.
PROJECT PARTNER: Phillips Lighting
STUDENT GROUPS: BA (Hons) Product Design, MArch Architecture
PROJECT TYPE: Product development, design feasibility, installation

There is a tendency for lighting codes and regulations to concentrate on the level of illumination required to satisfy the needs of vision. The level is clearly important, but this alone ignores our needs for the overall perception of a space.
– Derek Phillips (2000) Lighting Modern Buildings. Oxford: Architectural Press.

This project explores the way that artificial lighting is incorporated into the public realm. Early analysis of existing public realm forms the basis of developing an outline design concept for the space. This outline concept will provide the background against which designs for artificial lighting proposals will be developed. Conventionally artificial lighting is provided by recognizable elements of street furniture (lamp posts, bollards, etc): this project explicitly seeks to examine alternative ways of lighting the public realm at night time.

Working with existing products manufactured by Philips Lighting, student groups speculate how lighting can be integrated into the design of the a stretch of the Fazeley Canal in Eastside, Birmingham. A range of functional issues needs to be addressed, including security of users of the space, adequacy of lighting to see the ground surface and resistance of lighting to tampering or vandalism. Artificial lighting can also provide visual delight and this quality is explored alongside the pragmatic requirements of the brief.