ENLIGHTER.ORG-TESTING » Interviews & Opinions

Changing the Night, Interview with Jan Edler from Realities:United

Mitja Prelovsek — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:04:32 +0000

Jan Edler, ©2008 Annette Hausschild, Ostkreuz Berlin Realities:United(RU) is responsible for some of the most renowned projects in the area of dynamic architecture such as SPOTS in Berlin / Germany and Kunsthaus Graz / Austria, to name just a few and is as such at the forefront of the dynamic night-time architecture. Needles to say we were very excited to do an interview with Jan Edler who is together with his brother Tim a founder and principal of RU. We talked about the concepts and ideas behind their work, the effect dynamic night-time architecture has on the urban environment, what can or should we communiate via these powerful new media and much more. Tell us a bit about yourself and your background. Both Tim and myself are trained architects who have started working together around 1997. Tim and Jan Edler, ©2008 Annette Hausschild, Ostkreuz Berlin At that time we were part of an art collective in Berlin called Konsultechnik, which was a platform of roughly 10 people coming from the fields of fine arts, architecture and media. And what kind of work did you do in that group? Was it in any way similar to what you do now? It definitely correlates content-wise. It was the first experiments in joining the built world and elements of the digital world but it was more of an abstract interest at that time. MultiMind Project (1999) For example ‘MultiMind’ project that was exhibited in 1999 in Deichtorhallen in Hamburg was exploring the potentials of video communication in a space. That might have been the beginning of what we do today, if you can actually define what we do today. Well, why don’t we try to define it anyway. What is it that you do today? Our work exists somewhere on the border between architecture and art. Kunsthaus Graz (2003). Facade lighting for the Kunsthaus in Graz. Lately though, especially after the Kunsthaus Graz project, we’ve been inreasingly involved with projects that explore the possibility of architecture, and especially facades, to change. It’s not that this particular field of work would be what we were looking for when we started, it’s more that we gradually got involved with it. It is one of many types of projects that we are interested in but it is clear that it has become quite a dominant field in our work in the last couple of years. One of the projects that I find particularly interesting is the Open House project. Could you explain a bit about it? That project was developed for an exhibition entitled ‘Open House’ organised by Vitra Design Museum . Open House (2007). Conceptual exploration on the Living in the Future They invited 13 architects from around the world and asked us to work on and explore the ‘living of the future’ – how will we live in the future, how does the house of the future look like and similar. What we at RU did was to go back to the promise of modernism and modernity in architecture. It was a promise of a very transparent and light architecture with a close connection to the outside world, which hasn’t come true through the years after the start of modernism. For example in towns like Berlin, where it is cold throughout a large part of the year there is a need of creating a very clear division between the outside and inside. Open House We looked what if it would be possible to make this division much looser through the use of inteligent clothing that would have the ability to warm you up and cool you down. We were interested in the subsequent possibility of architecture that would be based solely on the activity in different spaces and not so much on the different climates. Do you think there is a connection between the openess and transparency your Open house exhibits and your present work, where the facades are much more transparent and penetratable for the eyes of the observer? I would say there is an abstract connection rather than a direct one. Architecture I believe is always trying to communicate something that is connected to the building and it’s use. The facades too, in my opinion, shouldn’t be completely disconnected to the building itself. If you have a comercial building for example, which is mostly used for commercial functions then it might be ok, for example, to put advertising from global players on the fasade. You can argue about it but at least you know that the building is about the turn-over of money and profit. The term “Media architecture” is associated with quite a lot of your work. What does this term mean to you? To be honest, I dont think that’s true. Maybe in some circles it is associated with media architecture, or to be more precise, media facades, but if you ask most people in the world, what a Media Facade is, you would hear it’s something similar to what you can see on Times Square in New York for example. It is more or less the idea of television, which is transformed and transfered to the urban space. We are working on the very specific part of this field (media architecture) and I believe it is a groundbreaking work in a way, because a common understanding of this field doesn’t exist yet. It is being created in the present. And I hope that in time we will get away from the general idea of a television transfered to the urban space, even though that today media industry is the predominant influence in these types of projects. What do you mean when you say that you would like to get away from the idea of media architecture as a transformation of TV onto the urban environment? What would you like the term Media Architecture to mean? Well, I think all of the architecture is connected to media. Regardless, if it incorporates technology that we usually associate with it or not. In general, I do not believe it is about creating a new kind of architecture, it is more about broadening the understanding of what architecture should incorporate today. It’s less about creating a new term, its more about dealing with the phenomena, that architects have to incorporate into their designs in order to stay on top of the future. Are these phenomena something that recently happened in terms of technology? What made it possible to have this discussion now and not 50 years ago? Yes, I think it is connected with a progress in technology even though the architect’s dream of creating something that has the capability to change is quite old. It was a big thing in the 60s, for example the concepts of walking cities and so on. All the ideas were out there, but they have always been, either incredibly expensive or just not possible due to the lack of appropriate tehnology. But today, the display technology is giving us the possiblity to change at least at the surface, which might lead to ideas of structures that could change also physically. So, in that way it is, of course, connected to the technology which has become available. If you walk through contemporary Berlin for example you see all of those jumbo commercials in the city, which have also become available due to printing technology suddenly becoming affordable. And in the times after the war when Berlin was showing incredible amounts of construction work due to the war damage, this was a very common way to earn money during the construction. Issues like these always come along with the availabillity of technology. We spoke a lot about the possibility of architecture to change. One of your projects that definitely fits into the category of dynamic architecture is NIX project. Could you explain a bit more about it? NIX project was developed for the new building of European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt/Germany. NIX (2005), Dynamic lighting utilising house lighting