The ILP’s ‘How to be brilliant’ event at Clerkenwell Design Week in May focused on how to ‘curate’, or control and manage, your lighting design from concept to reality.
The ILP’s ‘How to be brilliant’ events programme took a breather over the summer and is set to return later this month.
The final talk for the first half of the year, at Clerkenwell Design Week in May, saw Michael Grubb Studio’s Melissa Byers, Abbie Hill and Anna Freiesleben talk about the ins and outs of ‘how to be brilliant at… curating the concept’.
The event was held at Clerkenwell’s ‘House of Detention’ as part of the ‘[d]arc thoughts’ series of lighting-related presentations and discussions. As it has been with all the 2024 ‘How to be brilliant’ programme, the event was sponsored by BEGA, meaning it remains free to attend and a key vehicle for the Institution to connect with young, new and up-and-coming lighters.
Melissa Byers, head of the practice’s Bournemouth Studio, opened the conversation by highlighting how RIBA Stage 2 – the concept design – is often ‘where the magic happens’ when it comes to lighting design. ‘It is where, as we always say, we sell the dream,’ she explained.
The three then discussed what, for them, are the six key takeways to ensure you effectively ‘curate’ this process, or keep control of the vision and ensure it is aligned to both the brief and delivery. They illustrated these points through their application within a number of Michael Grubb Studio projects, notably Battersea Power Station’s Lift 109 Visitor Experience, which we shall come to shortly.
The first learning point, highlighted Anna Freiesleben, project lighting designer, was simply to ‘loosen up’, to work to feel free, yet still to think creatively. ‘It is how we learn and grow. As children, we will often draw without inhibition but then as we get older negative judgements can set in, and that can hinder our thought process,’ she emphasised.
‘At a practical level, this is often achieved through rough, quick sketches between the different team members via Zoom when remote working. This also allows the whole team to seamlessly work across their two studios based in London and the South West of England covering projects across the UK and internationally,’ Anna explained.
‘This is useful at the start of a project, when we’re gathering ideas, discussing things, and going through and strengthening the concept. A sketch can be an instant way to get an idea across; you’re not using too many words, you’re just getting straight to the point,’ she added.
The second takeaway was to ‘be yourself’. ‘Be yourself seems like an easy thing to do, it seems very simple,’ said lighting designer Abbie Hill.
‘But in reality it takes a lot of vulnerability; it allows you to look inwards and then express outwards your authentic self. In the design world, this can mean being creative and bold with your ideas; not being afraid to face rejection.
‘We work to nurture all the different styles from every different designer. Sometimes it will be simply sketches, other times more photo-realistic renders, or developed organically and authentically. It allows you to express yourself and that’s key to creating your own style,’ she added.
Anna then outlined how the next takeaway was to ‘open your mind’. She highlighted work she is doing around trying to imagine what lighting might look like in 2100 if humanity has to relocate to another planet, one split into permanent day and night where there is a single habitable strip of land in-between that is in permanent sunset.
‘Thinking about light in this way made me think about the future lighting conditions humans may face, and how we would design for these new concepts. Breaking down the idea of lighting design and reframing it,’ she explained.
Abbie then explained the next takeaway or learning point was to ‘touch grass’. ‘What we mean by that is to disconnect and step away from our current reality. Stepping away allows you to expand your vision and therefore expand your inspiration,’ she said.
So, for example, this could be thinking about how light works in nature or in a totally different, non-Western urban environment, with Abbie explaining how, on a trip to Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam, she had been struck by the minimal use of street lighting across its rural areas.
LIFT 109 VISITOR EXPERIENCE
The fifth learning point was ‘listen to the project’, emphasised Melissa. ‘Every time we’re approaching a project, there are so many different ways we can approach it and look at how we’re going create it. So, it is thinking about what we need in order to tell our vision effectively but also efficiently. Some projects are very clear, in terms of how best to curate and present the concept development. Others are more challenging because they are unique themselves,’ she said.
To illustrate this in action, Melissa turned to the practice’s experience in illuminating the Lift 109 Visitor Experience. This is located in the power station’s magnificent art deco Turbine Hall. The centrepiece is a large-scale pendant suspended in front of the double-height window, which was designed to complement the structure of the turbine. The pendant comprises 172 individually addressed nodes and coloured rings of light suspended above an interactive AV table.
Alongside this, a 15-sq m glass elevator travels inside the interior of the power station’s northwest chimney. The experience was designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates in partnership with Sysco Productions and Squint/ Opera, with Michael Grubb Studio brought in to provide the lighting design and delivery through to construction.
The express lift takes visitors to the bottom of the chimney, where single linear luminaires at low level illuminate the entrance portal. The lighting acts as a guide up the chimney steps. A series of circular Oculi infinite mirrors chase light in tandem with a soundtrack. These are located in the ceiling at the top of the stairs on the circular viewing platform in anticipation of the lift doors opening. Upon stepping into the lift, the rings pulsate and multiply, with the light building to extend across the lift walls and ceiling as the elevator reaches the height of its ascent. As the lift descends, the ring lights then shine outwards in a halo of white light.
‘It was a truly unique experience where we had to draw on a lot of different skills to try to get the vision across,’ Melissa explained. But creating and delivering the concept was not easy.
‘There were so many unique and challenging elements. There were so many different teams, all across the site. It wasn’t just multiple, different teams; there were multiple, different teams doing multiple, different tasks as well, and often in very, very small spaces, even though the site is large,’ she said.
‘The circular theme was inspired by the turbines and much of the machinery was one of the inspirations of the project; the cylindrical form of the chimney itself. The other inspiration was just the sheer energy of this “Cathedral of Power”. We wanted to build up to a climax at the top of the chimney. Everything revolved around movement, turning, circular motion.
‘The creative teams started to develop the narrative collectively as they might a film, along a timeline. The whole experience is cyclical. There is audio-visual, sound and light, and people moving around, meaning the timings become really critical. Often, we did not know how long exactly the lift would take, the timings, the doors everything. So, we laid it out in quite simple terms along a narrative, showing the visitor experience,’ Melissa added.
Anna then highlighted how, for such a complex project, in-studio and on-site testing was absolutely key, including getting a clear idea of the structure, the quantity of rings that would be needed, and the timing of the ascent and descent.
EXPERIMENTS WITH AI
The final takeaway then was to ‘look beyond’, Abbie emphasised, highlighting how the practice has been experimenting with AI-led designs within a research case study, using the Midjourney AI image generation tool to imagine (or reimagine) lighting concepts for the Harrods department store, albeit just as a creative experiment.
One challenge she identified was the fact the tool uses or references existing work of designers and artists, that it ‘scrapes’ from the internet to collate an image.
‘This project does pose a moral dilemma for designers as to whether we should be using this, as it doesn’t accredit these people, and the design influences it has come from,’ Abbie pointed out.
In its current iteration, the tool can also throw up anomalies, such as spelling errors, random lights in the sky or even alien monsters suddenly appearing.
‘It can seem polished and perfect but it does lack a human element to it,’ Abbie cautioned. ‘But it is important to note that embracing your own skill-set is incredibly valuable; it is important to express yourself authentically. You need to establish yourself and your own style which is very valuable.’
‘But if you take anything away from today,’ Melissa said in conclusion, ‘it is to be bold, be brave, but most of all be brilliant.’
- This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the September edition of Lighting Journal. Click on the link to the edition to read the full article.
