Rawad Choubassi, Pioneer of Light - Systematica

© Cédric Helsly

Pioneer of Light Rawad Choubassi

32 ONDERWERP

Clothing the city in light

By Denise Close, Jean-Luc Wittersheim

Lighting clothes a city’s urban forms, argues the architect Rawad Choubassi, partner at Systematica and a specialist in urban planning and mobility who worked on large-scale projects. He describes how light shapes and fashions landscapes, sets the foundation for cities’ identities and humanizes them while enabling the structuring of mobility by revealing spaces and flow patterns.

What are the key factors in mobility planning?

The factors that drive mobility planning are manifold. The most important is a robust and consolidated methodical approach that still adapts to the specific conditions of every context, problem and challenge.

No single engineering approach can resolve complex city mobility issues on its own. A comprehensive overview is essential to get away from the technocratic and linear approach of traditional traffic engineering.

Why should we care about lighting in urban planning?

Light in the city defines its identity and breaks its internal barriers.

Every city has its own color. Paris is warm during the night; Shenzhen is white due to its LED lights. The identity of public space is also reshaped during nighttime. Light can create intimacy, mystery, tranquility, apprehension, or simply resize space - generating different and unimagined forms.

Light devices also have an important role in furnishing our cities.

Eastern Parkway in New York is an emblematic example: it uses different sizes of light poles across the street section, helping to define the scale of the street for people (on the sides and for vehicles (in the middle part. Another example is Dubai. During our attempt to “humanize” parts of premium developments in Dubai, we used the dimension of light poles as a means to scale down the streets and sidewalks to human scale. Hence changing perception of the street.

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“What I also would like to see in the future is that lighting contributes to achieving safer cities and reduces the differences between different social groups” Rawad Choubassi Why is light so important in projects – and for you personally?

Light has different roles in daytime and nighttime. During the day the furnishing role prevails, but at night light becomes a medium of expression, a way to reshape streets and redefine their mood and message.

The characteristics of each space are related to their connectivity levels, visibility and integration within the entire network. Light is there to accentuate and complement spatial characteristics through expression and mood creation.

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© Cédric Helsly

Biography Rawad Choubassi Rawad Choubassi’s experience is founded on both an operational angle – such as his work with the Facilities and Planning Design Unit in Beirut – and, later, on planning and design in New York with Kliment Halsband Architects and in Milan/Tokyo with Arata Isozaki Architects.

This all happened before he obtained his Master’s degree in urban planning and policy design from the Politecnico di Milano and joined Systematica in 2008.

What’s the role of smart lighting in the future?

We never notice the ubiquity of light devices and poles until we map them. Smart lighting is an incredibly clever way of leveraging the potential of the diffusion of lighting devices, turning them into sensitive devices that adapt and learn about the city and its patterns of use. Smart lighting transforms the public realm into a platform that contributes to the evolution of the planning process, where the linear approach of planning becomes cyclical and the selective nature of decision-making becomes adaptive, fluid or simply timeless.

In your wildest dreams, how do you see urban lighting?

I feel that the potential of lighting is still not being exploited fully.

I would like to see a moment where lighting blends naturally with other public objects. What I also would like to see in the future is that lighting contributes to achieving safer cities and reduces the differences between different social groups. The difference is astounding between city center lighting and the periphery in many European cities - and is emblematic of the uneven love and care given to different parts of the city. I think light manufacturers and designers play a major role in this and perhaps have some responsibility.

When neck-deep in a real-time project, how do you continue up-dating your knowledge?

I do it partly thanks to the projects that continuously pose tough challenges requiring research and experiment, and partly thanks to believing that what we are doing can actually change people’s lives.

Actually, keeping one’s knowledge up-to-date is a tough task, especially for those who are involved in real projects that demand a huge amount of productive effort and submissions to manage.

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Systematica profile Systematica has thrived for years, redefining the general approach to tackling transportation planning and mobility engineering.

Its mission is above all to defy the technocratic approach to transportation. It’s based on principles which construe mobility as a problem to be solved through pure engineering means rather than an asset to develop and leverage.

Mobility has acquired complex levels which require new tools and a multi-disciplinary professional setup. Systematica believes in offering alternative mobility options based on changing habits and increasingly complex responses to these.

Despite this, we manage to schedule some of our time for research, to produce publications and books on specific topics as well as to participate in different worldwide conferences. Moreover, we consider every project to be an opportunity to experiment with new methods and seek new approaches.

Which three projects are your greatest sources of pride?

I was lucky to be involved in a number of very challenging projects and I’m particularly proud of being part of three projects during which we have tried to transcend the limits of our practice through innovating and challenging the ordinary approach.

The first is a development in Dubai, entitled “Mall of the World”.

We started the project by analyzing a previous development scheme aimed at housing the largest volume of retail floor space in the country and perhaps in the world. This approach required an in-depth study that lasted 18 months.

The second is three years of work on the Road and Transportation Master Plan for the West Bank and Gaza. This territory is divided into two parts, Gaza and West Bank. Another peculiarity is that the West Bank is fragmented into three zones, each diversely accessible by people with different citizenship status, two independent road networks and a system of by-passes that privileges connections between some settlements, etc. Despite these “abnormal” conditions we managed to model and simulate the current situation into a sort of complex “normalized” connectivity.

The third experience is a year-long research project with a very prominent car manufacturer company that appointed us to conduct extensive research into predicting the future of mobility in American cities. The study was based on Big Data collected from millions of handheld cellphones devices car navigators, overlaid by a huge demographic database. It gave us insight into movement dynamics and generated an unprecedented mapping of city geographies and movement of people with specific demographic traits.

© Systematica © Systematica

US project | Systematica

Significant projects – Europa City Paris, France – Galeries Lafayette, France – Le Grand Palais, France – Milano Innovation District, Italy – The “Floating Piers” di Christo on Iseo Lake, Italy – Dubai Business Bay, UAE – National Transport Strategy and Master Plan of Malta, Malta – PNB118 Tower Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – CityLife Milano, Italy – Perm General Plan & Strategic Master Plan, Russia – Expo 2015 Milano, Italy – Masdar City, UAE Website www.systematica.net

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© Systematica

Dubai Project | Lead designer: 5+Design | End client: Dubai Holding

West Bank and Gaza Project | End client: European Investment Bank Beneficiary: Ministry of Transportation – Palestine

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