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.
Welcome to the Lighting Matters podcast. We're so happy that you've decided to join us today, and we're really expecting you to get a lot of value out of this conversation.
I am Lisa Reed with Reed Burkitt lighting design in St. Louis.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: And I'm Avi Moore with Moore Lights in Chicago. And we have the extreme privilege.
Is that the right word to use? We are privileged today to have our guest with us today, Margaret Kavanaugh, the managing director for Perkins and Wells Chicago. Margaret, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule and joining us.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Oh, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting me to do this, and I'm looking forward to a lively conversation.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah, we, we like to say this is just forget the camera, forget the people, and just enjoy the conversation with, with fun people.
But for those who, who don't know you, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and, and your path to becoming the. The managing director?
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Sure, sure. And, you know, it's a new title. I've only been in this role for about five months, not quite five months, so congratulations. I'm still getting used to this, but I've been an architect in the Chicago area for a long time.
I been here for, I don't know, since, you know, time immemorial. I don't know. It feels like a long time ago, but not that long. But I was at Booth Hansen for a while, and then I worked with a developer client for a long time and learned an awful lot about high rise building construction. And then I went to Studio Gang. So when Jeanne got the commission to design Aqua, she asked me to come help her grow the firm. And so I was there for 20 years.
And while at Studio Gang, I had the opportunity to work across so many different project types, so many different client types, so many lighting concerns. Right. So. And I learned a vast amount about the importance of lighting and how it can support and improve a project.
And so it was never boring, even if sometimes the projects were kind of the same repeat typology, they were different client and different constraints and different opportunities.
So I took all of the experience that I had from Studio Gang, and when Perkins and well approached me last year, it seemed like a really amazing opportunity to join an even larger firm. If Studio gang is about 140 people, Perkins and Wills, 175 in this Chicago studio, and 2,500 people across the world. So it was like taking everything I learned and everything I value about being an architect and practicing in Chicago and bringing it to this established firm that has been around for 90 years and doing amazing projects in healthcare and civic and culture and K12 and workplace interiors and all the other sort of practices and disciplines. So taking, you know, I'm very excited about the opportunity to sort of expect, keep doing this. Right. Because I'm expanding yet once again after, you know, growing slowly through Studio Gang, leapt into this new opportunity. And so this is where I am now.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Well, and you know, there's so many things in that that I think are so fascinating. Right.
I mean, you think about the scale and size of Perkins and Will, and you think about the average lighting studio in the US is in the 20s. I don't know, what do you think?
[00:03:53] Speaker B: That's probably a large average is probably wrong.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Average is probably like 10, five or six.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: I mean, Lisa, you're what, 25 now?
[00:04:02] Speaker B: We're, we're just under 20. Yeah, 20, 18, 19.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: We're five. I think HLB would be probably the biggest firm.
It's, it's amazing to think about that scale.
I couldn't even imagine, you know, Lisa and I have talked a lot about, I mean, that we're going down a little path here, but, you know, just cash flow management in a scale like that, just, you know, in our industry.
Wow, I can't imagine.
[00:04:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: You need a lot of projects, is that what you're saying?
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Yeah, you need a lot of projects to support all of this. And it sort of feeds on itself. Right. I think most of the architecture firms in the country are 10 or fewer.
So you have most of 75% of them are somewhere in that, say 10, 15, 20. And then you have this little teeny sliver that. Are these mega firms?
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Exactly.
So that's where my mind went to when you were giving your introduction. And so at things like AIA conferences or whenever you're getting support, is most of the education directed toward smaller, smaller firms? Or how does that, how does that work? How do you, how do you relate? How do you, how do you expand? And you're still figuring that out in your role.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: But yeah, my joke recently has been that instead of an fire hose of information that is on full tilt, you know, coming at me, I've slight control of the volume of it. You know, I can kind of Dial it up, dial it down. But in terms of. And is your question more about supporting staff and growing staff professionally, or is that what you're sort of asking about?
[00:05:44] Speaker B: I don't know. I guess it is sort of a fire hose, because it's all of those things. Let me see if I can refine my question a little bit. But who are your peers and where do you learn how to do this at this scale?
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Peer firms, there are other large firms. Right. And the competitors we come up against, you know, sometimes we compete against those that are in the Chicago area that are also, you know, well known, have been around for decades.
But then in terms of how we learn how to do this, I think a lot of it is sort of doing it once, and then you learn from it and you do it again. And so for me, particularly here I'm joined a firm that is very well established, very good at what they do, and I'm trying to understand how they go after proposals, how we staff a job, how we support the teams, how we educate the young architects in the office, how we create a culture. You know, if we're part of 2500, but we have our own individual culture.
How has Perkins and Will done this so well for so long to support this group?
How do we find work?
How do RFPs come to us? Do we seek them out? You know, it's a yes. And so it's.
All of those things are somewhat familiar. Those are all things that a smaller firm might be doing. Like, architects have to find work, you have to build a team, you have to support a team. Then there is kind of a process of concept schematic design, dd you know, those things are kind of familiar, but the scale at which it happens is bigger and broader at different firms. And then they can be more unique in terms of the healthcare practice sort of follows this sort of trajectory, or The K through 12 practice might follow a different trajectory for finding work and maintaining clients and building relationships. And a lot of it is building relationships with clients and then maintaining those relationships over decades. You know, that's one of the things I'm finding that is so interesting and really enriching. You know, there are clients that have been Perkins and Will friends for decades.
Studio Gang just isn't old enough for that yet. It'll get there, right?
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Exactly.
Wow. Well, so I think to the topic of the podcast, because I think there's a lot there too. And that's is just. You were talking a little bit before we joined in a little bit in your introduction about how Impactful lighting has been for your projects and can be.
Where does that come from?
Where does light matter?
Do you have a storyline or something that.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: When did you first notice lighting?
