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.
Hey, welcome to the Lighting Matters podcast. I'm Lisa Reed with Reed Burkitt Lighting Design.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: And I'm Avraham Moore with morelight. And we have a really special guest today, somebody who I've known since I started in this profession, Mr. Julio Padota with Schuler Shook. How are you today, Julio? Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Good, thank you. I'm honored to be here with two great colleagues of mine who I just saw at the ild Enlightened. And here we are again.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I missed you already.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: Likewise. Likewise.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: So how has re entry been since the conference?
[00:01:06] Speaker C: Absolutely. It all cut out. You know, I just roll right. This is what I do on a daily basis. I go to conferences, I come back, I, you know, roll right through my tasks, my clients, and it's great. And actually, you know, very inspired to see everybody else's work at the conference and to learn that everybody, all the architectural lighting designers are challenged with all the complexities of our industry in terms of the technology and the design, the great designs that we face, that keeps our life very interesting and fun.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Oh, that's great perspective, Julia.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: We always like to have somebody start with a little bit of background. How did you get into this and what led you to where you are today as a. As a principal inside of Schuler Shug.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: Yeah. So my life started without much planning. I literally went to a party one day where all these directors and general managers for the National Theater of Venezuela, one of the most important theaters in the world at the time.
And, you know, I was studying computer programming at the time, and I spoke English because I went to high school in Canada. And to make a long story short, the technical director told me we have a big old lighting board that we only have one single person that knows how to operate it. And as you can imagine, one of the biggest opera, ballet and multiple function theater.
They needed somebody else to learn it. And so I had never been into a theater, and they invited me to see Romeo and Juliet. And I was blown away by the lighting in the set and the costumes. And so I took the job in one of the most sophisticated theaters in the world at the time. And that led to a scholarship to North Carolina School of the Arts, where I got my BFA in theatrical lighting design. And then as you know, Venezuela went into a lot of political turmoil. It still is today. So I never went back. And I developed my life here in the United States. And I started as a, you know, working for an engineering firm that did illuminating engineering, as they would call it, internally. And then I would run away after 5 o'clock and I would go do theater in the city of Chicago. And then I realized that I was starting to burn out because I was working seven days a week. And after two and a half years of that, I said, you know, I have to do architectural lighting design. And I was lucky to. You know, I used to attend Life Fair and all the conferences, and I bump into Bob Shook and Jim Bney, and we started the conversation. And at the time, they didn't have an opening, but eventually when the position opened, they called me and I joined Schiller Shuck. And that has been 25 years of a great journey, you know, collaborating with architects and our internal team to create just great projects.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: So that's great. 25 years. I love the stories of how people find architectural lighting because it's not something that you grow up as a kid wanting to be Right.
[00:04:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: And I know people who come from that theatrical background, like, you have. Have so much good experience with what light does. You get that immediate feedback.
[00:04:44] Speaker C: And do you guys remember Russ De La CI?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:04:48] Speaker C: Well, he was kind of like the first theatrical lighting designer that was doing fantastic work, you know, along with Fisher Moran, which then became Fisher Moran Stone. And I had met Jules Fisher. So they were kind of like my inspiration, you know, And I said, oh, these are theatrical guys that made it into the architectural world. And because I always had friends in the architectural world that we always talked about architecture and lighting. And so it was just my inspiration to embark on an architectural lighting design career.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: What were the challenges for you coming from theatrical into architectural? What did you have to learn?