that is taken over by a centralised system when the offices are not in use. Coop Himmelblau who were the architects invited us to the project mainly because they were afraid that the ECB might decide to put something like a big EURO sign on top of the tower in order to communicate that this is the building of ECB. Coop Himmelblau wanted us to look at the night time design and explore the possibilities of getting around the danger of advertisements on the top of the tower. Our approach was based on two starting points. One was trying to find the design potential of technologies, which are incorporated into modern buildings, such as sunshading or lighting control systems for example. These technologies are there mostly for technical reasons, and are very rarely used to find the right ‘gestalt’ for the building. We called these technologies ‘anyhow technologies’, because they are there more for technical or environmental reasons and are usually not influencing the design of the building. The goal that was driving us was making a step further from BIX (Kunsthaus Graz) project and taking the dynamics into the 3rd dimension. Not staying on the surface, but rather infiltrating the whole volume of the building and taking the whole building as your field of work. In that way, the whole building could become a piece of abstract art. The idea of using lighting of individual office cells to create a something dynamic that spans across the whole building is actually in cohesion with the overall philosophy of ESB which is ‘bringing individual elements together in order to create added value’. What would that ’something dynamic’ actually be? How would the night-time image of the building change and what would the dynamics be based on? The idea that somehow took off was that a special piece of software would analyse what is happening in the bank from day to day and would create an abstract reproduction – a lightprint – during the night-time. But at the same time, anybody that kept working in the building after dark would distort that image. You could say that there would be an aesthetic will – an artistic software - controlling all the lighting and creating these very slow and mild dynamics in the night-time, which would be in a constant dialog with the individual users of the building. If you think a step further and incorporate other technologies such as sunshading systems for example, you could have something like a technical will of the building which could override the individual user, if the buildings needs to cool down for example. It would be a constant struggle between different interests. If you imagine a modern city with a large number of highrise buildings, what effect would it have the night-time environment if every one of these skyscrapes was changing in night-time? Oh, it would be awfull (laughs)! We have to develop something better. It is a task of exploring the potentials of available technologies and I think we are just at the beginning of a long process. But it also won’t do any good for us designers to burry our heads in the sand and not pay attention to what is going on, because other industries will do it instead of us. One of those is, obviously, the advertising industry. I believe, that we just don’t have enough experience to know what architecture might be able to say, if it had the ability to change. And that could be something completely different from what we expect today. The problem is, that in most projects you don’t have the option to explore different possibilities, because they are already pre-set to a specific field, which is mostly advertising. In that way, the project in Graz (Kunsthaus Graz) was very important for us. I believe we had a very unique situation: the Client didn’t know that they are getting a facade that could communicate to the outside world and consequently there was no commercial pressure behind the project. In that way, it was an ideal laboratory, where the Kunsthaus could actually develop an understanding of how and what will they, as an art institution, want to communicate to the outside. So they could do those various steps into the field of defining what dynamic architecture could be about. Through the years, we worked on quite a number of ‘platform’ projects like that, where we basically create a grid which can be filled by other people. But in more and more projects we get away from that and try to develop the content of the installation as well. NIX project is an example of an installation that is not a platform but is a closed piece with it’s own content. How is it with technology that is needed for these applications? Is it already available? Technology is roughly there, but it is not as simple as it looks like. That’s the reason why we don’t have it everywhere today. If you have the chance to incorporate this technology into the building at a very early stage of design process it is actually comparably cheap, so it is not adding a lot of extra money. However, one of the reasons why the project for ECB didn’t go ahead was because the client would have to tender a lighting module that hasn’t been on the market yet. So on one hand it is a fundamental issue of having the available technologies, while on the other hand the problem with these kinds of project is that suddenly there has to be a certain level of communication between different engineers in the project who are not used to communicate between themselves. So you have to have a very strong architect who has the power to bring all those people from electrical engineering, building automation systems, security systems, data distribution engineers and so on to one table and make them understand that you want to influence what they are doing and that is not common. It makes it immensely complicated. And it makes you go through hell (laughs), because those people are not used to have a designer to come along and tell them what to do. The other issue for example is just visualising the idea. In NIX project for example, we had to develop a special rendering software to visualise it, because you can’t wait for days and days for your rendering software to decide how the whole installation is going to look like. What is your opinion on the recent trend of interactive installation. For example, where the lighting interacts with users texting messages, or it detects people with blue tooth devices and so on… It can surely be temptive and beautiful, but very often is a sign of having no idea, in my opinion. Maybe it’s a bit evil to say something like this, but the problem with these installation is that a certain information is taken which, regardless of it’s importance and relevance, suddenly affects the whole building or facade. And you don’t know why would this piece of information be so important or how is it related to the building and so on. As I said, it can be very beautiful, but is quite often very plain. Can you describe the usual role of Realities United in the architectural process. How do you get into the project for example? There are different settings, the most simple one being a commision from the client who wants to have a sculpture or an art piece. An example of this would be the installation Museum X. The most common setting for us is however, that we get approached by the architects. Quite often that happens during the competition stage. Usually the architects initiate the idea of having us on board and then the client commisiones us, sometimes though we get commisioned by the architects themselves and we get on board their team. Thank you very much, Jan Editorial note: Unless otherwise noted, all the images in this article are copyrighted by Realities:United. For any kind of reproduction whatsoever of the images in this article a permission from Realities United has to be obtained.

