It’s November! My 2023 Light Can Help Us series is nearing its end, the revisiting of my preferred language of light nearly complete. Or is it? Long before Light Can Help You was born, I began experimenting with a new language of light, a new way to talk about why light is important and how it can help […]
Category: Design Theory
Light Can Help Us #12: Change Easily
I have always been me, yet everything about me- and around me- has changed. This is true of every human on the planet, in every nation: we are always changing. Some of these changes are inevitable: none of us can avoid growing older and encountering the changes that come with aging. Other changes are those […]
Light Can Help Us #11: Focus Clearly
Light is so awesome that I occasionally need reminded that light is not everything. The human experience- in nature, in buildings, with others- is affected by so many variables from the particles in the air to the temperature around us to the views outside…and by what we ate, how we slept, who is nearby, what […]
Light Can Help Us #10: Feel Better Part 2
“Using CCT as a proxy for the biological potency of light cannot be justified.” -Esposito, T., Houser, K. Click HERE for full article. A few weeks ago I revisited the promise that light can help us feel better and drew parallels between taste and sight. Food, when prepared creatively, can deliver momentary pleasure on our tastebuds but it takes […]
Light Can Help Us #9: Feel Better
Light for our bodies can help us feel better, and this may be the most important promise of them all. Throughout human history, discovery and invention have joined together to deliver turning points of epic proportions, moments at which all of humanity advanced into new eras. We discovered countless galaxies and nebulae and expanded our […]
Light Can Help Us #8: Know More
If light itself is a gift, what kind of gift is it? Is it a new pair of socks, useful but not particularly exciting, or new electronics that are exciting now but will be obsolete in a few short years? Is light something handmade with love, with no monetary value but nonetheless priceless? Light, which […]
THINK LIGHT: Light + Justice
Of all the moments of discovery, connection, and understanding provided at LightFair this year, none stirred my emotions or challenged my thinking as deeply as the fifty minutes allotted to the Light + Justice conference session. Led by Edward Bartholomew, Mark Loeffler, and Lya S. Osborn, the presentation shook up my thinking and clarified my focus. […]
Light Can Help Us #7: Do Better 2
Of all five (or six?) of the promises of light, light that helps us Do Better is the one most of us think we know. It doesn’t take a lighting designer to understand that, if we want to read a magazine, we need a light on it. Does it really matter if it comes from a […]
Light Can Help Us #6: Do Better
Recently our team delivered a continuing education webinar on layers of light for residential and hospitality spaces, a session I have led many times. Each time I revisit the material and update the presentation based on what I have learned since the previous outing. While preparing for this latest offering, I made a new mental connection […]
Light Can Help Us #5: Red Velvet Lighting
Periodically my obsession with Red Velvet cake (or Waldorf Astoria Cake, as it is sometimes known) leaves the safety of my personal life and comes across the border into my work. A few years ago, struggling to explain the value of layers of light in ways that would make it easy remember, I realized that […]