Hang on! Coming About! Changing the Course of Lighting Design By JAMES R. BENYA, PE, FIES, FIALD
Lighting design as a profession is not very old. I don’t pretend to be an historian, but based on my personal experience and contacts, the profession of lighting design as we know it today is about the same age as computer drafting. It remains very specialized, with only a few lighting design degree programs1 in the US and only a few others around the planet. Most lighting designers grew up in the industry, and now there are lighting design firms in most major markets worldwide. Where did lighting designers come from? Many lighting designers, especially older ones, have degrees in other fields such as architecture, architectural engineering, interior design, electrical engineering or theater, and got the itch, like I did, to dedicate a career to lighting design. Most younger designers have the advantage of having more appropriate educations and have grown up in the industry, working directly with the founders of their practices. I’d like to start at the beginning. By the middle of the 20th century, lighting had become a significant part of any building project because the IES published recommended illumination levels based on visual tasks. In turn, bright lighting was believed to be related to productivity and success. Lighting plans were prepared by architects and engineers to achieve IES recommended lighting levels, which were much higher than those today. Other than hanging chandeliers in appropriate locations in a church or over a dining table, recessed lighting was the name of the game, from living rooms to classrooms. I remember when in the 1970s I had to explain the meaning of the word “sconce” as modernism had all but killed off ornamental or sculptural lighting. Like many things “modernist”, the lighting system of 50 years ago was orthogonal, regular, bright, very evenly distributed, and although largely uninteresting, it worked.
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But not everyone was enamored with bright evenness. At the time, lighting “design” was little more than laying-out lighting symbols on a plan in order to achieve IES recommended lighting levels. But there was a group who believed building owners and occupants would benefit from and appreciate better lighting than the ordinary lighting of the day – thirteen friendly yet competing lighting designers, mostly from New York and having a theater, architecture and/or interior design background. They were smart, skilled and strong, and above all, principled. They believed that lighting design was an opportunity to enhance buildings and environments, and that the business model of the industry either prevented it from happening or made it expensive. They took a stand, and the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) was born in 1969. IALD’s founders made a monumental choice to keep their own work as pure from the temptation of money as possible by disallowing the selling of lighting products. A professional fee and expense reimbursement only, please. I’m sure that they knew they were taking on a battle with the norms of design, bidding, contracting, construction and above all, the mechanics of how lighting construction went from working drawings to a completed building. Considering all the stuff that happens during construction such as substitutions and “value engineering”, lighting designers were going to have to be tough and principled. But they were determined to straighten out the system by setting a squeaky-clean example. It was, after all, the 1960s. I can honestly say that, after 35 years as a professional member of IALD and 20 years as a Fellow, I honored the rules, and I think the restriction made an impression and raised the profile of IALD. For instance, IALD’s representation of lighting designers to the State of Texas overturned a