[00:05:27] Speaker C: Mostly it was learning the equipment and the lighting calculations. The equipment was easy because at the time, although there was no Internet, there were catalogs in the libraries. If you go to the libraries, you would find not only catalogs, okay. People would donate lighting catalogs, and I would just grab them like I remember the Light Lear one. And I would start looking at the photometrics and look at the equipment and looking at the sources and so forth. And then one day I bump into Gary Steffi's book, you know, the architectural lighting book, and I just read the whole thing and I highlighted it, and then I moved on to the next book and the next book. Finally, I ended up buying the books, and it just took me about a year and a half to two years to read the books. And the more I read, I fell in love with the profession. And, you know, obviously, Jules Fisher always told me, if you want to learn about theatrical lighting design, you have to go into a theater and, you know, pay a ticket and sit down and watch it. And that is great. He said, but for architectural lighting design, you just got to walk the streets and look up. And he was so right on that. I don't think I stopped looking up ever since he told me that, you know, this is when he had invited me to see a Broadway play that I couldn't afford to pay at the time. And, you know, he invited me with other students that had attended his workshop, and I said, you know, architectural lighting is free. You can learn by just looking at it. So that was the beginning of my journey and inspiration.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: That's great. I think learning to see architectural lighting is one of the skills that I try to teach our young designers.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: Anyway, learning to look at it would say, what do you want to see? Right. If you ask that question, what do you want to see? Because light reveals. And so if you answer that question, then you got a lighting design in your hands, at the very least conceptually, right? And then you have to materialize it through lighting equipment.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: I love that. What do you want to see? And I think getting onto the topic of today, I think that is becoming more challenging, right. As the. The architecture becomes more complicated, the conversation of what you want to see, how the light applies. I don't like how I just transitioned there, right. It really should be. As the art of architecture becomes more complex and more sophisticated, then the challenge of the day is to the architectural lighting designer to show and not show the pieces that. That are important to that.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: And that's key. What to not show. And, you know, we don't just blast it all with even light, right. That's not. That's not our art.
[00:08:24] Speaker C: That's why it's very important in today's world to really listen to the architect. You know, how they conceive the building, what are their priorities, why did they sort of use such a volumetric approach or why did they use transparency in the building so that then you can translate, you know, that in. Into architect or architectural lighting concepts. And so it becomes very philosophical. And some of the architects appreciate that because, you know, they. For them to conceive the building, they went through an entire process, right. That if they're willing to share it with you, they need to understand that we take that philosophy and translate it into, you know, lighting philosophy. Right. And eventually that will translate into lighting equipment. But without that, you know, we would just illuminate buildings by just providing general lighting. Right. But ultimately, I think architectural lighting design enhances and reinforces the architectural concept. And I try to communicate that a lot because, you know, from the artistic point of view, that's what we want to do to the architecture. That in itself has become art in mind you. They're very functional spaces. Right. At the end of the day. Right. But that's the sort of the second fold of lighting design that has to be human centric from the perspective of making it functional for human beings. You know, there is a theater, you know, in Minneapolis that was designed by a French architect, and then they did the lighting too, you know, and, you know, I remember being there and saying, this looks really cool. And from the sort of visual point of view, it was a very and still is a cool theater. But unfortunately, the demographics of the theater has a lot of older people that need more light to see. And while the theater looks cool and it's dark and it fails to provide functional lighting for the end user. So our job as architectural lighting designers is to enhance and reinforce the architectural concepts, make them look really cool and artistic and all of that, but also honor the fact that some of these places need functional lighting. So it becomes, you know, balancing act between the two.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: It does. It does. That's what I loved. I wrote down philosophical and functional, and I. I wonder if you have a way of drawing that out. If you have an architect who maybe doesn't understand that you really want to know. You want them to go back to their concepts and not just tell you, okay, this is the. This is the room, you know, this is the shape. This is the ceiling height. Do you have any way of drawing that out of them? Like, no, really? What was on your concept boards? What's behind this?
[00:11:14] Speaker C: You know, these days, I have to say that with the highly sophisticated renderings that architects produce, because they have all kinds of different softwares to do it, 3DS Max being one of them, they inevitably put it out there through a rendering, and most of them get it right. And so your job becomes, okay, well, you did this right. However, you still are missing some aspects that will make this design more successful. Some of them have the total capability with the software, but they don't do it correctly. And so then you embark on a sort of major correction of, okay, the rendering looks great. However, this is how we envision at that point. We just take that rendering and Photoshop it so that they can understand. We want to enhance your work. If you have a hovering ceiling, we want to uplight that ceiling and that becomes a lantern. And so the conversation begins with the hovering ceiling that is illuminated. You start discussing these concepts that most of the ones that have been around, they know. They know, and they can communicate it very clearly with words, even if they don't have a rendering.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I love those renderings we see with the omnilight and all this daylight in a 90 or 200 foot deep space. It's like.
