Lighting and much more

Martin Klaasen is an award-winning lighting designer, design consultant, lecturer and resource speaker with over three decades of experience in the lighting industry. He has to his credit major international projects such as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Shangri-la Hotels in Singapore, China and Mumbai, the Grand Hyatt in Goa and the Bund in Shanghai. He is also the author of Light Talk, a book that has achieved a lot of peer appreciation.
Martin was recently in the City for a launch. Excerpts from an interaction:

What are the critical elements to consider when working on residential lighting?

I think it should be simplicity and ease of operation. You want to come home and turn on the lights and have it work. Among other elements to consider would be durability, reliability and simple operation. There is a trend towards controlling your lights with your smart device and there are many who love such gadgets, but there are also many who prefer to be able to just simply switch on their lights and dim it according to need. Lights will also need to be cost and energy-friendly and easy to purchase.

Public education is, in my opinion, the most important thing to consider. While you may be able to go to a hardware store to pick up a pretty light, you may not know the best placement for it. You may have access to a variety of lights, but may not be sure of what your needs actually are in terms of your bathroom, living room or your dining room. Each of these needs is different and may have to be addressed by a professional.

LED seems to be the future of lighting. What are some of the newer applications in indoor and outdoor LED lighting?

There are a few things that characterise the LEDs - such as their compact nature as a light source. Because of this compact nature, there is a trend to move away from the traditional downlighting trend, move away from lighting products as we know it. We can now integrate LEDs into several products that were not thought possible before; you now find LEDs embedded in building materials, in carpets and in wall finishing. We even start to see it being incorporated in everyday products such as clothing. It is the compact nature of the LED product that allows this miniaturisation and integration.

Another trend is the control of colour. An LED RGB chip is similar to what is used in your TV. By combining red, green and blue LEDs, you can create any colour you want and with that the ability to create interesting new combinations. We can now simulate what daylight does – cool in the morning, warm in the evening (sunset) at any time of the day. We now have the ability to introduce control in a totally new way.

If you take a look at the long-haul inter-continental flights, you will find that the lighting in the plane’s cabin changes according to the time of the day or the activity in the plane (meal, sleep, etc). This is something that is now also being tried in social and commercial settings. Simple colour changes and soft tones are increasingly being used in commercial spaces, hotels, residences and others. Because research has proved that lighting is also linked to health as it is directly affecting our bio-rhythm and metabolism. This aspect of lighting is now an important part of lighting design in general and should be considered in new projects

The lighting market saw quite a dip in 2014. How does it stand today? And what are your predictions for this year?

As an international lighting designer, I operate across Asia, and India is an integrated part of it. I look at the lighting industry from a broader perspective – the economies of a country and the economies of scale. I, indeed, experienced a slowdown in 2014 in terms of projects in India. But things are picking up now, all thanks to the new and more stable government.

How is the lighting industry catering to the huge concern of sustainability?

There is a big misunderstanding about what sustainability is. It is often mistaken as being only about energy saving. Sustainability is more than that. It is an interaction between light pollution and energy saving, the big environmental concerns and the monetary concerns; how much architects or builders or home owners have to spend. And most of all, it is about the human and social aspects of projects. We design for people and not for energy or lux-based factors. This is an important distinction to make.

What are some of the lighting trends that are fading away?

Good old flood lighting of outdoor facades is slowly phasing out in favour of multimedia facades. If you go to a mall, you have a huge TV or a media facade, where colours or images are streaming from the building (some including sound). Market analysts predict that by 2020, 90 per cent of lighting will be LED-based. That is how fast conventional modes are disappearing from the market.