Understanding the light environment
“What is evaluated for the Taiwan Light Environment Award is not lighting per se, or the functions of light, but the interrelationship between light and the environment,” says Chou Lien, chairman of the jury and an internationally respected master of lighting design. From the lighting design for the Statue of Liberty in New York to that for the old city walls of Hengchun in Pingtung County and the makeover of Tainan’s Fengshen Temple, Chou Lien has time and again demonstrated the magic of light. For Chou, light has never been about whether one can see or not or how bright something is; it has always been about the relationship between light and the environment, and about the emotions that light draws out of people.
But what is the “light environment”? Chou Lien points to two examples that allow people to understand instantly.
Going to the temple to worship and communicate with the gods is part of the daily routine for Taiwanese. But most temples in Taiwan either have rows of fluorescent lights or a dazzling glare that makes it almost impossible to open your eyes.
When night falls and the lights go on, the city changes its appearance. But when you walk in the streets, the streetlights shining down from above make the faces of the people passing by appear dark and ugly. “The design of street lighting in Taiwan only takes account of the amount of light at ground level, but pays no concern to how vertical surfaces are illuminated. The regulations about this should be reassessed,” says Chou.
These are both negative examples, but they are things encountered in daily life, and they realistically portray the lack of understanding of the light environment in Taiwan.
Most lighting in Taiwan is overly busy, making it impossible to enter a calm state of mind. Lin Hwai-min raises the concept of “light pollution.” We are familiar with “noise pollution,” but don’t know that excessive lighting is also a kind of pollution. In today’s over-illuminated environment, the dark of night has been swallowed up by light, causing the rod cells in our retinas, which enable us to see at low light levels, to become desensitized. This is a very serious matter, explains Chou Lien.
Accompanying the jury, we visit several structures in Yilan, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung that are in the running for the grand prize. All along the trail we savor the light and shadow of the architecture, and discover that light is not just light—what is more important is the relationship between light and people.
Using light to embellish a space creates a mood that is markedly different from daylight hours. The photo was taken at the Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park in Yilan County. (photo by Jimmy Lin)