Laurence Favager

Kerem Asfuroglu

Having recently been awarded the PLDR Best Newcomer award Kerem Asfuroglu talks to mondo*arc about his inspiration and his work as both a lighting designer and graphic novelist.

How did you get into lighting design?

Curiosity. Anyone who is keen on understanding the ways of altering perception will eventually find themselves exploring the alchemy of light and shadow.

Why did you join Speirs + Major?

Passion. I became familiar with Speirs + Major’s work while studying my masters course at Wismar University. I was only a student when I first saw my future directors Mark, Keith and Jonathan present together at PLDC, Berlin. Clearly the quality of their work was outstanding but that was not what got to me – it was their explosive energy and passion. I said to myself, “I want to work with these guys.” It’s been five years and I’m  still a happy member of this family.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

Storytelling and creative freedom. I love stories - who doesn’t? If you think about it, we have massive film and music industries that are built on this. From way back in the distant past when we gathered around the fire to shelter from the dark of the unknown, stories have spoken to us, cutting across social and cultural differences. As lighting designers we get to tell stories of people and places using brightness and darkness. Playing with such an ethereal medium while creating a physical manifestation and a visceral effect is something that still blows my mind sometimes. You may have the courage and talent to tell a good story yet lack the freedom to speak. That comes with working with the right people and for the right people. That said we must also be mindful that there are limits to what we can convey with light, just like light itself has a limit in its speed. After all, what does a rainbow mean to a blind person?

What’s a favourite project you’ve worked on up to now?

Light Echoes. I have been lucky enough to work on many fantastic projects of varying scales while I have been at Speirs + Major - from Covent Garden’s site-wide lighting improvement through to Shakespeare’s New Place in Stratford Upon Avon. Often though, I find that the real champions are the tiny projects - the ones that no one has ever heard of. In 2013, a group from Speirs + Major worked on a temporary light installation for Canning Town’s Light Night. It was an interactive sound and light piece composed of a ring of nine tom-tom drums. We located these drums under the A13 flyover where we had the luxury of finding a pocket of well-preserved urban darkness to play with. Light was projected through the water filled drums. When they were played, the water in each drum was agitated, producing pulsating patterns of light on the underside of the flyover.

You were recently awarded the PLDR Best Newcomer award. How pleased were you about this?

Over the moon. It is great to be recognised for something I consider to be a compulsive disorder that I am wired with. The list of people to thank for getting me there is far too long. There is a sense of overwhelming contentment when people appreciate you for being you.

You are also a very talented graphic artist. How did this develop?

Comics and films. I read a shit load of comics when I was a kid. They took me to an alternative reality where things were less lucid. This is what happens when you are brought to see The Terminator at the age of three by your Grandma, who is the craziest artist I’ve ever known. I still get inspired by her flaming passion for creativity.

Your artwork has been published in mondo*arc and it was used for the 2015 darc awards. How good is it to see your work published?

Fantastic. Comics are like a type of meditation for me, they provide a place for my imagination to run riot. I’ve been amazed at how supportive people have been about the crazy decision of mondo*arc to include two pages of comics in the magazine. Boldness of the magazine has given me a chance to communicate my influences to people. Good or bad, people have an opinion about it. This is what I love about art. It’s approachable but viral.

So lighting designer or graphic novelist? What’s the future?

Unknown. I really enjoy my job but I also get most of my inspiration from things outside of the lighting world - from science, art and literature, to music and comics. I can’t help but think that the moment you put a title on yourself, you potentially close off interesting and exciting new avenues. Regardless of how I express my view, I hope that I’ll constantly be exploring the issues that move me.

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by Laurence Favager

Paule Constable

Winner of four Olivier awards and two Tonys, Paule Constable is a lighting designer who needs no introduction. With work spanning a broad catalogue of opera and theatre productions, her stripped back approach to lighting design has earned global recognition. mondo*arc caught up with Constable, after a showing of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, to talk about light and its ability to adapt.

Growing up in a military family, lighting designer Paule Constable has moved around all of her life. The need to make friends quickly and the peripatetic nature of this lifestyle made theatre attractive to her. Although it may seem like a somewhat unlikely correlation, Constable explains: “It’s amazing how many military kids gravitate towards theatre.”

