Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the podcast about lighting matters. Our unflinching conversations uncover the nuances and complexities which shape the craft of lighting design.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: We explore the pivotal whys behind a lighting designer's choices and find honest answers to your most challenging lighting questions. Because lighting matters.
Hello and welcome to the Lighting Matters podcast. This is episode number one. So congratulations for being here from the very beginning. You're a part of our first episode. I am Lisa Reed with Reed Birkitt, lighting design. I'm here with my co host, Avi.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: This is Avraham Moore from Mohr Lights, based in Chicago, and we have our first guest here, Dan Weissman from Lam Partners. Dan, thank you so much for being here today.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: Hello. Thank you.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: This episode is made possible by our good friends at Lumini, based here in Chicago, just down the street, and we want to thank them very much for helping make this possible. I got to tell you, they're one of our favorite manufacturers to go to when we're using tape, light, cove light, things like that.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm also super grateful to Lumini for being a sponsor. Thanks for helping us get this content out there. We love Lumini because they have everything we need. They have a full range of products. They have the right channels and the right tapes and the right diffusers. And if we have to pivot from something that's flexible to something that's rigid or something large to something that's smaller, they always have what we need in their full package of products. So we really appreciate that. And I've had good experiences using them on projects. How about you, Dan?
[00:01:53] Speaker C: I've had some great experiences with Lumini over the years. I did a project for a glass bridge that we edge lit with their grazing optic. I've used the color changing stuff. I've got a project right now with a ton of pixel tape that's getting installed as we speak. So it's been good. And as they've developed, or I should say, as they've purchased other manufacturers and brought them into their fold, it's been cool to see how they've brought those manufacturers in line, developed some really interesting things.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Have you ever used remote control lighting? I have not.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: I have not. But yes, they do have that now. But they were one of the first with Senso to have a direct indirect cylinder pendant, and I used that on a project a couple years ago which turned out really nice.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: One of many things I love about Lumini is they were willing to embrace dolly controls for their products very early on. So they have kind of become our standard. Their submittals and shops drawings just make it so easy for the contractor to install what we specify. But among all things, there's challenges you have of manufacturers. Manufacturing goes wrong. And we had a challenge at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry with a ton of matrix panels, white tuning, and there was a manufacturing defect, and there wasn't finger pointing, there wasn't a whole back and forth yada yada. It just got taken care of. And that's the kind of partner you want in any product line. And I think Lumini is one of those companies that they're really a great partner in our projects, and they have great product along with that, right? Like, they got everything. So it's really been great, and they really help get the design process going right. Whether you're rendering or whatever it may be, sometimes you just gotta see it. And that process is so important. And Lumini is a key partner of ours as we look at process. And ultimately, that's the goal of our conversation today. And Dan, again, thank you for joining us. And we should talk a little bit.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: About process, if it's okay. Before we jump into process, I would love to give Dan a few minutes to just tell us about himself, a little bit of your history. And let's see.
[00:04:20] Speaker C: I wanted to be an architect since I was a little kid, so that was always my direction. I grew up in Milwaukee in the nineties, when Calatrava's museum was under construction, and was really taken by that. And then I got to undergrad at Washoe in St. Louis and learned about how architecture could be used in the service of helping society at large, helping communities, doing more than just making pretty fancy buildings, and was very taken by that method. But I always sort of had an eye for light and daylight in particular. And the integration of daylight and architecture was something I was interested in intuitively. And then my senior year of college, I sat at the table of the distinguished Alumni award winner for that year, Paul Zafiriu, who was a principal at Lam Partners. And at the end of the dinner, he said, hey, you want to come to Cambridge and work for us at Lam? We have bagels on Fridays. And I said, that sounds great. So he came out and interviewed, and two weeks after I graduated college, I was hired. It was the very peak of economic times in 2005, and things were going well. We did a lot of work with Safdie, Moshe Safdie at the. In those couple years, I worked on United States Institute of Peace and Kansas City Performing Arts center and crystal bridges.
