocturnal narratives, the power of disorder and heterogeneous spaces and places, wrapped in a frame to consider when designing illumination for cities.
Two more books released in 2015
Cities of Light, Two Centuries of Urban Illumination can be purchased from Routledge Press.
A long envisioned future practice, “nighttime design” stepped into the spotlight with two publications in early 2015. In short, my team and colleagues at Arup have agreed that broadening the purview of urban lighting into a interdisciplinary process of design is the way forward. Firstly, Cities Alive, Rethinking the Shades of Night.
Here, the Arup description:
“In the past, the attitude of ‘the more light the better’ has led to a general abundance of light, especially in urban areas, but both light and darkness are equally important to our health and well-being,” said Florence Lam, global lighting design leader at Arup. “With the shift towards 24 hour cities, we should not aim to simply recreate the day at night, but instead, we need to carefully consider the role of night-time lighting. We need to design our cities to change depending on the time of night and the different usage patterns of the public realm after dark – articulating what we call the ‘different shades of night’.”
The report highlights that we need to make human centered night-time design a priority in urban development, and one that should be considered from the earliest planning stages. It proposes that night-time lighting should play a more active role in shaping sustainable cities that are more enjoyable, more sociable, safer, healthier and easier to get around.
“Night-time is fundamentally different from daytime,” said Leni Schwendinger, lighting designer and urbanist at Arup. “In many hotter climates, it provides the best conditions for people to use outdoor urban spaces. So it deserves its own design approach, and thinking harder and smarter about street lighting is a vital part of this.”
The report was collaboration between the Foresight + Research + Innovation and Lighting teams at Arup. Involving a range of internal and external experts.
Link to download Rethinking the Shades of Night. And here, more about the nighttime design philosphy.
Earlier in the year, Cities of Light, Two Centuries of Urban Illumination was also released. This comprehensive volume published by Routledge Press is edited by Sandy Isenstadt, Margaret Maile Petty, Dietrich Neumann. Each of 31 chapter covers a city – including Boston, Istanbul, Shanghai, Oulu, Derby… my contribution is New York City, with a chapter on a creative lighting strategy for a Queen’s district conceptualized as A Roadmap for Illumination and Community-Building.
At a moment when the entire world is being reshaped by new lighting technologies and new design attitudes, the longer history of urban lighting remains fragmentary. Cities of Light aims to provide a global framework for historical studies of urban lighting and to offer a new perspective on the fast-moving developments of lighting today.
I have been testing “nighttime design” as a descriptor for a new urban illumination fortified by expertise and input by fellow urbanists, urban designers, social researchers, geographers, economic consultants, landscape architects, just to name a few. In Cities of Light the phrase was committed to print for the first time.
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