[00:08:44] Speaker C: When did I first notice.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: This is why we have such great partner on this.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: I don't know when I first, first noticed. I'm going back to some of my earliest projects in, in Chicago.
You know, actually I'll go back further. My first job, I was the only employee of a sole practitioner. So it's basically two of us. Unless his wife came in to help and she wrote specs sometimes.
And I think I was learning there was a residential project and I was learning understanding what switching was, how, how to do switching diagrams, how to control lighting. I grew up in a really old house. When my parents bought the house, it had.
Some of the rooms still had pull chains and they had. What's it called, post and tube, you know, knob and tubes and things.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Are those old school buttons that you can still buy?
[00:09:44] Speaker C: So it's in a glass fuses that you would put into the panel? You know, so I didn't know. And it still had the gas fixtures. Some of them had been converted to electric, but they still had the gas lines in the walls. Right. So that was my experience with residential lighting, was sort of making do and using lamps everywhere. Right. So this first project I was working with Ted and learning, oh, there's lighting control. You can have more. I mean, I know what down lights are, right. And track lights and all that kind of stuff. But this is my first experience figuring out how to place them, thinking about where it should go so that it's not casting a shadow on your face when you're looking at the bathroom mirror. You know, things like that and how you could control them from two rooms, two sides of a room. I was like, you know, so I think that was where I first started to understand how you can use lighting to enhance and manipulate and improve the flexibility, improve the lighting quality. And I started to understand more about color, temperature.
You know, it was well before we thought about warm dimming and light dimming and things like that. We were still using incandescent lights. It might have been before par lamps, I don't know, but it was, you know, it was, it was still, you know, and so you learn a little bit, like I said before, you learn one thing and you carry that information to the next project, to the next, this sort of thing. You started with understanding switching and lighting and the benefits of it. So then carry it forward, you know, number of years and Working on other residential projects, which is a lot of what I did when I was younger or earlier in my career. At Booth Hanson, I worked on residential projects. At LR Development, I worked on residential projects. And I think those give you a really amazing lens around which to think about how you can enhance, literally enhance someone's features on a very small, very personal scale, and how you can manipulate and control the lighting and the mood and the atmosphere. So then you apply that to much larger projects and much larger museums, to academic settings, into other settings, and so build on all of that information over years.
So sort of a slow acquisition of lighting knowledge, and it becomes more sophisticated along the way.
You know, it's very important to me, and Avi knows this. I don't like seeing the light source in a lot of the projects. I wanted it to just sort of glow. I love up lighting, right. So, you know, how can you make a project glow without seeing that led?
How do you make it just feel like it is. You know, that's much harder than just doing a downlight in the ceiling. Right. So then that's where the lighting designer comes in, because then they can really expand beyond what you think, you know? You know, I don't know what I don't know. In many, many, many ways.
And working with a lighting designer really is important to a project.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: At what point do you think it triggered in your projects that you were like, well, this has gotten to a point where I need an independent expert. Right. I'm sure there was a point where the reps were helpful and the engineer was good and it was fine. But was there a project in particular or a point in time where you just got to like, yeah, I'm not dealing with this anymore. Right. Like, I need to have somebody that's a design partner.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: I'm trying to think which project where we were doing some of that. Certainly at Studio Gang, it became much. I was much more.
I honestly don't know that I really worked with a lighting designer much more before I went to Studio Gang. So it would have been just sort of guessing. And the lighting rep, like you just said, oh, that's why it looks kind of spotty on the wall. Yeah, it's not so good. Okay, next time maybe I'll do better.
So you got some light scallops there.
I think when we started working on the Media Production center, that was an early project that was all about making film and how to teach students how to make film. And so the sort of concept of the project was using the building as a tool for making film and use it as a tool to teach students without them quite perhaps recognizing that they were thinking, learning about a deep focus shot because there was light at the end of the corridor or a frame in frame shot kind of like, you know, Hitchcock might have used, you know, so it was.
And then using the colored glass of the SMPTE diagram on the exterior of the building. Right. Which really has this amazing sort of cathedral like quality depending on what the sun is doing. And as it's. It's very temporal, you know, it moves and changes over the day and over the year. And that was a really. That was just using sunlight. Right. And colored glass. But the. You can still do that, you know, in. With artificial lighting as well. And so it was very interesting to think about how we could do that in this one particular building and then, and then build on that. So that was an early, early experience.
So.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: So how was that experience or what was.
What was easier about working with a lighting designer or what was challenging? What do you, what do you wish you knew about working with a lighting designer?
[00:15:27] Speaker C: I don't think I ever know.
I don't know that it was challenging and I don't remember.
I think I don't know what they. I don't know. Right. And so I am always willing to ask questions and willing to ask just sort of, well, what about this? What about that? Can we try this?
And so I think it would be more advice of be willing to ask questions. You know, don't be afraid to let people know. You don't, you don't know everything.
It was a good relationship with the client. That project was exciting because the client was so invested in building this building and creating a new pedagogy for the school around where all the students could learn on one directing stage. And so they had lighting design students, theater lighting, you know, filmmaking lighting, big lighting rig that came down and super flat floor so the cameras could roll across it. And then space where the students could sit to watch the directing students work or what. So they could all learn from one another in one space. And this whole building was designed that one studio.
It was an amazing experience because everyone was focused on that and it was just, it was a really great, great project.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: I love that thinking back to those, you know, those projects where everyone is doing, doing their, their role and it's working really well and everyone's working well together. Those are, those are always good memories.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's that singular goal success for this thing. And I think that's. That, that's where like the challenging of the residential high rises and things kind of become so challenging because the goal is profit, right? I mean, to be honest, right. The goal is. The goal is profit. So. And how do we get this feel of millions of dollars for pennies, right? It's. It's that feeling of this versus that. Whereas, like a project like that media center, it's.
