Independent lighting design 43 art installation of world-class quality for the bridges’, with entries welcome from ‘artists and lighting designers, engineers, architects, technologists and others’. Especially welcome from my perspective was the fact the brief was focused on ‘architectural lighting’ rather than operational lighting or simply art pieces. The idea is to develop a design masterplan for all 17 main road, rail and pedestrian bridges between Albert and Tower Bridge (including the proposed Nine Elms Bridge and Garden Bridge). Then the intention is that there will be concept design lighting schemes for four individual bridges: Westminster, Waterloo, London and Chelsea, with an honorarium of £15,000 awarded to each of the shortlisted teams. The projects are expected to start from 2018. EMINENT JUDGING PANEL All heady stuff – a competition with both finance behind it and the major’s blessing – and, of course, very welcome in the wider scheme of building the profile of our industry. Entries closed in July and I will await the verdict with interest. But, irrespective of how the project pans out, there was, for me, one disappointing catch. I’ve always gone on the rule that, when entering a competition, you should look very closely at who the judges are. At first glance the panel appeared to be eminent and, positively,
pretty much split 50/50 between men and women. Keynote names included architect Malcolm Reading, Professor Ricky Burdett, professor of urban studies at London School of Economics (and director of the LSE Cities and the Urban Age Programme), Lucy Musgrave, the founder of urban design and public realm consultancy Publica, the director of the Hayward Gallery Ralph Rugoff, and deputy mayor for culture and the creative industries Justine Simons. The others on the judging panel were writer and filmmaker Hannah Rothschild, who is chair of the Illuminated River Foundation behind the project, and panel chairman Lord Rothschild, chairman of RIT Capital Partners plc and chairman of the Rothschild Foundation. I expect you’ve spotted it too – why weren’t there any lighting designers or lighting associations on the judging panel? Tellingly, despite all the positive noises, the Architectural Review’s coverage of the launch of the project even managed to excise the word ‘lighting designer’ from its article. We were wiped away, to be replaced by the notion that the competition was open to the ‘finest artists, architects, designers, engineers and technologists’. It was the same for the architectural website e-architect – no mention whatsoever of lighting designers.
Ditto on the BBC’s report, although it mitigation it managed to cover the competition without mentioning any professions by name at all, just the generic term ‘teams’! I know some individuals and practices from within the international lighting design community have entered the competition as team members to form a multidisciplinary unit. I wish them all the best, and hope that one of our IALD members at least will be in the winning selection. More widely, I am sure the Illuminated River will, in time, unveil some stunning lighting designs across London’s rivers that will, I hope, capture the public imagination and showcase what we, as a profession, can do. It remains an exciting competition and one I will watch unfold with great interest. But it is still disappointing, and an indication of how far lighting design still needs to go to get itself on to the design ‘top table’, that a competition with such potential to promote our industry to the wider public managed to stumble on what should have been a straightforward element, getting a lighting designer on to the judging panel. I just hope that whoever gets the winning spot is able truly to promote the importance of architectural lighting design. Emma Cogswell is IALD UK projects manager
Lighting Journal September 2016