Remaking the Night: The coronavirus crisis and the nighttime economy

Lighting Journal (UK) July 2020 Issue

NTD’s Leni Schwendinger, and advisor, Don Slater joined an The Institution of Lighting Professionals round-table from which the article is based.

…Leni Schwendinger emphasized the need for what she termed a ‘malleable’ night-time environment, one where the public realm, and public realm lighting, reflected, responded to and resonated with the individual communities it was serving. She invoked opportunities that smart and responsive illumination will provide for outdoor scenarios, not unlike a collaborative theatre approach.

‘Let’s lift local communities, figure out – through observation, capacity building, evaluating and analysing – what is happening at night throughout the night. Let’s create transformational environments per locale,’ she said.

Don Slater: ‘If you think about the way light can be very flexible in indicating routes – wayfinding and responsive change – how it can shift the relation between risk and danger. Zoning, making little puddles of light for people to collect in; it just seems a very clear connection between the type of material that light is and the kind of social/public space connections (or lack of connections) we need to talk about,’ .

The article also flags up the new friendship agreement between The Institution of Lighting Professionals and NTD.

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NightSeeing Comes to London

Lighting Magazine (link) 

On International Day of Light, May 16, 2018, the formation of International Nighttime Design Initiative was announced. (Photos here)

Celebrate the other side of day with International Nighttime Design Initiative (NTD) and London School of Economics’ Configuring Light. Presenting the nocturnal city of light, NightSeeing™ is a real-time travelogue through the culture of urban lighting in public spaces to convey recognition of one’s own environment of the shadowed vistas that define our surroundings literally half the time, and yet are so familiar they are almost unseen. 

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El-Space: An elevated space pilot grows in Brooklyn

• Graphic from New York Magazine
• Article from The Architect’s Newspaper “New York City launches pilot to activate highway underpasses in Sunset Park”
• FOX 5 broadcast

Smart Everyday Nighttime Design: Pilot, Cartagena, Colombia

Direct link to YouTube City Lights, Nighttime Design (six-minute video)

Smart Everyday Nighttime Design is an interdisciplinary research project spearheaded by Arup, with Leni Schwendinger and the support of the London School of Economics, Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano and Despacio, iGuzzini, and Findeter, documented by PLANE—SITE. The initiative focused on lighting in the Getsemani neighborhood of Cartagena, Colombia with the intention of improving public health, social life, security and safety in after-dark environment. The research and incorporation of the new lantern system heavily involved the participation of Getsemani residents in an attempt to galvanize the community.