[00:12:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the. I remember an old Iald conference that was in Sonoma county, which, by the way, any people listening? Let's just go there every year for Iald. But nice. But they brought in the lighting designer for Kung Fu Panda, and he was talking about one of the final scenes of the original movie where Po is sitting. He's gotten the dragon scroll, but the dragon scroll area is all lit with green light because the dragon scrolls green. And they put Poe in that environment. And Po is a white and black panda. And they said, well, he can't be green. He can't be lit by green light because he's a black and white panda. So in that environment, he was illuminated by the green light, but they excluded his person Right. In that rendering from having green affect him. Right. So the light was happening, but not the color. And that's just this classic example I use all the time when I see some of these renderings where you can do amazing things inside of a computer, inside a 3D Studio Max, or. I'm sure you've both experienced renderings from some of the other engines that are out there that really fake light. Right. They don't really know directionality or even the realities of light. Right. It doesn't bend Magic. Magic light to get the image they want. And I think, Julia, to your point, what you're getting at is, you know, they've come up with a vision of what they want it to look like most of the time during the day. And then it becomes our responsibility as lighting designers to say, I hear you, I understand what you're saying. But now let's look at this at night. And now let's look at this in those transitions from daylight to night light. Right. As well. And let's talk about what you want to see and how we apply that.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: Right. Which goes back to the question, what do you want to see at night? If you Answer that simple question. I think you'll at the very least develop the lighting design concept for the nighttime scene. So. And Enscape is one of the softwares that I think, you know, the Genslers and Soms and all these architects, you know, I'm currently working with Juan Moreno, jgma, and I am really impressed with all the renderings that they do. I mean, they are, like, so sophisticated. Okay. That they're very good at providing an image. And frankly, sometimes when they get it right, our job is to execute the lighting design. You know, mind you, that we didn't completely develop it with them, we may have refined it with them because, you know, these softwares do such a good job. And some people behind these softwares are very visual, and then they know exactly how they want it to look, but they don't know how to get there. Which brings the other aspect of a lighting designer is our technical expertise. You know, and as you all know, I mean, we spend a lot of time with equipment playing, mocking it up, vetting it, you know, seeing if it's got the right, you know, light distribution, if the quality of the light is soft, if it has a hard edge, if it has, you know, color over. Over angle problems. Right? This yellow, you know, tint for our listeners who may not know, that sort of shows up at the edges of the light and in. So, you know, this is the expertise that we bring and why people need to hire a lighting designer or consultant, you know, because it's, you know, if you have a clear idea what the lighting design needs to be. Well, most important is to know how to execute it with lighting equipment. And not everybody gets it. Right.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: So you bring a good point. I just want to go back to one point that I think is important to note is Enscape, as it exists right now, is actually, in my opinion, kind of a fairly dangerous tool because you can get great images, but it's not based on realistic lighting. Right. It is creating great images. And I remember speaking to some of the folks, this is prior to them getting purchased by Chaos Group, and they were saying, we're estimating, we're guessing because we can't render that fast. Real light, you know, that's what Vantage is for. And that's the other Chaos Group piece of software. But I think it's important because, Julia, the other side of what you were saying is the technology, right? There are products that do odd things at odd distances with different kinds of architecture. So that mockup becomes so important, and you can only take things so Far in a computer, where you really need to get specific. And you said this earlier, too, which I think is just an important point to keep driving. Right. There's design that happens, and where do you want the light? What do you want it to look like? And then we have a very important other element that we do as lighting designers, which is the technology of it. Right. And I wrestle with. And I really hate, but I have yet to find out with a better language of the art in science of lighting design. But it really is. And there is no better explanation than the art and the creative. And it really is art. Everything we do as lighting designers is creating an artistic masterpiece. And then it's based on this technology. Right. Monet had his paints and created art. We have this technology that's made by lots of different people that then fuels the art that we are trying to create.
[00:18:50] Speaker C: Right. It's the paint and brush that we use to achieve it, always keeping in mind that we design space, spaces for human beings. So. And going back to the theater in Minneapolis, that if you can see well at the end of the day, and then, you know, we have not achieved our objective, and that's the challenge that we have.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Yeah. When people bring out a flashlight in a restaurant to read the menu, I'm like, oh, man, you missed the core. Core. Because if you can't read the menu, you probably can't see what the food.
