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Lyon is home to the Lighting Urban Communities International organization.  This city hosts one of the most sophisticated and spectacular light festivals in the world. #lightwalk #urbandesign #International #publiclighting #LeniSchwendinger #LinkedIn #LightWalk #CitiesofLight #lightfestival #LightProjectsLTD #LUCI #Lighting #NightSeeing #cities

Dwell Magazine’s series, As You Light It , focuses on my idea of the City as home and the NightSeeing™ program. The video takes the viewer on a journey starting in the Light Projects LTD studio and on to the far west side of Manhattan, Triple Bridge Gateway at the bus terminal, Times Square and Bryant Park. Link to learn about my Public Lighting Theory and walk with me (and the camera) on Night City, a movie. #lightwalk #urbandesign #design #publiclighting #LeniSchwendinger #TripleBridgeGateway #NewYorkCity #Infrastructure #LinkedIn #NightSeeing #LightWalk #streetlight #LightProjectsLTD #Lighting #cities

Less than one year after the contract was awarded, Light Projects’ illumination and color design for Louisville’s 2nd Street Bridge and Streetscape opened to celebrants on October 13, 2010.  Officially named 2nd Street Transportation Project, the landscape architect was Carman and engineers HDR.  Our client was Louisville’s Downtown Development Corporation (DDC).  DDC and Carman navigated complex approval processes which included federal government agencies, State and City Department of Transportation, and the local Waterfront Development Corporation, among others. The project was funded by the ARRA stimulus  program; which called for a fast track and economical design concept and solution. The streetscape area was a service road combined with adjacent vacant land running along side the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge.  The cantilevered truss bridge, locally known as 2nd Street bridge, crosses the Ohio River between Kentucky and Indiana. The bridge is in the National Register of Historic Places. Cross streets Washington and Witherspoon join 2nd Street. A row of wooden buildings on Washington present their old timey “Whiskey Row” back doors to the street.  The buildings of Iron Quarter on Washington are being renovated into hotels, restaurants and bars.  When Light Projects arrived a generally disheveled, chipped and neglected sensibility pervaded. We visited the site and participated in a design charrette in November 2009.The stakeholder workshop set the tone and direction for the design. Bright and welcoming were the keywords for lighting. Mock-ups were held as the bridge was being painted Now, the underside of the bridge is enhanced with a floating effect of cast light; outlining and illuminating the I-beam surfaces and textures. The duo-tone color scheme — red and gold — is balanced with the cream color of paint coating. The colors — bridge as canvas and the lighting — are based on a celebration of amber liquid bourbon and colors of sunset. In-progress photographs during the last night of programming Light Projects selected energy-saving fluorescent tubes for the bridge lighting – simple, industrial lighting fixtures with a twist; the luminaires were filtered with colored glass and controlled by Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI). DALI is an electronic network protocol that is generally used for lighting in buildings. We adapted it for our exterior use and complex lighting sequences. Another technological innovation is a series of flasher beacons mounted on the face of the bridge. Whimsical sequences mark sunset and each hour afterward until 2:00 AM on weekends, and midnight during the week. These flashers are famous for lighting up the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Here, a little movie shot during programming that demonstrates the breathing sequence of color. #construction #design #ARRA #publiclighting #transportation #Bridges #streetscape #energysaving #color #landscape #LinkedIn #AmericanRecoveryandReinvestmentAct #Lighting #cities