Like many young and brilliant minds, Constable studied an eclectic mix of arts and science subjects through school, culminating in A-levels in Maths, Physics, English and History of Art. “I didn’t know what to do next. Originally I was considering architecture, then I thought about engineering but in the end I decided to do an English degree,” says Constable. The English degree in question she pursued at Goldsmiths College in London, which at the time - in the mid 80s - was a hub of creativity, producing the likes of Damian Hirst, under the guidance of Dean Richard Hoggart. Invigorated by the artistic essence of the institution, Constable changed after a year to a combined English and Drama course because “...it was just a better course for me,” she explains.

During her studies Constable went through the motions of wanting to become an academic or a director. However, during a real-life piece of theatre, her flatmate - a stage manager at the time - fell madly in love and ran away to Spain. Seizing the opportunity, Constable pretended to be her, took her job as a follow spot operator and turned up at the Hackney Empire to announce “I’ve no idea what I’m doing”.

After doing a lot of climbing when she was younger and having never been frightened of heights, she was immediately happy amongst theatre’s stage rigging and equipment. Constable explained: “Because of A-level Physics I could rewire stuff and I loved the creative aspects of lighting. It discovered me really. I worked in the music industry for a few years, then experimental theatre and devised theatre. I simply followed my nose.”

In that time, academic study of lighting was rare and the route into the industry came from people who were working as electricians. Learning on the job, Constable followed the advice of a couple of key designers who mentored her. After being in the industry for a short time, she realised that it wasn’t just the technology that interested her but also the storytelling of lighting. “I already had an academic strand to my life with an English degree and a love for literature, as well as a very practical strand and I didn’t want to do something that was purely one or the other.” It was at this point that she realised design was the missing piece to her puzzle.

When asked about her influences along her journey to success as a lighting designer, Constable responds: “Through learning, there have been people who have been very influential to me. Through looking at other people’s work and realising it was different, particular and special.” More specifically, she cites Germany’s Wolfgang Goebbel, who created a very different aesthetic to anybody on the UK stage, as well as Jean Kalman from France. These people, along with many others, made Constable realise that light could be more; it didn’t have to be purely functional.

In her own projects, she worked with a lighting designer in the UK called Stevie Whitson who was very experimental after coming from La Mama theatre in New York. “I worked with him and helped him out a lot. He was completely anarchic and brilliant. He made you believe that light could do anything,” she explains.

In addition, Constable draws inspiration from cross-discipline sources, finding reference material that unlocks her creative vision in sources such as American photographer Gregory Crewdson. “He uses light in a very particular way, it is so resonant.”

Lighting is a very diverse medium, from theatre to architecture it can be manipulated to impressive effect. Constable attributes its creative value to the feeling that “there is something about working in a landscape that is not necessarily understood, seen or overt. Something about the subversive nature of it. It’s not concrete and not right or wrong; it is incredibly lyrical but also literal. It’s so many contrasting things”.

As a great lover of the outdoors and, more specifically, an obsessive fell runner, Constable’s appreciation for light and the way it interacts with landscape, people and space runs deep. “Even if you’re working in a tiny space, you have to find a sense of why light is there; working in a medium that is never entirely finished, it is entirely illusive,” she adds.

This philosophy runs through into her lighting of theatre. For example, shows such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time doesn’t use traditional scenery to tell the story, but instead uses gesture and lighting to create the impression of a room with nothing. Based on long collaborative relationships between the team behind the show, the result is a spectacular display of light, sound and interaction. “We began with a floor of LED pixels in a grid. We wanted to make it an experience for the audience, a journey they went on with Christopher – the lead character,” explains Constable. With the focus on stimulating the audience and to reflect Christopher’s state of mind, the team looked at how the space would respond. Therefore, allowing the stage to become the inside of his head. Based on the protagonist’s immaculate attention to detail and fascination with his surroundings, the team thought he would love technical theatre, lights and equipment. With this in mind, they came up with the idea of a square and then Constable created the idea of having a pixel grid of LEDs and RGB light boxes, which are used to represent objects throughout the performance. “I wanted to reflect the same above him, to create Christopher’s world, his machine. You feel as if you are creating the show with him, creating an immersive experience for the audience.”

As a member of the audience you understand the rules of the space within the first ten minutes. There is a collective sense that you are going to share something with the actors. This is achieved, in the most part, by a stage brought to life through intelligent lighting and the diversity of LEDs. “When we first started making Curious Incident, LEDs would flash on and the story would get lost as it felt as if the lights were doing something to him rather than with him. We had to make sure that it felt like he was making it happen - a brilliant conversation between mediums,” comments Constable.