[00:19:25] Speaker C: There's a steakhouse here in Chicago where they walk around with flashlights. And I talked to the lighting consultant who happens to be from Chicago, and they told me they have the capability. Capability to turn the lights at a higher intensity. They choose not to.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Yeah. They don't want you to see the food. Yikes.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: Yeah. So it's just they want to keep it very sort of private and, you know.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: But, yeah, no, that's definitely a thing in steakhouses.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm going to bring an example of the O'Hare T5 terminal that it posed a challenge for us because, going back to your point, there's so much you can do in calculations and renderings and so forth. You know that that sort of visual concept was developed by hok, the introduction of these eyelid domes. And I remember we built the domes in ag, and we put two fixtures in it with asymmetrical distributions, and they look perfect. And when we did the mock up, because we knew that this was going to be a difficult step or feature in the building, we started seeing all kinds of shadows. I mean, those shadows, you're not going to see them. In an AGI calculation. And so we did a mock up. And not only we could see shadows, but also directly behind it, behind the eyelid, there was a downlight. And out of the five name specs that we had, the fixture that got awarded by light, Lear was the tallest one out of them all.
Unfortunately, when you pull away from certain vantage points, you could see the very tip of the fixture behind a lip. And so we had to work with the architect to create a lip that would conceal the fixture. That lip is higher at the very center center, and then it tapers off on the side. And we could not have realized the refinement of that detail without a mock up. If we would have gone in with just a lighting calculation, which looked perfect in AGI, we would have been in trouble. So.
Because there is, I don't know, there's roughly 300 of them of these eyelid domes. So which brings a, you know, going back to HOK design, a space that is really artistic, is very conceptual and intentional, and they had these domes that are very complex, Perhaps not so much from the architectural point of view, although it did take a lot for the architects to work with the GC to build them, but to integrate lighting into them, and if we skip the mock ups, we just don't reach that level of sophistication, which is, again, one of the things that architectural lighting designers do. When we get beyond the conceptual design and we move on into the execution design, we know the technology, we know the red flags, we know what we have to do in order to reach that level of sophistication. Okay, that's not something you're going to get from electrical engineers, and we all know that.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: I think engineers would think they weren't doing their job well if a mockup was required. I think they think they're supposed to know exactly what's going to happen without a mock up. And we've all learned how important the mockup is to our craft, right?
[00:23:02] Speaker C: Because the logical mind and the ego say, well, I can figure it out, but it's too complex. And as much as engineers think that they can work it out on their drafting table per se, we all know that it's just there are unpredictable aspects of it. And you know this. We spend a lot of time observing the properties of light. You know, light, color, right direction distribution, color rendition, color temperature and so forth. And with all that, we still cannot achieve that level of sophistication when the architectural design is as complex as it typically is. These days, when you're talking about A feature project.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Right, that's the thing. To be fair, we're working on complex one off designs where an engineer is often working on the same kind of space over and over again. So they do know what's going to happen. And I think that's that step across the line of, okay, we're working on something that hasn't been done before. And so, yeah, but I think it's.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Important for people to know that also on the small scale, what some people would think, simple projects that we all are involved in as well, there's an application of art and thought and sometimes mock up, not for verification of our thinking, but for verification for the customer to understand the value in the concept. I don't want the audience or anybody to think that this is only for these huge one off big time jobs. Right. Like I remember early in some of the restaurant work we did with a particular customer, they didn't really understand why you would want to use LED tape. You know, they have been using little incandescent lamps forever. And it really took a mock up. Right. Bringing the product, showing it to them, bringing the thing that they used already and the thing we wanted them to use, using both and then showing them the difference. Right. Look, I can touch this thing. It's been on for half an hour. This one. I can't. Right. Warranty all those other elements. But in the end, right. The effect on the front bar or back bar was the same. Right. But you can describe it, you can talk it as much as possible, but to see it. Right again, Julia, as you was talking about, right. What do you want to see? Well, I know this is what I want to see. This has worked for years and years. Okay, well, here's a list of reasons why. And now is this seeing what you want to see again? I think it's just important that we make sure that it's not just the big, huge things, but it's also at scale too, that it applies.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. The little gems.
I'm sure. Giulio, you have some precious little project that you just love. I know I have those little babies.