Comment> A renowned lighting designer takes a walk in the dark in search of illumination (Full text and images link) In October 2010 my article on the NightSeeing™ program appeared in the Architect’s Newspaper.  It was a welcome opportunity to describe the development of the program, current events and future aspirations. Here, some excerpts: Savor the word “light” and the interior landscape of language evokes images of atmospheric effects—mysterious, picturesque, sublime. What is the NightSeeing™ program? Conceptually, NightSeeing is an itinerary of group exploration and discovery, a curriculum designed for the general public and those in the architectural and planning professions. Presenting the nocturnal city of light, NightSeeing is a real-time travelogue through the culture of urban lighting in public spaces to convey recognition of one’s own environment of the shadowed vistas that define our surroundings literally half the time, and yet are so familiar they are almost unseen. The program can stand alone, or be presented by a conference, festival, or as an event for urban planners to enhance their public outreach efforts. It provides a context to examine and decode the shadows, emanations, and reflections that define our cities’ darkened hours. NightSeeing consists of several events: the LightTalk, a LightWalk, and a Light Planning Workshop. Why is it important? The issues and substance of public illumination increasingly influence the global language of urban design and urban experience. Through initiatives like NightSeeing, we can learn to see shadows in a whole different light. Stories about NightSeeing™ past… In the article I cover the NightSeeing™ LightWalks in Manhattan’s Little Italy/Chinatown, Bryant Park and in Washington D.C. And coverage of upcoming events The shifting interplay of nighttime dark and light makes every city a unique destination. For London’s Architecture Retail and Commercial Lighting Show on January 12, 2012, I look forward to mapping the Angel Islington district with the International Association of Lighting Designers to find the perfect route through preserved and chic-modern alleyways and unusual paved topographies. I spent time here in the 1970s frequenting Sadler Wells Theatre, the Angel’s Chapel Road second-hand market, and a particular pub with my crowd from the East End. For me, the LightWalk will be eye-opening to the pleasures of the crowds dining, walking from bus to subway to home, window shopping the antique shops, and experiencing evocations of Dickens’ darkened muddy passageways which have existed since the dawn of public lighting. NightSeeing is a trademark program of Leni Schwendinger Light Projects LTD Experience the urban  light… contact Leni (leni@lightprojectsltd.com) to book NightSeeing™ in your town or city with your organization, company,  friends and neighbors. #lightwalk #Architecture #urbandesign #urbanplanning #design #publiclighting #streetscape #NewYorkCity #LinkedIn #LightWalk #Lighting #landscapearchitects #NightSeeing #derive #cities

Interview with Leni Schwendinger, Light Artist and Designer (Full text and images link) Cities of Light, Planetizen’s version (Link to The Dirt) On NightSeeing™: It’s important that people see a place where they’ve always been walking around at night and yet see it with new eyes. It’s an inspiring and enlivening relationship with the city that I’m happy to promote. On Triple Bridge Gateway …they folded an aesthetic improvement into the infrastructure budget and it was brilliantly conceived in that manner. Expanded sustainability We have to be concerned with energy use but we also have to add to our sustainable precepts the vital health of people congregating and using the city streets at night. On HTO Park Early on in public lighting history, there were moonlight poles. In Austin, they use super-high moonlight poles and just use a few lights to cover a large area. I think it’s a good approach to save energy and keep technology out of the way of park users. About collaboration for Dreaming in Color, McCaw Hall It really was a true collaboration — the design team included architects, landscape architects, scenic designer (an opera designer who would work at the McCaw Hall), engineers, stakeholders, and owners. We all worked together and did presentations to each other in a brainstorming style. It was an exciting kind of mind meld. Effective strategies for smart growth We’re on the verge of a new lighting discipline, a melding of lighting and urban design, which I call public design. Public design is an exploration of environmental lighting design at night. One of the great options we’re now getting to use in the U.S. is lighting control, which allows us to really interact with light in a more direct way. We can brighten the street lights at certain hours, dim the street lights at other hours, and look at it as an economic development tool. We can decide Main Street will be brighter or dimmer at certain hours. Community groups can define what the right time is to make that light brighter and dimmer. That interaction with the communities is very important. Lighting and the communities that we are lighting should be connected in this way. Energy Saving and sustainable technology I’m telling you right now IES committees are debating how much light is needed for any particular city or any district. You’re going to find some people who say let’s bring the light down. You can also find people in inner cities where you’re just building a park for the first time saying give me some light so I can play, give me more light, I want to recognize that person as they come toward me. It’s not an easy answer. We have to be concerned with CO2 emissions. We have to be concerned with energy use but we also have to add to our sustainable precepts the vital health of people congregating and using the city streets at night. #lightwalk #publiclighting #NewYorkCity #LinkedIn #LightWalk #Lighting #NightSeeing