Her commercially successful shows such as The Curious Incident, War horse and Wonder.land, which travel the world or appear on Broadway, obviously attract the most media attention. However, Constable’s favourite show of last year was a production of Wozzeck – the opera – in Chicago. “It was a piece I’d never done before; based on an 18th century German play by Buchner, written by Berg as a response to the First World War. Incredibly modern, short and episodic, it’s really angry. We did a stripped back version of it designed by Vicki Mortimer – a close friend and colleague of mine – and directed by Sir David McVicar - someone I have worked with for 20 years. The coming together of the piece, the creative team, the cast and the space made for a great production. All in white, it was hard, brutal and really stripped back. At first I never thought it was going to work but in the end we got close to something that really landed with the music,” says Constable.

When comparing theatrical lighting and architectural lighting, the link may seem unrelated. However, Constable believes that the understanding of light and its application is universal. Citing the work of Speirs + Major, she says: “I’ve always really loved their work because it’s story driven. I love their relationship to landscape and talking to them, I was fascinated to see how similar their thinking was to mine. I look at architectural lighting design, particularly in interiors - it can be quite functional or it can be quite transcendent. Their work for me feels like it wants to do both things. You go into their spaces and you feel different – your senses wake up.

“The area that people such as Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell are exploring is absolutely the area that concerns me. Then there are people who objectify light like Dan Flavin – even though his work is still about colour balance. I think this is true with architectural work, you can see there are places where people are really telling a story with a space or places that are rudimentary and functional. Similarly in theatre, say with musicals, the lighting often has to create rhythm and shift the space in a very overt way - not working from the inside but imposing an agenda on a moment. This to me is objectified lighting - it has a strong external hand. As in offices, when it needs to be functional, compared with places that need to be stimulating.”

The road to success is often described as a bumpy one and Constable’s has been no different. “Being female and having children has been tough. The weird thing about lighting is that people can use the idea of technology as a weapon against you. Being an electrician, my technical knowledge was quite good. But now things change very quickly. I use the technology to be creative but I can’t talk to you about the technical minutiae of how we manage data in say Curious Incident. It is about learning that you don’t have to be able to do everything. Originally, I would hang my own lights and do my own programming. That can be a problem for young people to come into the business,” she explains.

Constable went on to describe a brief encounter with the V&A museum that opened her eyes to how light can be interpreted in space. “One thing I think is interesting about architectural lighting design, I discovered during a brief encounter with the museum. They were scared by the way I think about light. I wasn’t thinking about lumens, functions, labels and walls. I was thinking about light as a dynamic, story-telling thing. I realised that I was the wrong person for them to be talking to. With my work, I can start with nothing but I don’t think in architectural work anyone can really do that. I don’t think of myself as much of lighting designer, as someone who works with darkness. That is a very different discipline.”

Aside from ups and downs, Constable has received four Olivier and two Tony awards for her work in lighting. Within an industry that is male dominated, achieving this level of public recognition has been a highlight in her professional career. “I am the only female senior lighting designer in this country who has global recognition - partly because I do a lot of opera. In a world where role models are really important, winning awards is great to prove to people that it is possible. In terms of gender balance within my own teams, most of my favourite programmers are women.  They tend to have a very level head in that particular role. Being in a position to champion them is really important,” she explains.

Constable pinpoints the beginning of her journey to success to a pivotal moment when she became the first woman to light a show at The National Theatre in 1993. “That is pretty shameful but I suppose that was the start of a big journey for me as I’m an associate director there now,” she says.

Another significant moment in her career has a very heart-warming story behind it. When working at the English National Opera, after just winning an Olivier award, the stage manager told her that she must bring it in the following week. On Monday, much to the manager’s surprise, the award was nowhere to be seen. “Where is it?” they said. “It went to show and tell with my kids,’’ says Constable. “They are nineteen and seventeen now but back then they must not have known what the bust of Olivier even meant.”

Her success and recognition within the industry is often attributed to her unique process, which tends to be simple and stripped back. “It’s kind of Amish,” explains Constable. With a simple, clear and honest approach, the focus remains on the right idea, light, the right moment to not feel obliged to do everything and the right moment to release a particular story. “My work doesn’t use a lot of saturated colour but I’m really interested in height and naturalism – ideas that come from a reality. I like stripping back to a truth and then heightening that,” states Constable.

What is apparent through lighting, whether it is theatrical or architectural, is that lighting designers share the same foundation of skills. These shape how people experience, perceive, feel and immerse themselves in space. There are so many ways to experience space and that becomes the common ground between all lighting designers. “Learning to look is the secret we share. The public don’t obviously always notice or perceive light. I was recently in terminal five at Heathrow, when my plane was delayed. I walked through the subway and the way the LEDs are used is really beautifully put together. You walk through the tunnel and you feel like you’re in a Sci-Fi movie - it is alive. It has been done thoughtfully without feeling suppressive. Even a small detail like that, you do it properly and it can make people’s travelling more enjoyable.”