I was enculturated from the very beginnings of my time as a lighting designer, learning sort of the bill lamb method, develop contrast ratios, and of course, the famous Richard Kelly principles. I think those methods of design process, certainly at the early stages of conceptualization, are important to step through as one is getting comfortable in the process. But I think at this point in my career, so much of that has been internalized to the point that I'll jump in and start playing and not necessarily describe those objectives or layers of light explicitly, but more sort of tacitly work through them as I develop design ideas to share with my colleagues or collaborators.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: So how much of the communicating of those principles become a part of that process, like when you're talking to either junior designers or clients?
[00:06:56] Speaker C: So a couple things, and this is something we talk about, we've been talking about a lot, because, so the backstory is that a decade ago, when I restarted back at Lam, so I worked at Lam for a couple years out of undergrad, and then left for grad school for six years, and worked in an architecture firm for a while. Then I came back. When I came back, I was finding myself very frustrated that we didn't have a good way to sort of visualize what we were designing. And I ended up having this whole long email thread with Ian Ashdown, who is the science advisor for lighting analysts, and therefore AGI, about how to do better renderings in AGI after lots and lots of nuance. The long story short was, AGI is really not designed for that. And so we started looking for other solutions and came upon a 3D Max based plugin called Iray that was photometrically accurate, real time visualization, validated, importantly. So we started using that. And over the course of the last ten years, we've become very facile at using that software, almost to a fault.
And I'll get to the fault part in a minute. But I think what the workflow process for us has revolutionized is allowing us to basically work on the thing itself, as opposed to working on representations of the thing. Now, it's still a representation, ultimately, but being able to design in real time, move digital lights around in a space with real materials or representations of real material, really lets you basically play in the space instead of working through concepts or the distancing of working in architectural representations. And then once you've figured out those things in three dimensions, or four dimensions, if the case may be, then you can go back and diagram. And what's really been so incredible about that process is that it sort of shortcuts, a lot of the, like the, to my mind, busy work of developing sectional representations with little glows of light coming out of slots and coves and down lights and things that don't actually have any meaning beyond sort of the most diagrammatic, and allows you to literally show a client or somebody who's not intuitive about lighting. Like this is how your space is going to look and feel. How do you like it intuitively? And don't worry about the nuances. Like, you know, I've had issues where, like, you show a client a plan and they're like, oh no, those downlights don't line up or this and that and all these stupid things that actually don't matter and they get planositis. And so when you can show a design in the three dimensional space, it cuts through some of that b's in a way. The other thing that it allows us to do is for those of us that are really facile in the software, instead of showing preparing a whole bunch of rendered views and fancy presentations, which we certainly do, I literally, for a working session, bring up the model in real time on a video call. And we look at the model and I zoom around and the rendered view is rendering in real time, and we can just show what we're doing. And if they're like, oh, well, what happens if we do this instead? And then we just make some tweaks and they sit there for a sec and sort of see how the sausage is made. But they're also sort of participating in the design in a very active way, and then we can make decisions and just move on to documentation. So that process is something that I've been championing for the last decade and has been very successful in many ways, especially for more complicated architectural spaces. I think where it's starting to get in the way is a lot of our younger staff are finding that it almost becomes a crutch. They need to render a solution for every idea, and they need to render every space, even if they are not necessarily that complicated of a space. And that's experience and intuition. And those are things that need to be learned over time. And in a way, working within the digital environment allows you to shortcut some of that time because it allows you to see an experience more quicker. But on the other hand, you still need to see those things in real life. That's what makes us different than like a video game designer. We're translating that digital space into reality. So I think something we're starting to work on more is actually reverse training, where we're trying to train more of our younger staff in some of the more manual processes because they've gotten so used to the digital, which I can't say is not all my fault, but I take responsibility where responsibilities do, and doing our best to sort of train holistically.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: So, Dan, in that process, how are you dealing with materiality or constant revisions to models?
