Cities of Light (original) (raw)
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Cities of Light: Two Centuries of Urban Illumination
2015
Cities of Light is the first global overview of modern urban illumination, a development that allows human wakefulness to colonize the night, doubling the hours available for purposeful and industrious activities. Urban lighting is undergoing a revolution due to recent developments in lighting technology, and increased focus on sustainability and human‐scaled environments. Cities of Light is expansive in coverage, spanning two centuries and touching on developments on six continents, without diluting its central focus on architectural and urban lighting. Covering history, geography, theory, and speculation in urban lighting, readers will have numerous points of entry into the book, finding it easy to navigate for a quick reference and or a coherent narrative if read straight through. With chapters written by respected scholars and highly‐regarded contemporary practitioners, this book will delight students and practitioners of architectural and urban history, area and cultural studie...
Urban lighting: The semiotic shift from functionalism to scenography
Lighting is an essential element to perceive the environment at night. Diverse ideas like safety requirements, branding, transformation and technological progress have led to different nocturnal streetscapes. Street lighting has been widely installed with the argument to improve safety. With the emergence of powerful and adaptive headlights in the automotive industry and highly re ective textiles for pedestrians, the role and effectiveness of conventional street lighting is questionable. From a technological point of view, energy ef ciency and low maintenance have dominated the public debate and contributed to the immense growth of LED lighting in cities, but additional developments have accelerated this trend. The miniaturization of the light source and sophisticated control technologies have paved the way for new applications. On the one hand, wearable textiles and gadgets allow pedestrians to communicate and present themselves as luminous objects in streets in a small scale. On the other hand, global and local brands have turned facades into dynamic displays to send corporate messages in a large scale. Political activists have recognised the nocturnal communication possibilities and started to use light for raising awareness regarding social and political issues. A comprehensive semiotic analysis provides the framework to identify lighting as a sign to communicate messages within the city at night. International permanent and temporary projects illustrate how the role of lighting has changed and will in uence our streets in urban areas.
Urban Lighting developments; From Lighting Supply to Creating an Artistic Text
2018
Light as an incorporeal element of urban landscape plays a significant role in the city activities during the night as well as the formation of the citys nightscape. Urban lighting in developed countries is considered as an interdisciplinary knowledge of the technical, engineering, humanities and art fields, which calls for joint co-operation among specialists. The formation and quality of social interaction and have been a popular topic, widely discussed in the civil societies. Since urban lighting is a special effort to facilitate the survival of urban social life, it is necessary to pay more attention to this issue, as the developed countries have benefited from its potentials. The current study argues that urban lighting has undergone dramatic changes since the arrival of the new era internationally. BBased on the formation aims and the citizens’s role as the target audiences, it can be divided into four categories: 1) Functional- Supplying light 2) Decorating and symbolizing 3) Creating artworks 4) Creating artistic texts In addition the role of citizens from the consumers and passive spectator has been changed to the producers, actors and active users. Thus, it can be concluded that the potentials of urban lighting have been promoted from a merely functional to an interactive art that is capable to satisfy social interactions which one of the main goals of urbanization. This paper is mainly focused to draw the attentions of managers, specialists and artists of the country to this new area. this may lead to make the advantages of the available potentials. Considering the global experiences it may also lead to the improvement of urban night landscape qualities by the application of the aesthetic and artistic approaches and renovation of the disconnected social relations and interactions arisen from the modern era. it may also give an insight to the healing the landscape system of our cities.
Lighting policy as an integral part of sustainable urban planning
Teka Komisji Architektury, Urbanistyki i Studiów Krajobrazowych
The aim of the paper is to describe an evolution of approaches to regulation of artificial light in urban areas and present examples of existing practices in this regard. The authors introduce the theoretical debate on the lighting pollution phenomenon and outline the contemporary arguments for lighting planning as an element of broader urban policy. Presented examples of comprehensive approaches to urban light planning have been based on the results of international inquiry curried out in 2018.
2012
La collana editoriale Esempi di Architettura nasce per divulgare pubblicazioni scientifiche edite dal mondo universitario e dai centri di ricerca, che focalizzino l'attenzione sulla lettura critica dei proget ti. Si vuole così creare un luogo per un dibattito culturale su argomenti interdisciplinari con la finalità di approfondire tematiche attinenti a differenti ambiti di studio che vadano dalla storia, al restauro, alla progettazione architettonica e strutturale, all'analisi tecnologica, al paesaggio e alla città.
Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais (RLEC)/Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies (LJCS), Vol. 8 N.º 1 (2021): “Sentien” City. An Atonal Landscape, 2021
In this article, we seek to explain some of the relationships between light and biopolitics in modern and contemporary cities. We consider light as an external stimulation capable of not only impacting and sensitizing bodies, but also influencing them in different ways and to different degrees. Based on this premise, we ask ourselves how, in modernity and in contemporary times, the luminous materialities and practices of urban space have the capacity to influence, determine, capture, monitor, discipline and control the opinions, discourses and practices of individuals. In order to outline some partial elements of response to this wide-ranging problem, we first try to demonstrate how public lighting in modern Paris can be considered a disciplinary technology. Then, we ask how light can, even today, participate in different power strategies. Starting with Paul Virilio (2002), we argue that there has been a shift in control strategies through light in relation to previous times. Subsequently, a distinction is proposed by the author, outlining two regimes: the first, coming from modernity, is characterized by the use of "direct light"; to this, we can now add a second regime of "indirect light", characteristic of societies of control. Thereby, we attempt to denaturalize our relationship with light, in the context of western culture, and recognize its role in the service of photo-politics, a term that we propose to designate some of the (bio)political instrumentalizations of light. Finally, analyzing contemporary insurgent luminous artworks and practices, we reflect on the possible strategies through which insurgent lights could be raised.