In the evening Washington D.C. NW is a monochromatic blend of light. People are the action. The shifting interplay of nighttime dark and light make every city a unique destination. Join acclaimed lighting artist and designer Leni Schwendinger and a group limited to 35 as she presents impromptu the D.C. nocturnal city of light, culminating at the ASLA Gala. This mistress of light sculpture and installation will decode the shadows, emanations, and reflections that define the nightscape, from shop silhouettes to the phantom photons of passing cars. — American Society of Landscape Architects’ Annual Meeting (2010)  invitation Saturday, September 11 7:45–8:30 pm, LightWalk with Leni Schwendinger –Sold Out! The NightSeeing™ LightWalk is conducted like a treasure hunt — a diverse group of participants searching for a fresh perception, a discovery of those lights and shadows, large and minute, to delight the mind and senses.  Or rephrased for planners, designers and landscape architects; an analysis of the character of lighting in any given place. I began the tour with a quote from the artist/engineer/planner, Pierre Charles L’Enfant from September 11, 1789.  On that date he wrote to President George Washington “to solicit the favor of being Employed in the  Business” of designing the new capital city. His became a Baroque plan featuring open ceremonial spaces and oversized radial avenues with respect for the natural contours of the land. With my intrepid group — landscape architects, designers and manufacturers from all over the country — I sought L’Enfant’s plan, lighting detail and filigree, and found a soft undifferentiated layer of light. Public lighting — the lighting supplied by the municipality, business improvement district/CBD, utility, or institution in the United States — is generally “designed” by engineers and manufacturers.  An increasing trend, however, is to incorporate lighting designers onto streetscape design and engineering teams to revitalize districts, neighborhoods and communities. City designs and plans, are strictly limited by regulations that are based on the primacy of the automobile (e.g. street lighting) and reducing risk , recommended brightness levels, maintenance and stocking issues, and the light pole and luminaire styles that manufacturers are currently marketing. On the positive side, this is the light that we can depend on – the base lighting that allows residents, workers and visitors to feel comfortable sallying forth into the city’s night.   Public lighting is the threshold of light, upon which private and found lighting are layered. NightSeeing™ Map Washington D.C. We started our journey focused on the Historical Society’s colonnaded edifice floodlighting.  A traditional, uplighting method of  frontal illumination, this approach results in soft ambient glow.  Appropriate for classical buildings, and inexpensive. Onward past rows of historicist streetlight lanterns.  Here, an effort could be made to differentiate street types and districts with varied types of poles, oh! a relief, the Chinatown lanterns with their red posts and lantern tops. We went through the Techworld canyon and surprisingly found the same decorative luminaires, rather than lighting fixture forms referencing forward-thinking technologies, although, there was one difference, induction lamps are being used — a source that is white light and has a long lamp life, requiring less maintenance. Some of the endearing details that we did find included count-down Walk/Don’t Walk signals, bracketed facade down-lights (cheap and easy), LED media signs and the colorful floodlit Chinatown gate. The most exciting part of the tour were the people on it and the acceptance of the D.C. residents and tourists milling about — the sidewalks were packed on 7th Street NW that evening.  The small groups of loungers on the National Museum of American Art grand stairs were curious about the LightWalk and we in turn, discovered them using steps for the appropriate evening purpose… sitting in the floodlight of the stair and colonnade, a staple of light and architecture in our nation’s capital. Leni Schwendinger’s LightWalk drew our members through the shadows of DC’s urban streetscape, guided by the eye of an artist and technician to experience the magical interplay of darkness and light. — Clark Ebbert, Education Program Manager, ASLA ——————————————————————————————————————- For more illumination, reading and pictures: Public Lighting Theory – developing the nexus of lighting and urban design Light Planning; Chinatown Little Italy Historic District Accolades and Finales (and the Winter LightWalk) Night City, The Movie The Making of Night City #lightwalk #urbandesign #urbanplanning #design #publiclighting #streetscape #landscape #publicspeaking #Infrastructure #LinkedIn #NightSeeing #LightWalk #streetlight #streetlighting #Lighting #landscapearchitects #LED #cities