It's about the education, it's about the, the students. It's about that singular piece. How do we do that, right. How do we make that thing happen?
And it becomes so challenging, right. For all of us because it's a different kind of client, different kind of project. And ultimately, in the singular focus of light, there's a totally different approach to those kinds of projects. Right.
[00:18:01] Speaker C: But they also don't have to be expensive. I mean, this was not an, you know, this was on time and under budget, and it was a lot of the. They were fluorescent light tubes or whatever was between fluorescent and led. You know, it was, you know, it was not. It was just creative use of lighting, which maybe developers could take a lesson from that, that it doesn't have to be expensive to still have high quality impact.
And you can do you pick one.
If you're going to try and light the exterior of a high rise or something, you pick one way or you pick one key detail to feature. You don't have to do it all.
It's like put on too much jewelry. You got to take off a piece of.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: I was just talking to one of our designers this morning about story too, and design and finding that thread. I think maybe this story is profit, but maybe there's another story that you can get that everyone can rally behind and rally around. And it gives a hook too, to the client. It makes them want to keep the thing because they understand the reason, the why, and whether that, you know, whether that why it could be profit. There are times where maybe that really is a story that people can rally around and we want to make this happen. Or maybe it is for the students or.
I think design is story.
[00:19:30] Speaker C: Yeah, it is about storytelling. I mean, I was working on another project at another time, and it was set in the woods, largely sort of in a forest and multiple buildings. And the goal with the lighting was to make each of the buildings feel a little bit like a lantern, so you could kind of see it through, you know, so it. It had a. And it would be often used and it's so needed. So there was a story there around softly glowing different kinds of light, you know, layers of light. You know, so it was. And it was very easy for the, the client group to sort of hook onto that and get a picture around their head of what that could be.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Well, and that kind of reminds me of the budget challenges, but also the design narrative that we worked together on at Spelman with the art center there. And a conversation that we had a lot about, like, how do we create that glow? And this building has solar shades on it. And there was a whole conversation of, well, we're over budget, but we want these things to be highlighted. You know, it's part of the story of this building. It's part of the shape of.
It's a key element.
Do we need to spend the money on lighting it? And what was neat was we turned on every light in the building virtually and rendered the building, and then we lit the fins virtually.
And what we discovered in the process was this is wasted money. The building glows. You know, the students, this is an art center. They're going to be in the building at night. And let's remember, you know, December, January, February, February, at 3 o' clock in the afternoon, the lights are going to be on. Right? And it was that discovery and conversation of, well, yeah, this, this makes sense, this works that we were able to, you know, peel the onion away, really, and, and kind of look at how to light that space.
[00:21:33] Speaker C: Yeah, no, and it worked out really well. I don't know if you've seen the. Seen it at night, but the photo, I haven't seen it in person at night, but it looks great.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: We have a really cool photo that I can send you later of the rendering. And then I stood exactly the same spot and took a photo.
And it looks exactly the same.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: I mean, is it live or is it Memorex?
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like. And honestly, like, I do the same thing with writers Theater. I remember bringing a rendering in of writers theater. And this is 10 plus years ago and kind of just kind of putting it on the table and Michael and Jeannie kind of walk into the room are like, yeah, that's what we want. Okay, are we done?
You know, and what's cool is that's what it looks like now, right? Like that, that the, the connection that we can play and the, and the story that we can have.
Because ultimately we're visual people, right? Like, we want to see that visual.
And I, I think the other thing that has been really powerful is showing the, the light fixture, right? Like, it still comes back to a technology. It still comes back to a thing.
So being Able to, in that design phase, take that rendering with a physical sample and allow our brains to connect that physical thing to the rendered element.
Allows us to get to that last piece, which is the actual thing. Right. And have that storyline.
So I thought that was cool. The other thing that I love telling the story on with Spellman was, remember an old time up in the greenhouse at Studio Gang and the general contractor saying, you're never going to get light fixtures you want. It's going to be overpriced from day one. There's going to be a problem. We're going to deal with it every part of this project.
Every time a budget came out, the light fixtures were the same price. We told the team the lights were going to be.
It, like never.
It was the only thing. It was a. It was a tough time through Covid.
Like there's. There's a whole story about that project, but, you know, we really manage that. And I think, Margaret, going back to your previous point, it doesn't have to be expensive.
You know, this conversation of lighting designers are expensive. They only specify expensive things.
You know, I don't think that's the right story. And maybe, Margaret, you could talk a little bit more to that.
[00:24:10] Speaker C: Yeah, no, and it's. And in fact, I think aren't there three or four fixture types that we. We rationalized it down to just a couple of fixture types. Most of them are suspended. Some of them are up light and down light. Some of them are just uplight. But the other thing that's interesting about it, you can see from the exterior of the building is they're all oriented the same direction, and that wasn't. And they're all at like four foot, two and a half inch dimension or something crazy. I don't remember exactly how we arrived at that.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: All it's entirely grid. There is a grid in the building and the lights are on the grid, period.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: And so it's. Some projects, it becomes like a.
Could become a. Like a graphic thing. But because they're all oriented the same way and you can stand outside and you can see all three floors, you can see them. It just sort of becomes more of a.
A texture and it works really well. And it's generally aligned with the mullions where we can. I mean, it was, you know, it. Everything in that building aligns. Yeah, that's good design.
It is good design, but that's also part of it. That's why it doesn't have to be an expensive light fixture, because you. You set an intention. You have a Concept. You follow it through. And what I tell people all the time is it just has to look organized. Right. Depending on what it is. And somebody was, like, looking at, you know, supply grills, return grills, cables, outlets. I'm like, yeah, well, if you just. They're like, oh, there's this. There's so much stuff on this wall. It's like, just organize it, make it look intentional, and then it doesn't. It doesn't matter anymore. Right. And so that's why you can. You can use inexpensive light fixtures here and there or economical light fixtures. Right. They do the job that they need to do without a lot of bells and whistles so that you can use that bell and whistle somewhere else.
