AD359 Advanced Lighting and Sustainability: City Lights

Course Description

Supported by the Nuckolls Fund for Lighting Education through a Lesley Wheel Introductory Lighting Program Grant

Advanced Lighting and Sustainability – City Lights, is the second course in our two-course sequence in the study of lighting offered for the first time this past Fall, 2011.

The goal of “City Lights” was to create a collaborative and interdisciplinary course environment leading toward the understanding and analysis of public sector lighting using a variety of approaches. Students were guided through case studies and field trips which they then used to create design solutions leading toward innovative lighting design in public spaces. It covered a broad range of topics, provided the students with a software tool kit, and the ability to critically analyze public space lighting as well as create designs that envisioned new concepts. The collaborative approach led to conclusions about lighting that suggested replacement of equally spaced street and plaza lamps with new technology in color and LED lamping to light landscapes, buildings and people – within and adjacent to the public street and as possible replacing lighting designed only for the street. Discussions included technology that would “turn off” nearby street lighting when building lighting was adequate, and the development of lighting strategies that highlighted significant public spaces as wayfinding (lighting significant places), as well as people (lighting bodies, or bodies carrying/creating light in one project), providing alternative lighting schemes in urban communities. Each student came to the course using the context of their major as their starting point.

The course was a great success, providing opportunity for collaboration between students from the graduate and undergraduate architecture and the studio for interrelated media departments at MassArt. The course included faculty lectures, visiting artist/professional lectures, field trips to the primary design/manufacturing center in lighting innovation (Color Kinetics and Osram Sylvania Corporate Headquarters), training in lighting software for a range of student abilities (from Sketch-up including lighting extensions to AGi32), and student design projects. Each week, key information in lighting and lighting design principles, as well as innovative projects globally were presented to the students. This complimented and informed evening field trips and student design sketches for spaces in the greater Boston area in a quest to use new technology in lighting to contribute to the design and amplification of key elements of public space in our cities. To support this work, students created analyses of various sites throughout the city during the semester. The course culminated in final individual project designs within the city of Boston. Selected documentation of this work is attached.

Look for “First Light” to be offered again in the 2012-2013 academic year! “First Light” is an introductory course in lighting principles of interior environments using daylighting and other sustainable strategies in lighting design. The next iteration will focus on these concepts in an interdisciplinary environment that will include architectural and theatrical and lighting to support student-proposed design concepts. “City Lights” and “First Light” are open to all students in the College. For more information, contact Patti Seitz, Head of the Graduate Program in Architecture.

Analysis of Urban Contexts

Dhruti M Ashar - Zakim Bridge	Tuan Trieu & Khuyen Nguyen Luong - Columbus Park
Tuan Trieu - Christian Science Center	Khuyen Nguyen Luong - Old North Church
Tuan Trieu - MassArt Campus, Cambridge	Khuyen Nguyen Luong - Alternative Parking Lot, Harvard Square
Rinko Kurata - Plaza in Kyoto, Japan	Laura Fratkin - Wachusett Mountain

Natasha Rocca Devine - "Starry Nights"