CultureNow is focused on cultural mapping and exhibitions about New York City. They called the other day and asked if I would talk about my work for their “Museum Without Walls” directory of podcasts.  The collection consists of first person discussions of art, architecture and other landmarks in the City. Here are links to the podcasts: Tidal Radiance Tidal Radiance, concept, custom glass, lighting design, projections Coney Island Parachute Jump Coney Island Parachute Jump Illumination Triple Bridge Gateway Triple Bridge Gateway; concept, color, illumination Dreaming in Color, a Three-Dimensional Color Field Dreaming in Color, concept, materials, illumination #Architecture #design #podcast #transportation #color #TripleBridgeGateway #NewYork #landscape #NewYorkCity #Infrastructure #LinkedIn #artwork #publicart

Free for New Yorkers of all ages:  A fantastical collision of Art and Science to hear gravity firsthand. “Astronomy’s New Messengers: Listening to the Universe with Gravitational Waves”, an exhibition courtesy of the National Science Foundation and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration was on view June 2 through 6, 2010 .  This interpretive exhibition offered an up-close look at the work process of a dynamic group of over 800 physicists and astronomers worldwide who have joined together in the search for gravitational waves from the most violent astrophysical events in the Universe. These scientific ideas are the basis for design throughout the exhibit from the undulating waveform shape of the space to the programming of the light sculpture and the graphic design. The sound waves superimposed onto the rotating color palettes is revealed in the sculpture's 3D screen LIGO, short for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, is a revolutionary new kind of telescope designed and built to observe, for the first time, ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by massive cosmic events. This amazing interactive exhibit featured a model interferometer with laser, a space-time curvature simulation, games to find the hidden gravitational wave in the static of the universe, even a mirror from the real LIGO. Overhead, Leni Schwendinger’s dazzling interactive light sculpture depicts the universe LIGO is trying to observe with a show of light and sound in real time. Mock-up at the Light Projects Studio “Astronomy’s New Messengers” is not only science. The LIGO scientific endeavor is motivated by the same desire for exploration, the curiosity for the unknown and the awe of nature which motivated humankind throughout millennia of history. In this respect, science and art are two facets of the same human quest for beauty and truth” explains Marco Cavaglia, Principal Investigator of Astronomy’ New Messengers and Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Mississippi. Here, the start of installation in the Ballroom Installation video on Light Project’s YouTube channel To communicate the wonderment in our universe Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership and Leni Schwendinger Light Projects LTD, creatively re-interpreted the ideas behind the science of LIGO resulting in an immersive exhibit that encourages visitors in self-guided exploration. Our goal and our hope is that the installation and the interactives faithfully convey the fascinating story of the quest to observe gravitational waves and what they will reveal to us about the history and nature of the universe.” relates Lee Skolnick, FAIA, Principal of LHSA+DP. “We have attempted to interpret and evoke the spirit of these waves and the mystery of space-time; and embody them in the visitor experience.” The exhibition’s design emphasizes the relationship between the light sculpture, the model interferometer acting as a real one, and the interaction of the visitor representing an event in the universe detected by the interferometer. Light Projects was very excited by the opportunity to translate the search for gravity through our art medium, video and LEDS. Our light attracts people, young and old”, observes Leni Schwendinger. Guests learn that gravity is a manifestation of the curvature of space-time and how LIGO scientists hope to see supernova explosions, black hole collisions, even the birth of the universe – the Big Bang – with a new set of eyes. Left, Leni Schwendinger points out the finer details of interaction with young visitors, right, Marco Cavaligia explains the interferometer Here, interactive designer, Ed Purver’s video documentation of the installation and visitors in action a must see! All in all the exploration and blending of art and science was a tremendous experience for the designers which was passed along to a diverse audience, around 2,000 visitors, through light, color, and interactivity. #design #color #interactiveinstallation #exhibitiondesign #blendingscienceandart #publicspeaking #LinkedIn #Lighting #LED