We've done a fair bit of things similar to what you're talking about. And the challenge that we have experienced is just not trying to stay up to date with things changing, materiality not being perfect. How are you addressing some of those challenges in your process?
[00:12:24] Speaker C: It's case by case.
In some cases, we're like you guys, the architects don't have a strong understanding of how you want to materialize this space. So we're actually going to not specifically materialize our models and just keep them 80, 50, 20.
We can still move around in real time. We can still do work in that very facile way, but just avoid the materiality question altogether. If the materials are well known, they're well understood at the time that we're working on the model, then we'll include them. But even, I think we often over maybe fetishize or over assume that the specifics of materiality are super important in the visualization. When we all know that if you put a wood texture on a wall, because you know it's going to be a wood wall, the chance that that rendered wood wall in your model that isn't, that you're not controlling that material in the first place is not going to look like what the final model is anyway. And it takes a certain amount of leap of faith or a maturity about knowing sort of the limits of the model. And at the end of the day, we're not modeling the materiality. We're not. We are, you know, showing the spatial experience, but we're modeling the light. You know, this is really getting back to the lecture that I gave at ILD conference, which promo. I'm actually giving that lecture again at the IES conference in New York in August.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Well, promo, it was so good, and everyone should go, listen, if you haven't heard it already.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And what about, like, changes? You know, I feel like things are changing so constantly, and obviously you're moving from Revit, Rhino, whatever, somebody's modeling system is into your system.
How do you deal with the concept? I mean. Cause you need time to build the image so you can show it to a client. How do you address the things constantly changing the backgrounds, constantly changing to then a deliverable of some sort.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: So, a couple very specific points on that. First of all, in our contractual language, we make it very explicit that these studies are for our own internal design purposes. We can share those with the client at our discretion, but they are not for them. If they want to pay us to do rendered studies of the final design, that's an additional service. That's something special. That is not our standard mode of practice. Typically, what I will do personally is render the design. When it is at a point where the architect is comfortable with sharing it with us. And then we will document based off of the decisions that are made from that model. If they make changes that are substantial enough that require a remodeling affair. We'll reimport the model. And just quickly sort of mush things around. To make sure that the decisions that we're making are based off of something close. But honestly, once we've gotten into the model and put light into it, and you understand how a space reacts to light. I think you build up an intuition about how that space reacts to light. And from there on, I can look at the model in less illuminated ways. And have a better understanding of what's going to work and what's not. And maybe I don't even need to go back and remodel it. Or maybe we'll go back and do a QA check at the end. And that's just down and dirty and not a full rendered study.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: So I think that's. I mean, that's key. Something you said there about, you know, how it's really going to react. And I just wonder. I haven't seen any of these fabulous models, except maybe what you showed in your presentation. But sometimes I feel like lighting renderings, photometrically accurate renderings. Can feel a little stale and not really real. And we really like to do. We like to do more artistic renderings when we're doing lighting renderings. Is that your experience, or has anybody ever reacted differently to the space than they did to the rendering? Or just. Yeah, all of that. How. How realistic is it? How much of it is your own, you know, your design eye and your interpretation of what's being rendered versus what's really there in the end?
[00:16:55] Speaker C: Well, I don't disagree that every modeled effort is biased towards the producer. And that there's always going to be some hand of the software, of the technology, the person who's working on it. In that, I guess the thing that is most apparent when you compare our renderings to built results are a couple factors, and I think that they are factors that we're well understand. One, obviously there's certain detail elements in reality that we're never going to build into our model. But I think the bigger one is the clamping of brightness and contrast, that the digital screen has an output of what, a couple hundred candela per square meter? The human eye can deal with contrast ratios that are many orders of magnitude more than that. So there's always going to be that layer that we can never really get to, even if you sort of fake it with hdr overlaying or whatnot. And when it matters, we'll use some sort of luminance based study, false colors, to do a more concerted assessment of brightness. But usually the brightness studies are going to be done in other ways. As for conveying emotional experience, personally, I like to show with as much fidelity as possible what we think we're going to achieve, as opposed to sort of presenting a client with fantastical artistic expressions that show a feeling but have a certain distancing.