Modern Impressionists – Interview with Jason Bruges

Mitja Prelovsek — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:20:45 +0000

In october 2007 I had a lovely talk with a current hot-star of interactive art & design Jason Bruges in his studio in London. The talk was a pleasant and fast-paced walk through his projects, with Jason symultaniously clicking on his computer, drinking coffee and explaining his ideas and projects in a very graphical and descriptive way. Through his emotional and inspiring way of describing his projects, he somehow always makes you see the same beauty that he sees in his projects. This talk was definitely a fun and quick ride through the present state of interactive (lighting design) art.

Before working at Foster and partners he trained as an architect at Oxford Brookes University. His path towards interactive environments started with his collaboration with Imagination, where he worked as a senior interactive design consultant. In 2001 he formed Jason Bruges Studio, which is a practice that produces “a diverse range of work that includes interactive light sculptures, interactive environments, events and screenbased installations…”.

Would you say you work mostly with light?
Actually we don’t work only with light – we work with kinetic, we work with materials. For example the “Interactive DADO rail” we designed for a special needs school uses 3D sounds in the space, tactile feedback and light. It reacts to touch and the response is light, sound and vibration – visual, audio and tactile feedback. The children use it as a guidance system that can obviously also be an object to play with.

In general we are interested in all senses, so to say – we have projects where we play with wind and how can we make them interactive for example.

So interactivity is the feature that connects most of your projects?
Exactly. And regarding this interactivity, we are taking on board how people are exploring the building, how they are using the building, how the environment is conditioning the use of the building – all these things are taken into account when designing the interaction.

Is there anything that you focus on specifically at your projets?
Maybe the most important thing is how you interface your installation with architecture. For example what you embed your technology or installation in, what is the feel of it, it’s location, it’s spatiality what diffusors or materials you use (when you are working with light for example) and so on. Everything is important.

How do you manage with the ever-changing technology?
We definitely work with best we can, but technology is evolving so fast that there is always something new next month, so that we sort of freeze the technology at a specific time and say “we are working just with this at the moment”.

I imagine there has to be a lot of computer engineering, algorythm design etc. with your work
Yes, that’s true – but still we build a lot of things ourselves. However, when they go to a production site and are going to stay in a building for 20 years, we usually use external help.

What would be your ultimate goal regarding your work at this point?
To build a complete space – to build roofs, to build walls, to build entrances, to build atriums. Because what we are working with could be called “making spaces” or adding another layer of ephemerality.