Just. Right, Exactly. Organized.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah. It's that whole management of the whole budget. I think we too often kind of cower in our corners versus what's the total budget. There's a project I'm working on right now saying that the light poles should be in the civilization project. I said, well, yes, the civil engineer has to deal with the hole in the ground. The structural engineer has to deal with the steel and the concrete. But the pole and the light that defines those two things are gonna be supplied by the electrical contractor.
They will never look in that civil set for a pole and for a light fixture.
The. The. The budget has to align with those three different parties coming together. And. Yeah, could we put it on the building? Sweet. We can reduce the budget here, reduce the budget there. But that. But that requires structural steel increases because you got all this, you know, like, it's. It's very conversational on all of these elements. And I feel like there's still this.
I'm doing the lighting, I'm doing the walls, I'm doing the windows. And it doesn't.
It doesn't create an organized delivery method, and it doesn't benefit anybody. And it creates a mess.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: I mean. And that's just on the design side. I mean, another example of that that we're dealing with right now, Is it a perimeter light fixture that builds. Makes its own cove, or is it an architectural cove with a lighting cove product in it?
[00:27:38] Speaker C: Right.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: And it just shifts the budget. Is that all in the lighting budget, or is that in the architectural budget?
But. But all of that is on the construction side. And then. And then you get clients. If you want to start talking about maintenance and what's going to make the most sense long term operating this building, a lot of times you get the sort of glazed overlook. Like, well, that's. That's A different bucket of money. That's not, you know, operational isn't our concern because we're capital. And so it's all.
When I start thinking in terms of that, I just start thinking about things holistically.
I tend to just frustrate myself. I don't know, how do we fix it?
[00:28:25] Speaker C: Yeah, it is hard because the favorite one is always, well, put it in the FF&E budget or take it out of the FF&E budget or where are the drapes? Oh, well, they're in the FF and E budget. Well, do you know how expensive drapes are?
You don't have an FF&E budget anymore, but, yeah, no, it takes a lot of coordination and communication. Good light fixture schedules, good diagram and good lighting making sure. Like Avi saying, get the information in the place it needs to be. I remember we spend so much time on interior elevations making sure you're showing where all the switches go. And most of the time, the subcontractors are not going to be looking at the interior elevations. And you've got to get somebody to get them together.
And so you need both the lighting plan, the power plan, and the interior elevations.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: I was thinking about that when you were talking about the grills and the fire alarms and the switches and.
[00:29:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Are they going to look at them?
[00:29:25] Speaker A: And not to mention the theater consultants drawings, too, because nobody looks at those until they're like, wait, how big of a conduit do you need to that box? And how deep is that box?
Whoa. Oh, yeah. Okay.
Yeah, we already poured all the concrete, so that's not gonna work.
[00:29:46] Speaker C: It's all gonna be surface mounted.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: It's all surface mounted. Here we go.
[00:29:50] Speaker C: Well, then you have to make that into a feature. Right. And you just make sure the conduit is beautiful.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Now you're thinking like an artist. That's totally an artist perspective.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: So I would assume that not every single project or customer comes to you and says, yeah, you need to make sure there's a lighting designer. But I'm guessing there's quite a few projects where you.
Where, if it's not specifically asked, you'll push back. Or. Or. Or really say you need one. How. How do you have that conversation? How do you say this is a. This is something we need help with?
[00:30:27] Speaker C: I think you come at it in terms of thinking about how it can, you know, talk about how it can improve the space. It can improve the functionality of the space depending on whether it's a, you know, more personal residential space or a more academic or institutional space. That A lighting designer can offer opportunities to really, you know, okay, yes, you can increase the flexibility of it, but then also change the atmosphere of the space from day to night to midday, you know, whatever. You can. You can evoke something different. So maybe they can host dinners there, and then you can have fundraising dinners in this space that you previously thought was just a rehearsal space, you know, and so they're like, oh, you know, so it's. It's explaining to them the making. Do more with less. Right? Maybe you can use more spaces in more ways and build fewer spaces. You know, that can be as one. One topic.
You can make people look better. You can make the space look better. You know, there are all of these things that refine it, elevate it and improve it in sometimes more subtle ways than they might be familiar with. And so you can sort of walk them through, through those opportunities. But you can use imagery and say, we have this opportunity here, like, see this lighting in this space that, you know, somebody else did. We can do that here. And then they go, oh, okay, I get it. So there's. It's usually a conversation using, you know, these are the benefits of. Because of xyz, here's some imagery and it is not.
And it can save money, right? Depending on. On how it's done, you can have more effective switching lighting. It can be more sustainable, more efficient. You know, there are a lot of different pros to it. I don't remember too many arguments where they're like, now we don't need a lighting designer. Most of these projects were, like, comprehensive enough that lighting design was understood.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: I always like to ask that question. I like that we ask that question because that tells us what you need from us to help sell lighting design as a. As a part of the project. Because a lot of times you're out there, you know, before us, trying to.
You're putting together the team, the project team, and you're. You're convincing the client to buy in. So the, the cost one is I have a case study where the concepts for this space were like, it was like from the Jetsons or something. So there were these light fixtures that looked like UFOs, because we all know what UFOs look like anyway. Light fixtures that look like UFOs, and they were on the concept boards and they were, I want to say, around $5,000 each.
And we looked at that product and it didn't provide any light. So we were going to have to supplement to actually provide the office lighting in this case.
And we were able as the lighting designers on the job, we were able to find another just a spun fixture that did the job, modified the size of it because we had that relationship with the manufacturer to talk to them about, okay, we need this fixture, but we need it bigger.