Light Planning and Community Involvement Official map of the Chinatown Little Italy Historic District boundaries The Chinatown Little Italy Historic District of New York City was designated in September 2009 by the National Register of Historic Places which allows building owners and community applicants to apply for grants to support the architecture and places of historic significance. Known for its intersection of Italian and Chinese immigrant cultures, the new historic neighborhood is roughly bounded by Worth St., Lafayette St., E. Houston St. and the Bowery. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council sponsored the application. I am working with the Two Bridges organization to support the community in their quest to invite visitors and locals to the district by marking the area with wayfinding and lighting.  Both neighborhoods, and the adjacent newly emerging Nolita, are filled with restaurants and night life that is not easy to find unless you know exactly where to go! Chinatown: Existing conditions Little Italy: Existing conditions Light Projects is developing charrette and brainstorming techniques so that community members are enabled to focus on the after-dark experience of their districts and neighborhoods. This workshop technique translates into a lighting master plan, lighting strategy and/or lighting guidelines. Leni Schwendinger Light Projects' synopsis of goals and benefits of city lighting programs The workshop for the the Chinatown Little Italy Historic District lighting session which was held April 19, 2010 is an example of our participatory approach.  The results will be compiled into a map and report to come later. WORKSHOP AGENDA 1. Introduction to Light Projects LTD – what is a lighting designer? 2. A slide presentation including “Night City”, a movie about light at night Introduction to goals and benefits of lighting strategies Lighting applications Little Italy/Chinatown Existing Conditions Previous all-night research on the St. Patrick's Old Cathedral (Little Italy) area 3. Discussion:Historic District: What are the highest priorities for lighting in our neighborhood?  What are our lighting principles? 5. Group and Paired Mapping Exercise How do visitors and locals travel to destinations and what are those routes like at night? Highlight Subway Stops Highlight Gateways (Are evening gateways different?) Locate Nighttime Activities (parks, etc.) Description of routes including areas of concern/opportunities Stakeholder group maps nighttime experience Acknowledgment and thanks to Robert Weber, Two Bridges; convener of the workshop and Wylie Stecklow; Nolita Neighborhood Association. Robert and Wylie took photographs of the charrette which appear in this article. Related Links Public Lighting Video Shoot Public Lighting Theory Night City – a seven minute movie about the night and its light #publiclighting #preservation #communityinvolvement #landscape #NewYorkCity #Infrastructure #LinkedIn #charrette

Imagine a non-profit’s gala fundraiser where the well-dressed and a population of dedicated black youth mingle with designers and artists guiding team paintings! Notable guests included Mayor Bloomberg, his companion Diana Taylor and Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden This living picture is reenacted every year for the annual Publicolor Stir Splatter + Roll party, silent auction and dinner to raise money to “engage disaffected teenage students in their education by involving them in adding color to all the public spaces in their schools”. Light Projects has been contributing to this worthy and inspiring non-profit event for the last 10 years by designing the lighting for the gala and leading a team painting process. Please consider joining us next year, read up on the programs and results of the Publicolor organization. Benefit chandeliers with construction string lights and hula hoops transform the gym into an intimate space for dining! Special thanks Light Projects’ Kristi Kent for creating our painting design, Joseph Legros for coordinating and painting and Eric Chenault for lighting design support.  Also to Mark Barton, friend of Light Projects, for on-site lighting focus. #design #color #nonprofit #Publicolor #NewYork #NewYorkCity #LinkedIn #Lighting #artwork