Project Report –
Working with translucent materials

Private House - Studland

For the past twenty years or so, the design philosophy for effective lighting has been to project light at objects and rely on the quality of highlighting that results as a consequence of that. It works on stage and screen, so why not in real life.
Well, up to a point.

The problem with high contrast lighting designs (as we have come to call them) is that they look great in promotional photographs, but often fail as functioning installations because the light is in the wrong place – it lights the wrong things – it doesn’t light the right things.

I’ll give you an example: high contrast lighting in a living room will concentrate its efforts on the things in the room that the designer or client feels ought to be seen; the expensive artworks, the bits and bobs of interior architecture, the pot plant. But when I sit in my living room, I want to be able to read the newspaper, do a crossword, find the TV remote, and so on. All of these things happen outside of the ‘high contrast’ envelope.

Email John Bullock