This Light
Link: Scales of Color is the final in a series of three
electronic newsletters discussing projects, lectures and exhibitions
for which color is an expressive language.
Light Projects'
evolving mission to create wondrous spaces continues. The company
has grown rapidly in the past two years. Our current business focus
includes seeking and attracting clients and owners who share the
Light Projects vision.
Stay tuned for
the next Light Link featuring interior installations such as
the recently unveiled Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler
Feminist Art wing by Polshek Partnership. The newsletter will also
introduce you to Light Projects' staff: designers and artists, each
of whom brings intelligence and commitment from widely ranging
backgrounds, towards the common goal of excelling in the highly
specialized work that we do here at Light Projects LTD.
Cooper-Hewitt,
National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Design Life Now: National Design Triennial, exhibiting
through July 29, 2007
 The third
Triennial brings together experimental designs and emerging ideas
--including animation, new media, fashion, robotics, architecture,
product, medical and graphic design - residing at the center of
American culture from 2003 to 2006.
Barbara
Bloemink, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Museum of Arts
& Design, comments to Leni Schwendinger:
Leni, you
are so very talented, and your images and video on view at the
museum, are so beautiful that I've seen many visitors draw in their
breath when they turn the corner and first view them. You are one of
the best most innovative lighting designers working today and I am
delighted to have worked with you on this and our "Fashion in
Colors" exhibition.
Design Life Now travels to the Institute of
Contemporary Art Boston, from September 27, 2007 to January 6, 2008,
and from there to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, from January
26, 2008 through April 20, 2008.
The Intent of
the Light Projects Display at the Triennial
 was to increase
public understanding of Light Projects' hybrid discipline --which
incorporates illumination, time-based artforms and urban design. The
exhibit creates a dialog between Coney Island's Parachute Jump Tower
and Glasgow's Kingston Bridge, two projects that create time-markers
and interpret site with light and color.
Chroma
Streams, an enhancement to the Kingston Bridge, consists of 142
variable, projected-light transformations initiated by sensor data
from road and river. This data converts into a visible color update
every minute. Drawings and reference materials depicting the
creative and technical process in determining each of these
color-palette compositions are displayed. Similarly, for Coney
Island, a 365-day transformation calendar was developed with the
municipal owner/stakeholder. The calendar tracks light-compositions
based on the boardwalk's on-and-off seasons, moon phases and
holidays.
The Parachute
Jump lighting calendar and Kingston Bridge's transformational
palettes exemplify Leni's theory that time is the essential element
which will revolutionize the nighttime environment of tomorrow.
Coney Island Parachute Jump Awards: New York Construction
Magazine Award of Merit and The New York Landmarks Conservancy's
Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award 2006.
Commentary
Notes CBS
News' tech critic "Digital" Dan Dubno: Leni Schwendinger is a
brilliant artist. I was first entranced by her extraordinary
transformation of the Kingston Bridge in Glasgow: a brutal mass of
industrial roadway suddenly bathed in flowing light syncopated with
the movement of the riverbelow and traffic above. But Leni's rebirth
of Coney Island's iconic parachute jump by designing with light just
makes me smile and connect to the Dreamland of my imagination.
Bright Lights! Huge Vision...
 According to
architect Thomas R. Krizmanic ... For weeks I have been meaning
to tell you how BRILLIANT your Parachute Jump project is...I really
get goose bumps when I see it -- including one time when I was
landing at night into JFK. WOW! You are the Christo of
Light!
From Time
Out New York's Dan Avery: "The best thing
about the revitalization of Coney Island"
 We're not
sure exactly what developer Joseph Sitt has in mind for Coney
Island, but we were thrilled by the recent restoration of the
Parachute Jump, which closed as an amusement in 1968 -- subsequently
gaining, losing and regaining landmark status. Leni Schwendinger of
the Manhattan-based Light Projects LTD created the flashy new
design, featuring six colorful season-specific settings. You just
know the Empire State Building is seething with jealousy.
And from
Margaret Maile Petty of Architectural Lighting
...Schwendinger sees these kinds of lighting programs as
an indication of the potential of urban lighting. Having identified
what she terms 'the shades of night', which correspond to the uses
and needs of public space at different locals and times,
Schwendinger proposes that 'lighting be keyed into these changes' so
that lighting responds intimately to use, people, and the
environment, reflecting the true meaning and purpose of public
space...
Civic Space
Projects In construction
and recently completed
Integrative
lighting both mirrors and intensifies planning objectives. Combined
with economic development and streetscape amenitization, lighting is
crucial to the quality of pedestrian experience.
Light
Projects' objective is to improve the nighttime environment by
integrating--through lighting-- the visual street with its
landscapes, buildings, street furniture, greenery and other features
and amenities.
Lighting programs enrich a district's
nighttime identity through community/stakeholder participation and
interpretation. For example, storefront lighting affects the public
by casting light onto sidewalks. A program to improve display window
lighting can be developed with local shopkeepers. Building owners
can contribute to the nighttime environment by illuminating their
building facades and doorways.
In a municipality's
public-works environment, underpasses and viaducts can be
transformed through light to create illuminated passageways from
compressed, darkened space. Similarly, interpretive lighting turns
bridges and other engineered structures into the equivalent of
public artworks.
As the nighttime environment increasingly
defines 21st-century urban experience--with round-the-clock global
enterprise blurring the distinctions of a.m. and p.m. through
later-night activities and flexible work-hours--visionary lighting
can brighten our cityscapes beyond the merely
utilitarian.