And they were $800 each instead of $5,000 each. And they provided all the light we needed and it saved the project $250,000.
It was just a little tenant fit out job. I mean, I think our fee was, you know, I don't know, 25,010th of that.
[00:33:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I know.
It's that one little thing that can flip the switch.
Yes.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and I think that there's the value too. I don't know if, you know, in the last last couple of years, Writers Theater got hit with lightning and they lost an amp and, and Then random light LEDs in long strips of light just started failing. And there's lots of surge protection around the building and all kinds of things. And in the end, you know, they were getting all kinds of crazy quotes. They reached out to us and said, hey, what the heck?
And we were able to show them how to replace the LEDs because everything we put in there had replaceable parts.
And the manufacturer sold them the parts directly because, you know, six years later, act of God kind of thing.
But they didn't have to rip out a ceiling, they didn't have to modify anything. And I can proudly say today that the photos we took 10, 12 years ago still looks the same.
Right. Like that.
Lisa and I have talked about how cool it is that the AIA does a 10 year award or 25 year award, right? You go back to a project, take photos again and talk about it. In the lighting industry, we really don't have anything like that.
And it's so surprising to me because if something's maintainable and you stay involved in it and you support it and help them, I mean, we don't change lights for years. There are schools in the Chicagoland area that are still running off 1950s metal boxes up in their ceilings. Maybe they've thrown some LEDs at them, not UL listed. So there's a whole separate conversation there.
But you know, this is a long term element in a building, right?
So I think there's the things like you're talking about, Lisa, and the maintenance conversation.
Margaret, we've talked on this podcast a lot about this idea that there are four primary visual designers on projects.
Architects, landscape architects, interior architects, interior designers, and lighting designers.
Does that, does that ring with you? Is there something we're missing there, or.
[00:36:35] Speaker C: You think there should be more, you think there should be less? Or are you one asking if lighting designers, because it's light and it's more ephemeral, is that part of the visual? I mean, is that.
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I think starting there.
Are we over elevating ourselves by saying, okay, we're this important to the project, just like an architect or an interior designer?
[00:37:01] Speaker C: No, I don't think it's over elevating it. I mean, I was thinking about one of your other questions, which was favorite illuminated space. And I was trying to think about why some spaces stick with you.
And it's often because of the quality of light.
And that doesn't just happen.
It's not a coincidence.
A bunch of those faces that I think are so amazing, they are well lit. I mean, they're beautifully designed. And so. And it is an opportunity. It's a missed opportunity if the lighting designer isn't part of the larger conversation.
And it has to start. I think sometimes there have been projects where the lighting designers brought in at DD or something. All right, we'll figure out the lighting. It's like those concepts start at the beginning, right? And you may not be involved in every meeting, maybe at the start, but there's still a concept, a kickoff, and that's part of that.
The project where we were using a lantern as an idea, that started at concept. Right. And I think it's very valuable for the entire team to be working together early and often.
Right. So to have all of those visual people have the structural engineer. I think the structural engineer has a visual component to it.
You know, I think everybody does to some extent. You know, there should be. Right. It's. It's. We're all building this together. And so if everybody can be around the table, the proverbial table, early on, getting around the same story, getting around the same concept, then you can build it together. And that was part of what the Media Production center was. Everyone early on had. We came together around this idea. Nobody ever done a Media Production center before and, you know, figured it all out together.
But it's. It's essential that the team is in.
In sync with one another.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Well, it's interesting to say that because the. The ideas kind of come from the idea of daylight and electric light.
[00:39:12] Speaker C: And.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: And if you take one thing from our conversation, hopefully you will remove the statement of artificial lighting from your vocabulary, because there's nothing artificial about it.
It's not AI It's. It's electric.
But that balancing of daylight and Electric light and how that plays with glass and the mechanical system.
There's a new, there's a new recommended practice. Newer.
I think there's an update coming in the next few months from the eliminating engineering society. Talking about our physical modifications like, you know Lisa, you probably can say the word, I'm like stumbling a little bit. But how we can psychologically change human interactions in spaces based on light, right? This circadian rhythm is some language that's been taught. There's all these other buzzwords out there but ultimately this is a standard talking about quantity of light, color of light things.
And when you think about it, and I heard a presentation on this, they were really talking about how so far lead the way this presenter was talking is lead came around.
We started talking about glass and mechanical systems and once you figured out those two things, LEED was pretty much taken care of and then you dealt with everything else.
But what this standard starts to bring around is well, maybe you should have a little bit clear glass which would mean you'd spend a little bit more money on mechanical system but you will have healthier people inside of your building. And I think this is really particular through K through 12 spaces.
This standard does not talk about night shift workers and things like that, right. This is a, I believe it's eight to five operable interior spaces.
But you need to bring that lighting designer in. Right. So now you're talking about daylight and, and kind of making a triangle of managing that energy. Right?
Clear glass, more mechanical load. But healthier people. But healthier people, more productivity, higher test scores. Right. Like this circle that has to be managed.
But then there's also scenarios where like you have hallways that go between daylight and non daylight spaces. We were talking to a client recently about that's a tunnel.
You just created a tunnel. There's zero foot candles coming in via daylight on, at, at 3 o' clock in the afternoon in July and nobody's going to walk, want to walk into that dark space. So we just, we have to put more light there. Like love that there's all this daylight. This is awesome. It's gonna be all this daylight. It's gonna be great.
But that other area is a big problem. And, and this project is very much like you're talking about. It's 50% DD. It's not changing. This is the way it is.
[00:42:21] Speaker C: And are they trying to duplicate the quantity of light of daylight coming into this tunnel so that you don't feel like a shift or they're just trying to adequately, you know, keep it from feeling like a tunnel. Like, I don't know if they. Because one's a bigger lift than the other.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's very much a.