And that's just me. I think there's much room for that in lighting design generally, and I'm always sort of in awe of folks that can produce that kind of work. But when I've tried it in the past, I've never really gone full tilt with it. Also, projects are just moving so fast most of the time that it never feels like you have the time to really dig in on that kind of level of work, for sure.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Yeah, and I wasn't saying maybe I over.
I wasn't saying that, you know, that it's artistic in a fantastical way, but almost that we can convey with Photoshop renderings a more accurate representation of what it's going to look like then sometimes. Certainly you mentioned AGI at the beginning, you know, an AGI rendering. That's not what we're going to see.
[00:19:36] Speaker C: Of course, but I think what we're able to do in 3D Max is a significant leap beyond AGI's capabilities and does allow us to, like, I can do a lot in three deciseconds that would look like it might be Photoshop.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I can say that for us, for our practice, what we find is that layer of 3d studio Max, like Dan, you're talking about, that you can get into the details, you get photometrically accurate, you get a look. Right. As professionals, we all know, I think, Dan, you said it, the first thing is, how is the space going to react to light? But once you start to put that in. Then you start to dial it in and it's almost like you're sitting at a lighting console, the old theatrical days and adjusting and making that picture.
And then what I find Lisa, is you take that image and you bring a light fixture right next to it. Maybe from Lumini. Haha.
[00:20:46] Speaker C: Nice plug.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: But now the client and customer, sometimes they're different, right? They can then connect that image that you know is right because your experience and the computer is putting it all together with the physical thing. And now you're talking about a story and you're talking about emotion and feeling. Whereas the thing with Photoshop, I think where we wrestle with it is when you have weird spaces and weird things, you can do some pretty funky stuff that's not necessarily realistic. Whereas there's a grounding and Dan, to your point, that point of almost going too far and it being a crutch, but there's a grounding that that system creates that lets you make sure that you can actually do what you're thinking.
[00:21:37] Speaker C: Well, I think there's a couple of points to that. First of all, most immediately we're talking about physically based modeling here, right? It's modeling software that's based in physical reality and physical systems, which is very different than a heuristic type of modeling, which Photoshop is in a manual sense, and increasingly through AI transitioning towards capabilities that allow you to make an image that appears a certain way but is produced by virtue of pixels being grouped together by proximity points, as opposed to, that's how light is actually working in reality. So I think that's a really important distinction.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: The thing that I can, if I can jump in, I mean that's why in our office that's, you know, that's not done by an intern. I mean it might be created by an intern, but there's a professional who says oh no, this is what the light's going to do there. You can't just draw it, it has to be right.
[00:22:35] Speaker C: But that does still require the human intervention part for sure.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: So sorry, go ahead.
[00:22:40] Speaker C: I mean, no less than in a software. The two other points I want to point is one that what excites me about physically based modeling systems is our profession has worked exclusively with IES files for four decades now and hopefully in the near future we'll be transitioning that to an XML base where there can be more data available. But at the end of the day that is a modeling approximation of a light fixtures distribution intensities based off of either a photopea simulation or a Ganyo metering from 20ft away. It's missing out on that near field photometry. We're missing near field photometry. What's really interesting about physically based rendering software is if you have the computing power and well, and frankly the bandwidth to do it, you can model the exact fixture geometry down to the led nodes. So this is something that actually I find has been really helpful, is if you're trying to show a client how a space would look with recessed down lights, with a globe pendant, or a low brightness microcell optic with lots of little one inch holes. You can't do that in AGI or some other radiosity based software. And if you're doing in Photoshop, you're faking it. But I can actually literally just put little lambertian optics inside the manufacturer's revit model geometry, bring it into three deciseconds and render exactly how that's going to look. And most importantly, and this gets back to also the Photoshop thing, I think we, I mean, this is an endemic issue throughout the design or the building architectural world, is the fetishization of the image and the locale of where you're taking that image from the viewpoint, the perspective. And if you're just working with architects renderings and photoshopping over them, you're sort of adopting their point of view. But we all know that's not how we experience buildings, right? My favorite thing to do when I get a model and show the architect is start with that point of view and then turn around like, what the hell does it look like behind you? And so if I can move around in 3d, if I can create little animations that show the visual experience as I move through space, and how various layers of light are helping sort of craft a narrative, to me that's a really, that is the poetic component of what we're doing, is being able to sort of show those things and not just tell them.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: What other impact does that then have on the rest of your process?
