How To Design Lightscapes

Can light transform a space into a place? We asked Elettra Bordonaro, the lighting designer who led the three-year research programme Social Lightscapes Workshop Series, created to integrate social and behavioural sciences and lighting design.

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What are the characteristics of a lightscape?

When we talk about lightscapes we are led to think in terms of natural light, in particular when it's about a city or urban spaces. It is rare to connect the term lightscape to the nocturnal urban landscape. It is instead important to think of lightscape also as the result of artificial lighting that can define spaces for urban living and associated activities. As artificial light is something that can be altered and managed by humans, there is the possibility to articulate the scape in different variations, placing in evidence paths and places and defining the space not only based on aesthetic characteristics but also social ones. The lightscape is an extension of the cityscape, just as light is an architectural material but with a great influence on space as an element of transformation.

What is meant by the term social lighting?