[00:26:22] Speaker C: And the ones that we don't love that much and everything in between, you know. So, you know, Avi, I want to sort of shift gears a little bit because yesterday I was at Studio Gang's offices and I know you work with them. And to me, she's one of the probably most distinguished architects right now who's doing really, really interesting work. And to me, Carol, Russ, Barney and her are at the top of their game. And And I saw, for example, a hotel that they just completed in Denver, and I was blown away to see that the windows are shaped in the form of an open eye. And the conceptual design is exactly what I'm talking about. That, you know, they draw so much. These architects draw so much from, you know, nature and the human body, and they come from a completely different angle that ends up challenging the architectural lighting design, because if you don't get on the same wavelength, you know, you're never going to be able to develop a lighting design that is congruent with their way of thinking. But you work with Jeannie Gang and her team. Is there anything in particular that you think they're doing that challenge you and that, you know, you feel that this was different, you know, from the norm?
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Yeah, we were chatting a little bit. I think what has come of their work, and really, as we have applied work and honestly, Karen at Studio K pushes, I think, us even harder in the. How do you light a space without seeing the light? I don't ever want to see a single light fixture, but it has to be lit for the environment. Right. But also to do the tasks that you want to do. And I think that many architects, you know, Studio Gang and Ross Barney, as you say, and, you know, even the Hoks and Genslers and, you know, just about everybody is kind of pushing that next envelope to light without light. And I think the art that we now have to apply is beyond the put a thing here. It's the pushing of architecture. Right. To push the architects and push the architecture to where we can then show what we want to show without seeing the thing that makes the show happen.
Right. Like in the theater world. Right. As much as possible, we hide all the lights behind different curtains, different spaces. We don't want to hear the color scrollers, if anybody's still using color scrollers. Right. But we don't want to hear the fans of moving lights, which is funny because now we mike every single actor and actress on a stage, so we don't hear all the moving light fans. But in the architecture, I think it's pushing the architect. And sorry, where. Where I wanted to go is in the theater, as a lighting designer, I always discussed what color black are you going to use in that costume. Right. Because you have the red blacks and you have the blue blacks. And I'm sure we've talked about this in the podcast because it's one of my favorite things. But now in architecture and with working with Studio Gang, as you know, we're working with Them. On other parts of the O'Hare project, it's been very much a conversation of, hey, what is it going to look like at night? What do you want to see? But also how do we modify the architecture to get you to that Enscape photo, right? Like, oh, I wanted to look like this in Enscape, okay. But that requires the architecture to move and shift and create ledges and coves and all that. And I think that's what's been most exciting. Like, I always thought USGBC and Leeds was going to push more of the connection between everybody as a team working together, but I think it's actually this next phase of architecture.
It's not even modernist movement, right? It's the human centric connection that architecture is now playing that is making the connection between all of the people involved in a project. Push the architecture even more and that helps us to make the light unseen, right. But still be able to read a menu or whatever that may be.
[00:31:10] Speaker C: Yeah, well, because they have all the tools, right? They have the software to create the visual aspect. They have now revit. They can see things in a three dimension model. They can visualize so much, right? And we need to integrate our fixtures to achieve exactly the Enscape look that you were referring to. And that becomes a total exercise, right? And to your point earlier, you know, we can't create coves that have a very shallow ceiling above. You know, it just light gets trapped in it. And we get so much of that where we have to fight for, you know, move your mechanical equipment and give me at least 6 to 8 inches so it can. Light can spread.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's tiny, right? It fits in the COVID It's so small. Well, you know physics.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: You don't see the sprinkler heads and you don't see the mechanical system. If you're uncomfortable, there will be a problem with the mechanical system, right? And I think I can say it, God forbid, knock on wood, right? Like there's an emergency, you need those sprinkler heads to function. But there's two things that people see in spaces, the space and the light that allows you to see the space, right? And there are many, many tools that those two folks that I think we conflict with constantly, right? Mechanical ducks and sprinkler heads that have the ability to add two more heads or do. Or make smaller multiple ducks or whatever it may be.
[00:32:50] Speaker C: You know, sorry if I interrupted you, but before I forget, DBHMS advocates bringing some of this mechanical equipment through the floor, which I love completely when you go to Europe, you see a lot of the mechanical elevated floors. And I would love for architects to move in that direction in this country. They were so used to putting everything on the ceiling and they would repeat it over and over and over until you're in an office where everything is on the floor more accessible and it makes the ceilings very clean. So. But we, you know, out of 10 projects, maybe one or two, you know, are approaching it that way, which makes our job harder.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: And like, to that end, the other thing we're seeing a lot, and I don't know if you two are experiencing this, is radiant heating systems right next to light fixtures. And I know we've had to have a lot of education to the mechanical engineers to remind them that the technology we use today hates heat.