[00:25:26] Speaker C: Those that know me, I'm very involved in sustainable design discourse in the lighting world. And I think being able to assess hardware selections, design strategies holistically, look at embodied carbon is starting to become a conversation. But operational and LPD is huge. And I think one thing that we're striving to do more is really interrogate our design decisions and make sure that the selected outputs that we have are correct. And I think being able to go back into the model in the later phases and I assess if how much output we've got specified makes sense is something that can be really important to do and being able to shave down your watts later on in the design process.
Then the other topic of conversation, I think, is detailing and how much you select hardware based off of manufacturers that are trying to offload as much of the detailing as possible onto the fixture versus taking ownership of it through architectural means. Actually, the presentation that I'm going to be giving with my colleague Srusti at ILD this fall is going to be about sort of detailing in the, particularly like looking at slots and coves and the non detail, if you will.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Could you elaborate a little bit more? I think there is a lot of conversation out there in the world. I know it comes up for us a lot of, well, are you doing details? And then more lights, are you doing details? And if we do them okay, then they end up on our sheets and then does anybody ever look at them versus getting them into architectural details? And what elements do you detail or not detail? How far do you take it?
[00:27:15] Speaker C: Well, I mean, in a practical sense, we always submit our details to the architect and with lots of notes that say that these need to be included in the architect set, produce any details for 100% cd set that's not contract. I think there's some contractual stuff about us including that under Lam headers that all needs to be included by the architect.
It's funny because it's something that we're constantly talking about needing to do more of and it's constantly feeling like nobody's doing enough of and yet no matter if it's done or not, the contractor is still going to go rogue and do whatever they want. And then you'll be like, wait, but what about that detail? And they're like, oh, too late now.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: So even if you do the detail, it doesn't get done.
[00:28:05] Speaker C: I mean, the best chance you have of getting something right is to get it into the construction set. And if they own it, then they, then they're supposedly going to have to do it. So I'm definitely not advocating not doing the details. I'm huge advocate of doing details. And I'm, as I've grown in my own practice, I'm endeavoring to draw more and more. One of the big things that we did about, gosh, was it a year ago now, we actually built out our own revit library of standard lighting details so that at a DD set, somebody can just include a couple sheets of standard cove and slot detail options and we don't know which one's going to happen yet.
By having that framework in place. It allows designers to quickly adapt, modify, mold them to what they're actually doing, so it doesn't require sort of starting from scratch every time. I wouldn't say that Lamb Partners has the Richard Meyer style library of standard details that we always do and no one's allowed to deviate from. That's definitely not the case, but I think we're constantly trying to strike a balance between doing enough and not going overboard.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: I guess that's another thing. When you were talking earlier about younger designers and the crutches they use.
The more experience you have, the more ways you've seen something get screwed up, the more you know what you have to detail what you have to include in the notes. It's just a lot easier to communicate your ideas in the plans or in the documents.