It's a. It's a long hallway and people are going to have to walk through it.
So it's having that. I don't know if you've ever experienced this where you have that, like, shadow line and it's so different, and you're, like, afraid you're going to trip over something.
[00:42:58] Speaker C: All the time, going from, we're in the Wrigley Building.
If you're going, especially if you're driving from, like, out on Rush or Wabash or whatever, and you go under Lower Michigan or. I mean, it's just like this jarring light to dark contrast. It makes you feel like I can't move.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Right. So imagine like walking in a building with a suitcase, and you're like. And you've never been in this space before.
Like, wait, I'm supposed to go down that dark thing.
But it's light here. So, you know, the answer to your question is, should it feel the same?
I think that's a design question. And I would say no, because that's way too much energy.
But it needs to feel like a transition that's smooth and not shocking.
And you're only going to have that issue at certain times of the year.
And we have technology that allows us to make that happen seamlessly. Imagine somebody trying to maintain something like that.
We have software to do those things.
But understanding that daylight.
This is another thing that I don't know if you've experienced, and Lisa, you've experienced, but the solar team on the job is doing all the math associated with it.
But I've been asking on this project for two and a half years, what does it look like at the top of the escalator?
Nobody can answer the question. So for two solstices, two equinoxes, the top of the escalator. Can I see down the escalator?
Or when I come up, am I going to be able to see the top?
You know, where it transitions?
Am I going to be able to see that?
And then you get into ADA and just impairment. Right. Like, there's so many elements that are fundamental in a conversation for everybody. And it's not just this silo that I think is just so important.
Sorry, I'm going down a path here. But I just.
It's just so interconnected, like you said. Margaret.
[00:45:15] Speaker C: No, it's interesting. And thinking back to what you were saying about circadian Rhythm and biophilia. I was working on a hospital design where color matters in terms of people's impression of seeing themselves in a mirror, but also not being reminded of human function and things like that. So color and how the patient spaces felt versus the waiting spaces versus it was a whole discussion about making people feel comfortable because they're not feeling well in the first place. This was a cancer center. Not feeling well in the first place. So then it was extra important to make sure that the lighting is really good so that they can feel better about being where they are.
I've learned an awful lot about.
I don't know that I've learned a lot. I've learned about this. And it's also interesting thinking About K through 12 and connection to daylight, being able to go, you know, right outside and not be inside and being connected to seeing the trees and the light and dappled light coming through the trees while you're in the classroom. You know that that is amazing. And you think about all these. I remember the school that I went to. They've now, because it had all this heat. It was built in the 40s or 50s, I don't know, had huge panes of glass. My high school. And they've now put, you know, fake stucco in, made the window smaller. And I think you can only see out if you're at your desk and like, put your head down and you know, stuff like that. But anyway, yeah, it's important.
It's the full cycle of day to night and everything. But.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: And it is all tied together. There are some. Some of my favorite studies about test scores. Avi, you said it earlier. Improving with access to daylight.
Retail stores sell more in daylit spaces. That's why you'll see skylights in a, you know, Walmart or something.
[00:47:15] Speaker C: But what about restaurants? Like, do they sell more when it is like feeling like it's a cozy pub or.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: I mean, so we. We will have coming up in a few episodes, Rob Katz, one of the owners of Boca Group.
And we. He has shared with me the restaurants that have lighting controls have higher liquor sales than the restaurants that have wall box dimmers. And it. And it's so. And I save that. I don't know how many times I've said this on the podcast. I repeat it almost all the time because I'm obsessed with this idea.
But watch next time you're in a restaurant and you notice the lights change, what everybody does do they start to leave is they look at their watch theater tickets, babysitters realizing what time it is.
Nobody loves this. But a restaurant is a casino and a theater in one, you want the same meal every time. The experience, the ambiance, the feeling, hopefully the same conversations, maybe new conversations, but you bring people for that conversation.
And then it's a casino. The, the, the restaurateur makes money on the alcohol, dessert, appetizer, spending more money. If you're sitting there ordering more and make more money, let's, you know, it's. McDonald's is a different situation than a Boca restaurant or a.
You know, I can't think of another group that off the top of my head, but there's direct correlation and, and we've even started to include white tuning. So when you have a space that has daylight coming in, making it feel like that daylight in the restaurant, but not blue, because it's never appropriate for a non McDonald's or Wendy's or Burger King or whatever.
But then as the night goes on, you get into that candlelight warmth and it just happens naturally. Right. We're not asking restaurateurs and managing staff to go and push buttons.
Actually, most of our restaurateurs believe that the staff should manage when to trigger something.
Liveliness of the room, cloudy day, whatever may happen, but it's a button press to get to that next step as opposed to automation automatically changing to early evening or late evening or whatever.
But yeah, there's a direct correlation to all these things. And, you know, we're where.
I don't know where the challenge, I wonder, is just getting the school districts, getting the restaurateurs to really kind of get to that level, to understand, well, there's an opportunity here to be more profitable. There's an opportunity to be a school district that people want to be in. Right?
People want to be in the neutral district because of New Trier. I don't know if it's about their lighting per se. It's actually not that great.
But, you know, there are elements to these districts, maybe outside of that, like nutrition area, that they want to draw people in. How do you do that?
[00:50:47] Speaker C: Perkins and Will. One of the first map projects that put them on the map was the Crow Island Elementary School, which is in Winnetka, 1935.
We are just now finishing a renovation in addition to that same building. It'll be opening for school in a month or so.
And so it's so exciting to me. And one of the important things about it, and why it was so seminal at the time, Avi, was that each classroom had its own door to a little garden play area. So every, every classroom has its own private. And all of the workstations and countertops and things were at child height. It was designed with the scale of the child in mind. And then all of the. So each one has copious daylight instead of being long double loaded corridors. It's basically a single loade corridor with these lovely little rooms off of it. And so it's so exciting that we have now been able to, you know, designed it first and now are, you know, reinventing and augmenting it, you know, 90 years later.