No heat. We don't like heat next to our lights. Back, you know, incandescent days, what, 21, 25 years ago, maybe even later, everything was incandescent and heat, whatever. But now these, these mechanical, you know, we have a project that has 200 degree Fahrenheit radiant panels within 6 inches of the light. They said, yeah, he, the heat's going to go down. And I didn't take mechanical, you know, theatrical lighting designer by trading. But heat rises.
And it's interesting, you know, how our education has to go beyond. I know we're shifting here from art and light, but the education of our systems into these buildings. Right. We're educating so many new people now as the architecture becomes more complicated, why.
[00:34:54] Speaker C: Couldn'T mechanical systems be integrated into the artistic scheme of a building? If you remember the Pompidou by Renzo Piano, and I think it was Richard Rogers, you know, they were the first ones that grabbed, you know, all these mechanical equipment and plumbing, and they exposed it, you know, and they painted it different colors to distinguish between one system and the other. And obviously at the time, the French hated it. And Renzo Piano had to hide, you know, when he got onto a taxi and not talk about it because even the cab drivers would tell him it's such an ugly building without knowing he was the architect. You know, I think we need to get the mechanical engineers to think, you know, that this can be integrated within the artistic, you know, scheme of the architects and the lighting design. And I just don't know that they have gotten there as far as they all go is, oh, we'll paint it all black, we'll paint it all white as a request of the architect. But they haven't really thought about how can we hide this equipment or make it more delicate or paint it different colors. And, you know, and when you see it, it's so refreshing. So refreshing.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Yeah. When it really becomes part of the artistic expression or hidden. And, you know, going back to your previous question about like Studio Gang and even the Genslers and the Carol Ross Bonnies, right, Like they're applying all of those systems and applying it to the architecture. Right. And it's part of the project whether that is that radiant panel that looks just like the ceiling panel that's next to it. Right. You can't tell the difference.
And really integrating all of these elements together to create these, I guess you would call that human centric, modernist. Modernist kind of architecture that we're all kind of experiencing today.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Who's going to drive that mechanical system? Change in thinking? I mean, that's going to come from the architecture. The lighting designers aren't going to convince them to change.
[00:37:01] Speaker C: Right. So we can convince the architect, and the architect can convince Vince, the mechanical engineer.
I remember reading about Renzo Piano, and I remember he used always, almost exclusively, this structural engineer from Ireland because he was willing to push the envelope.
And I think for us, dbhms is a little bit like that. If you talk to them and push them a little bit, they're into it. They are into pushing the envelope.
As a result, they're kind of like the most progressive engineers that we have in town. But it is our role to push anybody to make it happen, whether we succeed or not. Otherwise, we just end up with a great building that when you look up, it's just a bit of a disorder, an ugly composition of mechanical equipment.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: It's a mess.
[00:38:01] Speaker C: And then our lights get moving. You know, you have to move your cylinders because, you know, this duck is coming through here. And we didn't see that in the, you know, clashing detection, revit models session. You know. Okay, great.
So, but I mean, at the end of the day, you know, people like beautiful things. You know, people like Ferraris, people like everything that Apple makes because it's beautiful. The Teslas, you know, we like beautiful things. And then next to that, yes, it has to be efficient, effective, you know, it has to function. I think that the architects are delivering. I'm truly impressed by them because between the form factors, the sort of volumetric modules and how they compose them, and then they come in with different materials. The material world alone is so progressing so fast, you know, and they're. They're bringing all these different glass and in woods and stone and, you know, and they have find ways to, you know, play with cement, that we as designers are being challenged. And we have to be in the same wavelength with them to understand, you know, why they conceived the building in the way they did so that we can enhance and reinforce their work. But we also have to get other disciplines to be on the same wavelengths. If not, they'll always be, you know, there's always going to be a portion of the building that didn't quite get there. And if you ever walk, walked into Renzo Piano's, you know, Art Institute, you'll see that everything from the handles, the handrails, the, you know, everything is so well studied, coordinated. And then you look up and, you know, the H vac equipment is hidden, you know, and even the fire alarm light is a piece of artwork, you know, so perhaps not everybody can pay for that, but I think we can get to a level that where it, you know, if well coordinated, it can be affordable and it doesn't take that much effort. So.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Have you guys ever noticed this? I might be about to ruin you. That really good architecture, the lighting just sort of designs itself. It's very obvious. The, you know, you mentioned modules, and that made me think about this. Julio, you know, if you're using downlights, they just, they work perfectly. And then in, you know, kind of average architecture, it feels like you're fighting to find the module, find the place for the things to go. I feel like in really good, well designed, well coordinated architecture, it's so much easier to do our jobs. Have you noticed that? Is that just me?