[00:29:40] Speaker C: I think a lot of what we try and do is create standards that minimize the chance of the basic screw ups. And we've got a 60 page architectural lighting spec language for inclusion in the spec book. Is anybody really reading that? I don't know, but it's there. And some people in the office feel really strongly that a lot of those notes should actually be sitting in the fixture schedule directly. Others are like, well, it's in the spec, and if it's owned, then it's owned. I don't know if there's a good answer of which one's right or wrong. I will say, personally, I don't include a ton of notes. I only include enough. But I don't think I've had very many issues on job sites that where I had to fight for something based off of a standard note. I think the things that are more likely to be screwed up are you unique conditions where you haven't really fully explained your design intent back to that.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: 60 page spec that no one reads. Hopefully they do. And that's their contract.
[00:30:44] Speaker C: Well, yeah, totally.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: That's their contract. I mean, they have to. We've recently been engaged with a spec writer on a project, and it's just, you know, people who. That's their whole. That's their specialty. It's a yemenite. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah. We actually do a unique thing. Well, maybe it's not too unique, but on our drawing sets, we don't put manufacturer name or model numbers, just the tag. And then in the spec, that's where you have the actual manufacturer model number, all the details, finishes, alternate manufacturers notes, things like that. And I can't tell you how many times we get calls saying, hey, we need a price for this job. There's no manufacturer's names or model numbers on the drawing set. It's like, well, did you pick up the spec book? And I kid you not half of the distributors or the contractors who call us to say, what's that?
[00:31:44] Speaker C: Now the question, Avi, is what's the rationale? And like, that seems to me like you're just trying to, like, you know, get one over on the contractor. Is there, what's the, what's the argument for doing it that way?
[00:31:57] Speaker A: So the argument is that instead of a contractor taking the drawing, cutting out the fixture schedule, and sending it to a distributor to get a price for the job, they have to go look to know in the spec what that fixture is, and they see all the other pieces, like spares and drivers and accessories, and I. All of the detail associated with each one of those particular products versus.
[00:32:26] Speaker C: Wait, does that mean. Are you including the cut sheet in the spec book too?
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So it gets them to the spec. I like doing that.
[00:32:34] Speaker C: Yeah. Cause, I mean, we'd go the opposite direction with a very fleshed out fixture schedule, but no cut sheets included in the spec.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: I'll tell you, one of the best reasons we used cut sheets is a project we had in Florida with a manufacturer. We had the cut sheet in the spec. We got the submittals and same model number. Everything was exactly the same. But the lumen output was 30% less all of a sudden. And we were using that product in the path of egress. And by having the cut sheet in the contract documents, we were able to say, well, look, we specified this, you submitted this. What's going on? And it turns out the manufacturer created a new product, new version of the product that just happened to have less lumen output. And we had to change products. We had to change a bunch of things. But they wanted all these change orders. They wanted ad services. There was all this money involved. It's like, but this is time, right? This could be a whole separate conversation, but the LED technology is changing. This is a change. But we had that record that said, this is what we specified. Now you're providing something different. The manufacturer changed something. This is the reality we need to change. I think whether you have the schedule like you're talking about, that has all that detail or simple schedule, and then put all the detail in a spreadsheet, whatever, inside of the spec book. I'm just trying to force people to go read a thing that they've, they don't read.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Yeah. That you just said earlier, you don't know if they read it this way. You know, they at least read part of it.
[00:34:26] Speaker C: What we're ultimately trying to do is, you know, get from the experience of being in that digital model to the experience of being in the real space as sinuously as possible.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're just trying to get the clients to understand how much it matters. Right. The lighting matters. You love this idea. You love this image. And let's follow it through to the end. There are other people that will get involved in the process that haven't been part of those conversations. That's why all this exists, to make sure that what we did through that process of creative becomes the reality.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. One of my favorites was a couple days ago we got a ve email from the contractor with some ve ideas. My favorite. Hey, what if we just removed this section of fixture around two sides of the building? That's like 200 linear feet of fixture that we could cut out right there. Oh, great. Well, that's like core to the architectural expression of the building. And are you willing to take out the custom brick pattern that the architect spent a whole bunch of time designing, too? The client is asking for an architectural expression based off of the architect and our collaborative experience as designers.