Could you describe the project you did for the 100% design festival?
It is a project we did for Greenpeace. We used the new 100% dimmable version of compact fluorescents which means that they dim down to 3% and they fire up at 3% too. We got the first 500 of the production line. We had an idea of making a raised garden – classical british ornamental flower garden, if you want – with lamps serving as a metaphor for plants. The interaction design supported it by dimming down the lamps when you are not near and lighting them up when you are. It’s like planting flowers: they bloom when you are near and die when you are away.

How often do you work on outdoor installations?
We are involved with landscapes a lot at the moment. We are currently working on a park in Fulham (Normand park) where we are building interactive luminaires. Each luminaire is site specific regarding the tree next to it, which means that the size, shape and form of the luminaire can match the tree and winds itself into it. Tree canopies are used as a texture maker and the light is interactive and reacts to the presence of people.

What would be the effect of this intervention?
It’s another layer of experience – it makes it richer. And it’s even safer, because if anyone is hiding in the park these things would have been triggered. It’s good from the security and from the energy point of view.

Since we already mentioned the energy point of view –was that the idea behind “wind to light” project?
Yeah – sort of. This project is really about “visualising the invisible” but it’s also taking a look at renewables as an aesthetic device rather than a bureacratic box-ticking exercise. There are so many regulations regarding renewables and sustainability, but what I was interested in, is whether we can use renewables as an aesthetic pallete. I mean people always want to decorate their environment, they always have and they always will. So why not do it in a very sustainable and renewable way? This installation is about putting it out there as a question, and people responded very well to it.

Where do you find your inspiration?
For me (pauses for a while)…just looking at wind or water…or across the field. Mostly very ephemeral things. Things that are dynamic, things that change – things that human beeings inherently enjoy. Flowers dancing around, the beauty of aurora borealis – you think of all these natural phenomena and people very very widely enjoy them and are amazed by them. It’s a bit like biomemetics – kind of copying from nature. Or better – taking Nature as an inspiration.

There are hundreds of interesting natural phenomena that would be quite fun to reproduce. Because in the end it’s about creating richness and texture in our environment where there is a lot of artificiality that doesn’t have to be as artificial as it is.

Thanks for your time, Jason.

Interview conducted by Mitja Prelovšek, MALD

Interview with Aleksandra Stratimirović

Mitja Prelovsek — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:47:19 +0000

I met Aleksandra Stratimirović in a nice cosy little place in Stockholm. It was spring in a town where they worship it perhaps the most in the whole world. And it was in Södermalm (the southern part of Stockholm), where you would go to enjoy it. And most likely it would be a place exactly like the one where it turned out that she forgot that we were supposed to have an interview. Well, in the end it was more of a relaxed talk than an official interview anyway.

There is a certain peace and out-of-this-world aura about Aleksandra. She speaks carefully and maybe even reluctantly about her work – as if she doesn’t really want to talk about it or that there are no appropriate words for what she wants to convey. But she definitely makes you listen.

Perhaps the best portrait of Aleksandra would actually be her own – a self-portrait that is called Sunny Day and is currently on display in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Translucent and very still. Something that stands out from, what is according to a japanese writer Murakami called – a giant anthill of capitalist society.

The above photographs are by Bojan Brecelj

Aleksandra was born in Belgrade where she attended the University of Fine Arts and Crafts. In 1998 and later on she attended various courses in the University of Fine Arts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden among them Lighting Design and Daylight and Architecture course. She currently lives and works in Stockholm as an independent artists working on different kinds of projects with exhibitions and awards ranging all across Europe. Among other things she is also an active participant of Lighting Detectives community, which is a group of Lighting Designers, that organises various lighting events around the world aimed at improving the quality and awareness of importance of light in urban space.

You were born in Belgrade and lived there for a long time –is there a difference between the night-time environment of Stockholm and Belgrade?
Belgrade is so much stronger. They use light everywhere and large amounts of it too. Regarding this we could also use a very popular saying in Serbia: the more the better.

Is observing these differences also the idea of Lighting Detectives?
Once per year Lighting Designers that are members of Lighting Detectives, meet and go to tests, try-outs and analyses at a location they choose.

And these events happen mostly outdoors – in urban space?
Yes. When The Detectives were founded, each member was supposed to analyse her or his own town. Now, it has more than thousand members, so this idea changed a bit.

What is the result of these analyses or events that are organized by Lighting Detectives?
It depends what was the purpose or the meaning of the event in the first place – it could be to show certain characteristics of an environment that is beeing analysed. It could be a workshop and to do something very quickly – it’s quite open actually. Every town or every initiative Lighting Detectives undertake is different. The only thing that is common between all of these initiatives is that all of the members of Lighting Detectives inform eachother of their activities and plans.

