20
MAY 2021
LIGHTING JOURNAL
TRANSITION VAMPED Transition spaces – corridors, lifts, lobbies and so on – are often ignored, unloved or simply overlit when it comes to lighting design. But if you want to bring real cohesion to your scheme, it can pay to pour a bit of design TLC into these oft-overlooked spaces – and it may be an opportunity to get your creative juices flowing
By Neil Knowles
H
ow do you judge or evaluate the interior design in a place? Take a hotel for example; do you stand at the entrance, take it all in with one brief glance and think ‘nice!’ to yourself? Do you instead look at the detailing, the colour choices of the lobby, the material selection of the reception top? Or do you do, as I do, withhold any judgment on the time, care and money that has been lavished on a space until you arrive at the secondary or tertiary spaces, the toilets, the lift lobby? You can tell a lot from a lift lobby. They’ve got your money already; it could be utilitarian and cheap. It often is. Or it could be an extension of the brand identity. In the 40 seconds before your lift arrives, you can look around you. I’m very keen on lighting design in
transition spaces. Often under-designed, often a victim of the dreaded ‘value engineering’, often a last-minute throw-in-acouple-of-downlights school of lighting design, transition spaces nevertheless offer an opportunity to make a clear and bold statement about a brand or building or your life choices. So, what counts as a transition space? I think, simply, anywhere that you don’t go to, but often find yourself transiting through. This definition therefore includes corridors, stairwells, lift lobbies and, to a lesser extent, arrival zones such as door lobbies, as well as not-really-transition-spaces such as small breakout zones. They are easy to light badly. Boring, flat, cold, tedious lighting, quashing your soul. But have no fear! I am here to tell you how