[00:51:59] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:52:00] Speaker C: Pretty spectacular.
[00:52:01] Speaker B: You mentioned decades long clients, but. That's right, yeah. Century long client.
[00:52:06] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And there have been other, you know, projects in the Winnetka and New Trier system as well. I think the first New Trier High School was designed by Dwight Perkins, which is the father of Larry Perkins.
But anyway, it was. So it's, it's. Yes. Long, long standing relationships and clients understand the benefit of building on what works and what they have and, and improving upon it and you know, adding to it.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: Well, I have to go check it out. I mean I'm in. Well met. So you know, when I come New Trier, sure. But you know that Winneca, they got their own electricity. It's weird up there.
It's like five blocks that way. Anyway, sorry.
[00:52:55] Speaker B: So Margaret told us before we started recording.
Well, let me back up. We were talking about, you know, disciplines being sort of isolated and how much better it is when we all work together.
And you told us before we started working that recording that if you weren't working as an architect, you might like to be a lighting designer or an acoustical designer.
So I think that's great that you have that. I mean that's what helps keep. Helps bring the disciplines together and not have us working in isolation. But I just wanted to.
I feel like, you know, when you're talking about the importance of lighting design, I feel like we're cheating because we have someone who loves lighting design and that's amazing.
So I don't know if you want to talk any more about that, but.
[00:53:44] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I think it's fascinating thinking about how you can say you have a deck of cards that you can play to tune the acoustics of a space or tune the lighting of a space.
There are different levers you can pull to change it. And I think that there's something very interesting about the.
So the subtlety with which you can do that.
And you know, I was working on a project where we had the opportunity to do warm dimming and it was going to be. It's a, you know, it's a residential project. Very intimate spaces and so warm dimming with these LEDs, I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is great, because otherwise it gets kind of grayed out. And that, that does have a, you know, there's a financial impact to doing that, but it was important to the project and important to the client. And so it's, that's one of those special levers that you can pull once in a while. And those kinds of projects are few and far between, but very, very special when you get to do them. And so working with a lighting designer to understand even what that meant, because I hadn't really done it on a project before, is like, oh, this is really cool. So now I go into a project, I'm like, are we going to do warm dimming?
Are you using a Crestron system?
But that was a residential project that suited that project.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[00:55:06] Speaker A: And what's good to know now is for the most part, right, we don't sell this stuff. We are designers, but for the most part, we're seeing that warm dim is the same cost as static white, and we're seeing that white tuning. So the ability to decide when that happens, as opposed to telling somebody, as opposed to buying a product. And as you dim it, it does a thing.
And you can't modify that. With white tuning, you could decide when and how and what happens as it dims. Maybe you don't want it.
[00:55:43] Speaker B: It could be warm, bright. It could be bright and warm, or dim and cool if you wanted it to.
[00:55:49] Speaker A: And we're finding that is pennies on the dollar. Yeah, it's such an impact, Such an impact. And it just takes a moment of conversation, a moment of thought and honestly, showing somebody. Right. I just get back to, I think far too often when it comes to light, people stare at numbers.
They stare at foot candle maps and they stare at budgets, but they have no idea what either one of those two things mean. You, you, you don't know the, the quality, right? And maybe the quality doesn't matter, right? We need the light to do this. Right. We were talking about that with, with Spellman. We need a linear fixture. There are 10 different people who made that stuff.
Rock and roll. I'm sure all 10 of those manufacturers would say, well, ours is better than this.
Great. Show us the numbers, because it all produces the same light level.
But that, that little bit of extra with white tuning, I mean, it's funny today, if we were to do Spelman, all Over again, we'd fight for white tuning. There's so much daylight that it begs for it.
But this pre Covid. I mean, that's just.
The world has changed, right. And the technology is changing so fast.
[00:57:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
No. And understanding, you know, for a long time. And maybe it's been tempered.
It's like. Which led. And then they had like the slightly different color temperatures, even within the same Kelvin range. It was like they. You know. But I think with all the white dimming and the warm dimming and everything, you white tuning, you can modulate that, right?
[00:57:38] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:57:39] Speaker C: Yeah. I love thinking about different kinds of details. I mentioned that I like lighting where you don't really see the source.
We were working on a project where. With the lighting designer. Wasn't you.
So I'm not blaming you on this one.
Not that I would anyway.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: That's okay.
[00:57:59] Speaker C: It was.
I got frustrated because we were working. It was a very important detail, and the lighting was going to make or break this space, and they just couldn't model it the way we needed it to be modeled to convince everybody in the room that it was going to work. And so I felt like we were going into CA on a wing and a prayer.
And we spent a huge amount of time aiming the light fixtures ultimately because it was.
It was such a guess that, you know, this was going to work and it worked and it is beautiful. But it did not come as easily as it should have.
They could have modeled it differently or we could have mocked it up up differently so that we knew going in with more confidence that it was going to work. And I think that's in some ways that sometimes. Sometimes you go, oh, I didn't know that was going to be that way. That's awesome. And other times you like, this is really important. I need to know in advance. Right?
Yeah.
[00:59:01] Speaker B: It's communication.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: Yeah. It makes me think of two stories. We had one project with Studio Gang. I forget if it was you or somebody else called me and it's like. Like this lighting designer says, this isn't going to work. We believe it is.
Can you. Can you check this? And we got the 3D model and we rendered it real quick. And we're like, yeah, see, this works exactly like you were thinking. It's like, why. Why couldn't they do that?
I don't know.
But there was also.