This isn't a Walmart. You get what you pay for.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: Well, that's when you go back to that model and take it out, right?
[00:35:54] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: What if we eliminate that look? It's not just that line of light. It's everything that that light is doing.
[00:36:01] Speaker C: Exactly. The big misconception between what constitutes sort of functional light versus other uses. And this is another good bill Lamism, where he made the distinction between activity needs and biological or physiological needs, where we need a certain amount of light to do a task. But we need qualities of light to for all sorts of things, whether it's intuitive wayfinding or the feeling of comfort or delight. And you can't put a price on those in the same way. Or maybe you can. It's like, well, the delight factor is an additional $25,000. I think that especially in the era of fast moving crazy projects in late capitalism, we do find ourselves just like, come up with an idea, document it, get out the door and move on to the next thing. And I find myself sometimes laying awake at night being like, should I have made that slot dimension two inches shorter to have a better cutoff? Is somebody going to notice? And then, of course, that's not a big deal. And something else turns out to be a whole crisis. But it is critically important to be able to produce some design output, create space from it. 100% DD goes out, you get six weeks while they price it. You come back to it in cds, and you're like, why the fuck did we do that? And then be willing to change it and be willing to cut out something that's not working. My brother is a writer, and he taught me this phrase that they called it kill your babies. The nicer way is saying it is killing your darlings, which is like, when you're developing some sort of creative output, you're going to throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall, and some of it's going to stick. Some of it doesn't stick immediately, but some of it sticks. But then you find that maybe it shouldn't be sticking, and you gotta be willing, even at the 11th hour, to say, you know, this just isn't working. I actually did that on a project yesterday where we started out with a continuous wall slot. It gets slowly chopped into little pieces.
We still had it in there, but, like, yesterday, I was like, look, 75% of this slot is behind presentation screens that are gonna be down two thirds of the time when these rooms are in use. Maybe we should just not spend the money and not spend the fuss on having them there and be willing to get rid of that. Even if the original detail was an indirect slot and it would have run continuous. Well, as soon as it has to be broken at every window and broken at every removable wall partition, it's just not worth the trouble. And so being willing to refine and tighten the design to be as sort of high quality as it can be without sort of all the frills, I think is really important.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: One of our designers says, it's not finished when there's nothing else you can add. It's finished when there's nothing else you can take away.
[00:38:59] Speaker C: Ooh, that's really good. I like that.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that.
[00:39:03] Speaker C: I was gonna say my other big design philosophy that I learned my sophomore year of college when my partner and I designed a pair of bridges for a bridge project. And one of the critiques was, you don't wear two brooches, you wear one brooch. So being judicious about the specialty element in a project so that you're not sort of over fussying a project with too many competing elements, I think is a really.
That one always stuck with me.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: Well, I think there's a lot more we can discuss. I liked the discussion, but I think we should come back to it another time. This has been really great, Dan, thanks. Thank you for being a part of our very first lighting Matters podcast. And I think you really hit the nail on the head on the first one about process. And you can see through the process how much it matters. Right. We're illuminating these spaces and the process matters on how you get to illumination.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: We all know it matters. We don't think it matters. We know it matters. It's just about making that clear to the rest of the world.
[00:40:17] Speaker C: You can't force somebody into being interested in something. The best way to show them is to show them where it's bad and then how it can be much better.
One of my favorite things in this profession is you go to a punch list aiming session and the architect's all complaining about how it looks terrible, whatever, and then you aim the fixtures like you actually fucking designed them. And then all of a sudden, oh my God, it looks great. Yes.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Yeah, you get the right light level.
We had a restaurant in Aspen where all the lights were white tuning because, you know, sun on the snow and you put 3000k inside, it'll look weird during the day. So we did 6000 to 2700. Well, they were sitting in the restaurant at night, no lighting control system. The contractor didn't order it. And they're sitting in the restaurant at night. And the things bright and the wrong color and, you know, last minute flight to Aspen make it work. And we're like, all you got to do is dim it, set the right color, adjust it daytime and magically. Everybody. Oh yeah, this is, this is what we wanted. This is what we looked at in the renderings.
