Call Yourself a Lighting Designer?

24-05-2009

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Crivvins, but thereÃ¯Â¿Â½s been rowdy behaviour in the quad with those nasty boys from Lighting Design causing trouble with those nice Electrical Engineer chappies. And now the head has got involved and thereÃ¯Â¿Â½ll be detentions for sure.

It seems that Gardner, long-acknowledged to be the main bullyboy in the LD house has been at his name-calling again, and went so far as to call the M&E house lads Ã¯Â¿Â½design-illiterateÃ¯Â¿Â½! I mean - hang on one bally moment! ThatÃ¯Â¿Â½s a bit below the belt, Gardy Ã¯Â¿Â½ and you know how much the truth can hurt!

But now we have a developing situation, as they describe it in the Foreign Office, between Gardner of LD house and Burton of M&E house that can only lead to satchels at 10 paces. BurtonÃ¯Â¿Â½s come back with that old engineersÃ¯Â¿Â½ riposte of lighting designers being Ã¯Â¿Â½soft-skilledÃ¯Â¿Â½. ItÃ¯Â¿Â½s not original Ã¯Â¿Â½ weÃ¯Â¿Â½ve heard it all before. It smacks of spanners and lacks the elan of the designer. ItÃ¯Â¿Â½s no wonder that gentlefolk used to consider engineers as being beneath their class.

Still: it created a ponder in me, as I was working out the circuit loadings of a garden lighting scheme thatÃ¯Â¿Â½s been taking up my time. (note to any engineers reading this Ã¯Â¿Â½ that last sentence contains what we call a Ã¯Â¿Â½subtextÃ¯Â¿Â½) Just when did I consider myself to be a designer? After all, IÃ¯Â¿Â½d got all my certificates by 1975, but when did the penny drop that I was no longer a number-crunching illumination engineer, but had actually passed over into the lighting land of milk and money? Hallelujah.

ThereÃ¯Â¿Â½s an idea that an education in anything at all, provided that you get a bit of paper at the end of it, means that you are gifted and capable enough to get on with .... well, whatever it is thatÃ¯Â¿Â½s written on the certificate. But I beg to differ. A person who holds the Bartlett MSc in Lighting is not a lighting designer, theyÃ¯Â¿Â½re just a person who holds the Bartlett MSc in Lighting. The knowledge is wrapped up in equations and numerical relationships and codes of practice and light meters. But thatÃ¯Â¿Â½s not design.

The bit about being a designer only comes with a full and proper engagement with the world and all its problems, where youÃ¯Â¿Â½re able to take all the stuff that youÃ¯Â¿Â½ve learned and turn it into something greater than the contents of the textbooks that youÃ¯Â¿Â½ve been studying. Maybe thatÃ¯Â¿Â½s the Ã¯Â¿Â½soft-skilledÃ¯Â¿Â½ charge that Dave Burton has placed against us Ã¯Â¿Â½ the ability to take hard numbers and translate them into something that is of benefit to humankind.

So: call me Ã¯Â¿Â½soft-skilledÃ¯Â¿Â½ if you like. IÃ¯Â¿Â½ll take that as a compliment Ã¯Â¿Â½ and IÃ¯Â¿Â½ll see you later in the promised land.