Whether it is in theatre, architecture or any other environment, this anecdote encapsulates what designing with light can create. Just like in Heathrow’s terminal five, with thoughtful design, even simplistic lighting can deliver a grand impact.

Pic: Lulu Ladd

www.pauleconstable.com

by Laurence Favager

Yoshi Tsukamoto

Last summer, as part of the iGuzzini and MAXXI Architecture collaborative project Light On, Yoshi Tsukamoto, founding partner of Tokyo-based architecture studio Atelier Bow Wow, discussed his design principles in the context of light. mondo*arc caught up with Tsukamoto to discover the inner workings of his process, applications of behaviourology and the beauty of vernacular architecture.

In the summer of 2015, iGuzzini and MAXXI Architecture - Italy’s museum of contemporary art - collaborated on a new project entitled Light On. The project consisted of talks from four major international architectural firms, including discussions of their work and the topics, themes and contexts defining their professional careers. Each designer offered a contemporary point of view on the relationship between form, technology and light.

The second event saw the exhibition of Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, founding partner of Japanese studio Atelier Bow Wow. In a conversation with Adolfo Guzzini, President of iGuzzini illuminazione, and Pippo Ciorra, Senior curator MAXXI Architettura, Tsukamoto presented the studio’s projects and explained the inspirations behind each in the context of light.

Atelier Bow-Wow is a Tokyo-based architecture firm, founded in 1992 by Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kajima. Born in 1965, Tsukamoto studied architecture at Tokyo Institute of Technology and then on to Paris, at L’Ecole d’Architecture de Belleville. Following this, in 2000, Tsukamoto became an Associate Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Born in Tokyo in 1969, Kaijima studied at Faculty of Domestic Science at Japan Women’s University and at Tokyo Institute of Technology. She also studied at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH). By 2009 she became an Associate Professor at the Art and Design School of the University of Tsukuba.

Atelier Bow Wow distinguishes itself from the most prestigious Japanese studies thanks to the duo’s investigative work of behaviourology. It is Tokyo’s environment and architectural landscape that characterises its research - an investigation of micro-architectures that tries to give logical rules to the urban complexity of modern cities. Having published Tsukamoto’s investigations in Made in Tokyo and Pet Architecture, the studio focuses on the role of architecture in the 21st century, attempting to apply principles of its research drawn from existing examples and altering them to create a new reality.

Faced with the evergrowing population of Japan’s core metropolis, the main focus of its priniciples is centred around the use of space, its sharing and employment. For example in residential buildings such as the studio’s office / living space, partitions are often removed to create a continuous but organised space, where stairs and landings are used to emphasise the continuity.

“Instead of making a strong partition between rooms we use the sense of occupancy to give a subtle articulation in the continuous space,’’ explains Tsukamoto. ‘‘So as you walk around you encounter different types of occupancy. This is interesting because it means we need the help of the users to achieve our intentions.”

The studio’s anthropological approach looks to create architecture without architect but with people, known as vernacular architecture. In the context of lighting, the studio’s work makes reference to Junichiro Tanizaki’s revered book In praise of Shadows, which describes the western world in favour of dazzling lights, and the east traditionally in favour of shade and shadow in interiors.

Using this, its work looks to find the balance between the traditional and the ultra modern based on how people, material and weather behave. After studying these behaviours, all considerations are integrated into one physical entity, creating architecture that reflects the people it is designed for.

Tsukamoto attributes what he calls a “failure of Twentieth century architecture’’ to viewing groups of people as mass numbers rather than individuals. “Twentieth century architecture became a very visual art when it should be both very beautiful and have delightful behaviour,” says Tsukamoto. With this in mind, he has reintroduced vernacular architecture in his home city. Tokyo is a metropolis of houses so it speaks to its surroundings, acting as a point of contact between inhabitant and environment – an ideal setting for vernacular architecture and the implementation of behaviourology.

He believes that all skills and behaviours are important to observe in order to give identity to particular groups of people. It is within the study of human behaviours that the power of light becomes apparent. “Light is a very important agent based on its natural discipline,” states Tsukamoto. His idea of space interrelates the behaviours of both humans and objects. Therefore light is investigated as one act of behaviour, as our behaviour is influenced by lighting conditions.