[00:41:33] Speaker C: Oh, well, there's your problem right there.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: We needed to tune it, we needed to align it, we needed to finish it. It's like looking at a space before they put the finishes on. But for some reason, the lighting doesn't get that moment of, oh, it needs to be adjusted and focused.
[00:41:53] Speaker C: Well, yeah, and I think the, you know, the good, the good architects that, or the experienced ones that we've worked with for years know that. And that's just a process of education.
[00:42:03] Speaker B: We were just at a project yesterday where a professional photo got taken before the lights were aimed. And that photo has taken on a life of its own. And now there's this gorgeous one with water and reflections. And the lighting is perfectly aimed. That's out there. You know, that's our photo. But this pre lighting aiming photo, it's even posted in the St. Louis airport. It's so sad. It's so sad.
[00:42:31] Speaker C: It's classic. I mean, same.
We've got a project that's out there now that has been, the firm that we worked with has been using it for all their marketing, but for whatever reason, some of the light fixtures were not fully installed when they took the pictures. And so all the lights are off, and so the project looks beautiful, but just in daylight. But it's so unfortunate that, like, it's not including the rest of the work, but so it goes.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: But, I mean, I have to say, most of the time, I don't know, 75% of the time, the photos that an architect uses, especially for an exterior, are those gorgeous nighttime or dusk twilight photos with the lighting. It's the lighting that matters.
[00:43:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, so that's something I sometimes like to throw out there. I think just to be provocative, is like, are we designing lighting for people and for the experience of daily lives, or are we designing lighting for the photos so that we can get the next project and for the Internet? Clickbait.
[00:43:42] Speaker A: I think it depends on the project. Is it a restaurant or is it an office space?
[00:43:49] Speaker C: Well, if it's a restaurant, that. What I'm hoping is that it's for the photos that all the people that go to the restaurant are going to take and post to their Instagram feeds.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
[00:44:01] Speaker C: I mean, it's just. It's how we experience the world now is, you know, through the image.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: Well, again, Dan, thank you so much for being our first guest on this podcast. We hope you will join us again in the future and carry on the conversation. And we also really want to thank Lumini for helping make this happen. At Lumini, they define reading a script here. This is going to be fun. At Lumini, they define illumination with made to order lighting solutions crafted through pioneering innovation. Their commitment to excellence has made Lumini the preferred choice of more lights, but many other spaces and position them at the forefront of the premier market. Listen, I like their stuff. What can I say?
[00:44:50] Speaker B: What sets Lumini apart is their easy to do business. With culture ingrained in every facet of their operations. From the first encounter with their sales team to ongoing support, Lumine ensures a seamless customer journey. Quotes and samples expect rapid responses and tangible solutions within days. Abhi, you shared a story about that already.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think just this week I'm heading over there to get some samples for a meeting on Tuesday. So I do like that they are about ten minutes away.
They have lots of experience, extensive portfolio and global supply chain, which helps a bit, too. And they really help us with Transformers solutions. I got to say quality, sustainability.
They really shine through every project. They meet what we need. And I also throw out there that when you needed another dollar cheaper, they're usually pretty good about that too.
[00:45:51] Speaker B: It says here, and it's true, Lumine continually pushes the boundaries of innovation, rigorously developing each product to meet their exacting standards. The result is unmatched color, quality, consistency and performance, setting new industry benchmarks. You can see all of their offerings@lumine.com or reach out to them anytime at info lumini.com luminii.com lighting matters as we wrap up, we want to reiterate how much we value your time, and we hope you found it as much fun to listen to as we had creating it. Remember to like it, and share this content with your friends and colleagues.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: The opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the sponsors. Our content has general application, but we recommend obtaining personalized guidance from a professional IaLD lighting designer such as RBLD or more lights for your next endeavor.
