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3D: DARC DESIGNERS
RYAN FISCHER NOMINATED BY BRETT ANDERSEN
Ryan Fischer is a lighting designer at award winning lighting design studio Focus Lighting in New York. The realisation that lighting was the career for him came in elementary school; after participating in a few small classroom performances, he was bitten by the theatre bug! “I was ten-years-old and my mom took me to the local community centre to participate in a class for technical theatre certification in lighting and audio,” he tells darc. “The first time I sat down at the theatre’s lighting console and raised and lowered the faders, I saw the power I had to transform the brightness, colour, texture, and mood of the empty stage with coloured light and I was hooked. I volunteered as the lighting console operator for local community theatre shows from the time I was ten until I was old enough to become an employee of the theatre, then began designing shows of my own. “I was briefly interested in various other theatrical trades at a few points over the years - audio engineering, technical direction, or working as a master electrician, however, every time, I ended up taking the technical knowledge from those experiences and bringing them back to apply on my lighting career, which I found the most creatively satisfying.” After more than twelve years designing lighting for local, community, and educational theatre, Fischer earned a BFA in Theatrical Lighting Design from Emerson College in Boston, which led to him freelancing around Boston as a lighting designer for theatre, cabaret and dance, before moving to New York City in 2010, where he took classes in architectural lighting at Parsons The New School for Design. “I am fascinated by the way that lighting can influence so many aspects of our day-to-day lives and, moreover, how it has the ability to bring people together to enjoy each other’s company,” Fischer tells darc. “I think I have an innately hospitable streak that always has to make sure that when I’m in the company of friends and family - or when I have the ability to shape experiences that others experience with their friends and family - that the setting and mood are just right. It’s probably an instinct born from my parents’ nature, when they would throw house parties when I was younger and I would run around the house putting up decorations, adjusting the dimmers, and creating those special, intimate settings where I could really spend quality time with the people I cared about the most. “I wanted to use light as a way to create a feeling or emotion in others that would enable them to have a memorable experience. I think that naturally translated into my two biggest interests: theatre and architecture. Theatre, in the sense that I discovered I could create an emotion in people by using light to tell a story, and architecture as a way to shape the environment around me for the same purposes. I’m not at all surprised that I ended up combining the two interests into one pursuit, and that some of my favourite projects thus far have ended up being hospitality or theatre venues. “One of the most crucial lessons taken from my theatrical lighting career that I’ve tried to apply to my architectural career is that good lighting design shouldn’t really be noticed at all. Lighting design should always serve the plot, the story, or the architecture, so that you can lose yourself in the experience of a space and become immersed in the current moment, in the here and now. “I believe decorative lighting serves two primary purposes: to motivate the architectural lighting in a space, or to bring light down to the human scale and make people look and feel good in a space. “When used as a focal point, decorative lighting can create a visual
cue by serving as the ‘apparent source of light’ in a space, which can motivate all of the other layers of architectural light around it. As long as there is a decorative fixture above a dining table I can use other layers of architectural light to illuminate the table and the dining room around it, but our brains will believe that all of the light is emanating from the decorative fixture. Take away the decorative light, however, and the ‘story’ of the lighting starts to unravel without an apparent source of light. The design loses its warmth, cohesiveness, and sense of place. “I also believe that decorative fixtures should be used to provide light for people, and architectural lighting should illuminate the architecture. I’m a huge fan of using ‘sidelight’, which I is a term I take from my theatrical and dance lighting experience. Especially when it comes to hospitality spaces, people look their absolute best in sidelight - candles, fireplaces, glowing decorative sconces, table lamps, or floor lamps, softly glowing architectural details and so on. Sidelight is incredibly flattering on skin tones and faces, and creates instant warmth and intimacy. I often prefer to have more lighting at eye level and floor level than I do overhead for this reason. I know that as long as I have warm, dimmable, human-scale decorative lighting in my design toolbox, I can’t go wrong.”
Lighting Hero My coworkers and industry colleagues, especially in the New York City lighting community. I love attending local industry events and presentations to learn from others’ perspectives and listen to how they approached a unique lighting challenge. If I could have worked on In the future I hope to continue to work on more theater projects - they are always a fascinating blend of architectural and decorative lighting challenges, and I love returning to my theatrical roots. I have previously designed two New York City theatres - the (almost simultaneous) renovations of the Hayes Theater and the Lyric Theater in New York City. The Hayes, was the opportunity to transform the smallest historically landmarked Broadway theatre into the revitalised home of Second Stage Theater. The Lyric, was the opportunity to transport audiences to another world as the permanent home for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway. Both fulfilled dreams of mine - to design lighting on Broadway - only not in the role I had originally expected (back when I worked in theatre full time). Stand out project Yvonne’s, a restaurant and speakeasy in Boston. Yvonne’s was a true design/build collaboration with the owners, COJE Management, and included many custom decorative and architectural lighting elements to complement the historic space formerly occupied by the 150-year-old iconic steakhouse Locke-Ober. Moving forward With the continued rapid advancement of LED technology, custom solutions for specific lighting challenges are becoming more accessible to designers every day. We’re no longer bound by the traditional expectations of what a light fixture or light source should look like. I look forward to continuing to develop relationships with lighting manufacturers and fabricators to create tailor-made lighting solutions that both enhance my design concepts and enhance a guest’s experience of a space. Light Is such a beautiful and powerful medium to work in - it’s intangible, physiological, psychological, emotional, ageless, limitless, ingrained in our very existence.