HTO Park,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
 Designed by Claude Cormier and Janet Rosenberg-- and
awarded by competition in 2003, this park plan initiated a series of
waterfront projects for Toronto. The evening skyline--with the
iconic CN Tower--will become a "borrowed" backdrop for dramatic,
seasonal color islands designed by Light Projects. Threshold light
will be provided in a cool moonlight tint by high mast- style
lighting fixtures. This gesture will reduce the number of poles and
fixtures in the park. Visitors will be able to touch the water from
the park edge, an unusual experience in city park design.
Carroll Creek
Bridge, Frederick, Maryland 
Carroll
Creek Bridge opened to a gala event in October, 2006. Designed by
HNTB Architecture and Engineering, its novel, bifurcated
design--seen in this photograph-- is illuminated discreetly to
create the visual illusion of floating. Light Projects also
specified an LED spire for the client to program with changing
colors.
Shops at Atlas Park, Queens, New York 
For
this life-style center, illumination design radiates from a central
landscape. The perimeter building designs are reinforced by a glow
of exterior lighting.
The central
fountain jets spring directly from the paved surface in a spiral
pattern, playfully accentuated by lighting. Paths, trees and foliage
are softly illuminated for an atmospheric evening experience in the
park. Visitors encounter a range of illuminated environments and
effects designed to orient and connect them spatially to the center.
A color theme changes periodically, providing freshness and change,
reinforcing the sense that The Shops at Atlas Park is a place of
activity and discovery. The artful lighting features are meant to
provide dramatic and welcoming strolls for families and friends.
Features include a dramatic curvilinear metal ribbon running through
a portico, a luminous vaulted ceiling at the cinema and a
large-scale sparkling chandelier (shown above).
Workshops and
Lectures Objective: To
present a vision of color and creativity that will inspire both
public and professional audiences.
Leni has
brought her talks to a variety of forums this past year. As part of
the Cooper-Hewitt Museum's 2006 Fashion in Colors exhibition,
Leni spoke to a members' event and a symposium for designers and
color experts. Leni also appeared at New York City's GEL (Good
Experience Live) and Gadgetoff, where she addressed creative
professionals including inventors, innovators, designers and
business people.
At the Illuminating Engineers Street and
Area Lighting Conference, her audience was comprised of engineers
and utility managers seeking new perspectives on street and
public-space lighting nationwide. In a historic town center,
Conyers, near Atlanta, for the Acuity Brands-sponsored Festival of
Lights, Leni shared the stage with international designers,
discussing creative city lighting with students and manufacturers.
For the American Institute of Architects, Minnesota Chapter,
Leni collaborated with fabric architecture innovator Nicholas
Goldsmith in a forum exploring the integration of light and
material.
Leni also
joined the all-day symposium Speed of Light with design and
technology luminaries Murray Moss, Ingo Maurer, David Rockwell,
Jules Fisher and Dan Dubno. Featuring academics in the fields of
physics, oceanography and art history, the seminar was attended by
professionals and students, and presented by the Museum of Arts
& Design in collaboration with Parsons/The New School for
Design.
City. People.
Light. Research
Philips
Lighting -- the worldwide manufacturer of lighting and all things
electrical and electronic -- invited Leni to a blue-ribbon
convocation of North and South American designers and architects to
discuss practical and futuristic city lighting concepts. Marco
Bevolo, Philips Design, six lighting designers from North and South
America, architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, landscape
architect Dennis McGlade and city officials from Philadelphia and
Montreal spent two days together. The workshop was repeated in Lyon,
Hamburg and Shanghai. The research will be released in book form in
Rotterdam entitled, city.people.light. City People Light
Forum, May 2007
Color and
Light: Humanizing the Urban Nighttime Environment
Illuminating Engineering Society--October, 2006 in
Tampa, Florida
Leni discussed
how the colored-light trend is on the rise. As manufacturers lead
the way by refining technologies and ease of use, this talk
addressed the measures by which designers, agencies and owners might
rate the applicability of colored light.
Click
here to download a summary of the presentation and Leni's
color bibliography. For a copy of the digital slide presentation
please contact Kristi
Kent.
Minnesota AIA 2006: Light Orchestration:
Integrating Electrical Lighting and Fabric
From the trade
magazine Fabric Architecture:
Leni and Nick Goldsmith
complemented each other perfectly by describing innovative
approaches from each point of view - material and light.
Dialogue with
Leni in 2007...
 . |
In May, Leni joined the
City. People.Light. forum in Rotterdam, the key theme
was the future of urban lighting -- in tandem with Rotterdam's
nomination as City of Architecture
2007 |
 |
On June 22, Leni will be
participating in the Designers Lighting Forum NY picnic and
viewing of the Coney Island Parachute
Jump. |
|
On September 25th, don't miss
Leni's review of the Coney Island Parachute Jump at CUNY's Art
and Science series presented by The Graduate Center of the
City University of New York: Science & the Arts and Gotham
Center. |
 |
And also this fall, Leni will
be speaking at a distinguished gathering at the Color
Association--the USA's oldest color forecasting service,
founded in 1915. |
... In New York City LightFair
International 2007
On May 8th,
Leni and the Light Projects team welcomed the international lighting
community back to New York City for LightFair International
2007.
Light Projects
LTD presented, for the fifth season, a bi-annual LightFair event in
our studio just two blocks from the Javits Center. This year the
Open Studio featured an exhibition of Unbuilt Projects --
including images and animations of Light Projects' current
competition proposal for Landmark Wales' riverside and motorway
monument (link to this towering media-sculpture below).
It was a
brilliant evening. We look forward to lifting a glass with our
colleagues at our next Open Studio, Spring 2009. If you missed this
year's event, and would like to arrange a visit for another time,
please call or email Walter Ramin, Light Projects studio manager on
212-947-6282, or admin@lig
htprojectsltd.com
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