During an interview with mondo*arc, Tsukamoto told us first hand about his experiences and inspirations, discussing the importance, impact and use of light in architecture. He considers light as “the central natural element that behaves in and around architecture. From this behaviourial point of view, lighting can become other natural elements in architectural design, even if it is artificially created.’’

His approach to lighting is appreciative of the way it behaves as well as its practical function. Tsukamoto explains: “Of course it’s important to light the space and its objects with an appropriate amount of light, but beside these functional concerns, the behaviours of light, such as reflection, creating shadow, projection and so on, are very interesting to my design process in architecture.’’

He argues that light has its own behaviour based on the physical principle itself. More importantly, it is the fact that you can’t change the physical principle that makes it exciting to play with the behaviour of light through architecture. From this, Tsukamoto explains: “you can make light tangible through architectural design”.

As with many things in architecture, light and shadow are two sides of the same coin, with the latter being another element that behaves in and around architecture. Produced by the interaction between light and architecture, shadow and darkness “are the powerful means that create a heterogeneous condition in the space; also providing a means to give depth to facade’’.

When asked about Tokyo and the role of light in cities in general, Tsukamoto passionately described light as “something that moves. Sometimes it appears and sometimes it disappears. It gives the sense of movement and rhythm of a city’’.

Atelier Bow Wow’s work is incredibly diverse, ranging from an outdoor canal swimmer’s club in Bruges, Belgium to the Izu Book Café in Shizuoka, Japan and the Four Boxes Gallery in Skive, Denmark. Two very different but very interesting examples of its work – the BMW Guggenheim Lab and the Kitamoto Station Plaza – showcase how lighting complements architecture to produce social environments that understand human behaviour.

When asked to explain the lighting of the BMW Guggenheim lab in Mumbai, Tsukamoto says: “The lighting was incorporated in a theatrical manner.” The part urban think tank, part community centre and public gathering space, travelled globally to inspire new ways of thinking about urban life. During the six weeks of its Mumbai presentation, the third stop on the project’s global tour, organised in collaboration with the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, the Lab offered 165 free programs over 29 days, including design projects, surveys, tours, talks, workshops, and film screenings. The central location of the Lab was on the grounds of the museum in Mumbai’s Byculla neighbourhood, making it available to a wide range of audiences and communities. This is a perfect example of how Atelier Bow Wow’s principles can apply universally, even to external, semi-permanent architecture, creating an interactive space where lighting plays a crucial role.

At the Kitamoto Station Plaza in Saitama, Japan, the lighting was limited as much as possible to make pedestrians as visible as possible for drivers. With this in mind, “very small but powerful downlights were set in the ceiling, lining along the edge of the pavement,’’ says Tsukamoto. “Combined with uplights set into the pavement, illuminating the ceiling that is finished by locally sourced wooden planks. In doing this, reflection from the ceiling is coloured by the light, taking on the wooden colour.” In summary, for Tsukamoto light “is very important since it is the central element investigated in behaviourology”. This is apparent in all of his work, which plays on the diverse condition of light - sometimes bright, sometimes dark - to create conditions for people that suit different behaviours, creating a collision between the shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the artificial light of the modern age.

Noticing that human behaviour can be influenced by natural behaviour - for example, when shadow in the summer gathers people together – Tsukamoto believes the same influence can be implemented with light in architecture. His designs look to create spaces that become a more complex place of experience, with an interest in light and its interactions with other agents.

Although, traditionally, Tsukamoto’s cultural background doesn’t pay much attention to lighting buildings at night, (until neon light arrived from USA, when places like Tokyo became flooded by neon) people are now beginning to light rooms the western way with spotlights, for example. However, he still argues that there isn’t enough atmospheric light and that strong lighting isn’t necessary everywhere. For example in Norway, they have abolished the subject of lighting streets, highlighting the importance of shadow.

Yoshi Tsukamoto and Atelier Bow Wow offer an approach that creates a meaningful environment to live in – a place to share that creates social interaction between its inhabitants. The studio’s philosophy appreciates the fact that behaviours and their natural discipline can’t be changed. With this, it prioritises the shareable aspect of behaviour as a very important resource in architectural design, creating a synthesis between the behaviour of such things as light and the behaviour of people to result in un-institutionalised space. Put simply: “The idea of behaviourology can apply everywhere, it isn’t specific to any culture or country but is a universal principle / school of thought that can be utilised in all areas of architecture,’’ concludes Tsukamoto.

Pic: Courtesy of Atelier Bow Wow

www.bow-wow.jp

by Laurence Favager