James Turrel once said that with his installations he is trying to create something like “pure light”. Is there anything that would join or connect Your work like the above statement connects Turrel’s?
Light is always part of my work – a very important part. But there is always some other material that I like to use together with light. A material that binds light and shadow, a material that conveys the main motive or the main beauty of light. Which one I use depends of course on the environment or space that I work in. It depends what that space wants to have.

What kind of projects are you involved with now?
Currently I am working on an interior installation in a courthouse here in Stockholm. It is a very interesting space - no daylight or very little amount of it. The installation consists of quite a large number of light points on the wall, distributed in a pattern that resembles a night view of a town from an airplane for example. These light points flicker – but very slowly. It is like the movements and changes in a nocturnal urbanscape –on a largescale it moves very slowly. And these light points change in groups – at a certain point a group of light points on one side is stronger but this stronger light slowly moves to the other side. The slow rhytm of change is very important. Because the user of the space shouldn’t and actually doesn’t really notice that there was a change, but on the subconscious level he/she does realise that something is different. This pace of movements and dynamics is very important.

How did you find out about the most appropriate speed of movements as actually a non-user of the space.
I had many meetings with the client where I learned about who is using the space, how fast do they pass through the space and so on. It was also very important to consider the people that work here – that they are not bored by the installation, but at the same time to be pleasant for those that come here for the occasions that are usually not so very pleasant for them, since it is a courthouse.

One can notice that your installations are very much like paintings or installations that are meant to be observed. They are a bit different from the “ambiental” installations, where the visitor actually enters “inside” the world they create. What’s your opinion on that?
I think it depends very much on the space where this installation will be. If it is a public building, it is not appropriate to create something like a “dark room” in it for example (smiles). But still, I think that it is possible to create something very attractive that enables someone, maybe not everyone, to spend some time in that feeling or mood. Even with two-dimensional installations that are sometimes the most you can get in many spaces it is still possible to create a window to a world, that exists beside the one that we live our daily lives in.

Thank you.

Interview conducted by Mitja Prelovšek, MALD

Light Symposium 2008: “Future of Light and Lighting”, Vox Juventa Call for Papers

Mitja Prelovsek — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 15:04:59 +0000

On the occasion of the centenary of Hochschule Wismar, the university and Professional Lighting Designer’s Association will be staging an international Symposium in November 2008.

The theme of “Light Symposium 2008“ will be “The Future of Light and Lighting“.(The symposium will be held in English).

The main aspects of the questions regarding the future of light and lighting are the following:

- art and daylight technology – status quo
- light and health – the biological, physiological and psychological impact of light
- tendencies and trends in architectural lighting design
- lighting design education

The PLDA Vox Juventa 2008 conference will be part of the Symposium programme. Vox Juventa is a conference for young Lighting Designers organised by PLDA (Professional Lighting Designers’ Association). After being staged in Stockholm, Hildesheim, and London (parallel to PLDC 2007 = Professional Lighting Design Convention) Vox Juventa will be hosted by Wismar 2008. This will be the fourth time it is held.

Chinese fixture-manufacturing capability

Mitja Prelovsek — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:14:08 +0000

During a visit to China some eight months back, Samar Sheikhawat, vice-president – marketing, Spencer’s, was talking to a local supplier for shop fixtures. The supplier enquired about the exact quantity Spencer’s needed.

“Fifty containers,” Sheikhawat answered, a bit tentative for he wasn’t sure whether such a ‘huge’ order could be serviced by the supplier. He was, however, clearly under-prepared for the supplier’s answer. “Fifty containers is too less. We are servicing requirements up to 200 containers. We can take your order in about six months… maybe,” it was the Chinese supplier’s turn to be tentative. Sheikhawat admits returning from that meeting disappointed, but as luck would have it, he soon found another Chinese supplier who could meet his 50-containers requirement of fixtures, tilings, racks, cash tills and trolleys every quarter.

Ban or Save The Bulb

Mitja Prelovsek — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:14:29 +0000

There is a wide discussion about the ecological advantages and disadvantages of banning the edison lamp – The Bulb. Some countries have already adopted laws that limit to significant extent the use of Light Bulbs in domestic areas – notably Australia and Ireland. However, the ecological impact of this move is still argued. The websites savethebulb.org and banthebulb.org present their respective view on the issue.

Professional Lighting Designer’s Association has also published a statement written by Gad Giladi – an active member of PLDA and Lighting Designer.

Interview Category!

Mitja Prelovsek — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:03:08 +0000

Enlighter saw light of the day in April 2008.