I talk a lot about Steppenwolf that we did with Smith Gill, and we were like, really wrestling with how to light the heart of the building. If you're not familiar with it. It's a GFRC structure with glass in front, and the panes do all kinds of crazy things. It looks one way during the day, and Gordon really wanted something different at night. And they built a scale model, and we use little fiber optic lights. And we said, well, will this work? And he's like, yeah, that works okay, but that's a fiber optic light on a model like this. How are you going to do it in reality? So then we, like, used theatrical rendering tools, and we used architectural rendering tools, and then we did a mock up and it was all to, like, just get everybody to understand this $150,000 plus equipment cost was going to work. And there's, there's, there was everything you could do possibly to communicate this was going to work, but sometimes the tools just won't do it right. I, I, I'm often saying that black is a great material color that can absorb light.
Glossy black isn't.
And how do you render that?
It's not possible.
Light, light does some unique things.
And, and there's an image that I have during mock up of or during final focus at Steppenwolf where the, the, all the panels come to a point, but they're all kind of different ways, and it comes to a point and we actually focus the light on it where the light wraps around the point.
It doesn't make any sense that it's possible that it doesn't it. But because of the angle, because of the angle of the point coming out the shot, like, everything it did, it was like the most.
And there's no way you were going to render that. Right. There's no way that you could find that.
So to the point of, like, is that going to work?
Sometimes there's a little bit of a wing and a prayer.
We're actually working on another project right now where the architects we're working with are, like, obsessed with the design of what this would look like. And our renderings are all in color because it's a media thing and all that.
And they just lost in the color palette. Like, it's LEDs. Be any color you want.
Is everything else okay? Well, we're not sure. We're lost in the color. It's like, okay, if we keep rendering this, this is going to get very expensive and you're not going to be able to get the effect you want.
So there's got to be a little bit of trust that we can create any color you want.
We just got to roll.
So anyway, I, I think there's a balance, but Again, that's why you need a designer and you need to build that trust. You need to. To develop that. What color is red? Relationship amongst the team and really embrace the team and work together and build that trust.
So we're running out of time, and we've been asking this final question of all of our guests.
What is your favorite illuminated space you've been in or want to be in, and why?
[01:03:15] Speaker C: It's like trying to name my favorite child. You know, you can't have one favorite child. They're all my favorites.
But, you know, as I was thinking and pondering, pondering this, I was thinking that came back to again and again, those places that just make you feel like everything is all right with the world. And it's. That it's being in a sort of a semi wooded area outdoors with light sort of streaming into the space. Sometimes it's softer, sometimes it's more vibrant light. And, you know, if you're in the right place, you can see the translucency of the leaves as the light is coming through the leaves. And it's creating this softness and this sort of quiet space that just has this, you know, evanescence to it. Right. It's ephemeral. It's not permanent. And that just. It's, you know. You know, I can evoke even then that you're feeling the breeze and that it smells good and you're outdoors. And so that kind of space for me is just, you know, it's. It's not electric light, but it is so memorable. Right?
So that is.
And you can find that in different places and different times.
So that would be sort of a favorite place.
And it's many places.
But then if I were thinking, I was also thinking about places that exist that you can be in. Another one is sort of similar to that. I remember one day I was in San Francisco and I was working on a project out there and needed to get away. I went for a long walk, went to Grace Cathedral, which is at the top of one of the hills, I can't remember, Russian Hill, maybe. And I was sitting inside the cathedral, and the organist was playing, and there was just sun streaming through the stained glass.
And so that is an ecclesiastical space. And there was this drama and grandeur to it. But again, it was not electrified light. It was just sunlight coming through. And it has, again, this. This quality of change, you know, and movement to it. And so then thinking of places that I want to go, I want to go to Ronchamp, you know, again, it's more, you know, Those deep windows. You see it in all these photographs and you see the colored squares of light and then there's sort of these beams coming through it. I want to see if it's really like it looks in the photographs. That's one place. And then Tadao Ando's Church of light, which creates light by the absence of physical. That makes this cross at the end of the church, behind the altar, which is actually a void, but the light coming through it makes it look like light and it's just a void. So you're using the architecture and a void to create this cross.
It's really looks like it's spectacular. And I haven't been to Japan yet, so those are. Those are a couple spaces. I think I mentioned before that I think up lighting is really beautiful and you can see that in offices, restaurants, homes. You know, it's done effectively. It creates this amazing quality of lightness and light without looking at the light bulb. Right. And it just, it imbues the space with just a soft quality.
Our Vancouver studio, the Perkins and Wool Vancouver studio has this is in an Arthur Erickson building. And they sort of followed one of the original lighting details that Arthur Erickson deployed, which is casting light up into the concrete grid, structural grid. And it's just beautifully reflected down into the space and the room. It's so even, I guess the word I'm searching for, it's so even and so consistent.
So, yeah, I probably have a lot more if I stop to think about it for too long.
But it's those quality where it feels like it's changing day to day, hour to hour. And that's the beauty of having a lighting designer. They can work with you to do that. So you can make these electrified spaces that do that and you don't even know it's happening. So you have an extra old fashioned.
[01:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[01:07:41] Speaker C: Right.
[01:07:41] Speaker A: I mean, literally you can still get those little things and it'll do whatever you want. Yeah, it's crazy.
Well, Margaret, I can't thank you enough for taking the time today and sharing your thoughts with our audience and with us and we.
Yeah, thank you so much.
[01:08:01] Speaker C: Oh, my pleasure. This was great fun. Can we do it again next week?
[01:08:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:08:06] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Let's do it again.
Let's take another.
[01:08:10] Speaker C: Hear the one from Rob Katz. Is that what you said his name is for the Boca Group? Yeah. I'm going to have to listen to that because I want to hear more about the tricks of the trade of restaurateurs because we know they have many up their sleeves.
[01:08:23] 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 value fun to listen to as we had creating it. Remember to like it and share this content with your friends and colleagues.
[01:08:38] 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. SA.