[00:40:48] Speaker C: I would agree, because I think if architects design buildings with lighting in mind, then everything on our end falls into place. It's just a very intuitive and logical process for us to look at the architecture and say, oh, this architect did a good job at organizing the building. And so this is just so easy for us to lay out our lighting. So, yeah, I love those projects.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: I want to take that one step further is those projects where there isn't an architect and it becomes a lighting project. I always talk to people about a fitness studio we designed, right Walls, throw the racks around the edge. We're going to do white walls, white ceiling, yada yada. Actually, they were talking about doing a black ceiling at one time, and our concept was to create these acoustic light fixtures that hung in the space. And it really is the art of the space. But that concept played out so simply in the space to light it that it worked out really well. So again, just trying to bring it back to the non architecture, you know, crazy projects that we, some people might think about where there are those other projects where, you know, it becomes a lighting project. Right. Like it's white walls and we need to light the space, but we want something unique. When you find that right concept, it plays in really well. But I would also agree, Lisa, that there are those spaces that kind of fighting the whole thing. Right. I actually can think of a restaurant we were involved in where the architect had all these coffers in the ceiling, but it had nothing to do with the table layouts. So now you're fighting everything to get the restaurant lit. Right. You have this ceiling that makes sense for a ceiling, but it has no connection to the ground. And. And you know, in the end what happened was they ended up changing the coffered ceiling to make it work.
But there was this long period of, well, we're already in construction documents and that's like going back to dd. Yeah, but you didn't hire us till a week before CDs were done. Right. Like, this is why this has to change. And it did, it changed and it all came better. But there are those things that, like, you're just fighting and, you know, it doesn't work until it gets rectified.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: It's just about thinking about the space three dimensionally. And you'd think other folks in the design team are doing that, but sometimes, I mean, certainly that's what lighting designers are doing and that's what I think differentiates us from engineers more than anything else is just really thinking about the space three dimensionally.
[00:43:36] Speaker C: Yeah. There's always that tension between form and function, and that's a very typical example.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: Well, I think this has been a spectacular conversation, talking about where we have gone, where we're going, the art of light and the application of lighting design. Julia, I really appreciate you being a part of this. It's been so great knowing you throughout my entire career. And likewise, I can't wait to see where this all goes in the future.
[00:44:07] Speaker C: I know it's a great journey. I'm having a good time. And, you know, we're blessed to be architectural lighting designers and for great architects to be out there. I think we're reaching a point where after many years of struggles where society and architects and owners understand what we do and the value that we bring to the profession. And I think from here on we're going to continue growing and we got literally all the tools that we need.
I don't know where LEDs are going from here on. It's a separate conversation, but that we do have a lot of the paint, brushes, and tools that we need to make architecture great is definitely a solid point.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: More dolly controls.
[00:44:57] Speaker C: More dolly controls.
[00:44:59] Speaker B: That's where we're going. That's where we're going.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: That's the next evolution for everybody in this.
[00:45:04] Speaker C: You know, I've been sitting at restaurants with Avi where he's dimming down like LED tape, you know, for wine racks. It's so beautiful because it dims it all the way down without flickering, you know, and that's when I started to understand that this is why he loves Dally, you know.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:45:21] Speaker C: Sounds good.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: Well, Julio, I always love talking to you as well. Thanks for being on our podcast.
[00:45:28] Speaker C: Yeah, no, thank you. This was fun and I'm honored, so thank you so much.
[00:45:34] Speaker B: 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.
[00:45:50] 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 morelights for your next endeavor.
