Nude Tubes; Part 2

The plot thickens…

Further to the “Nude Tubes” post regarding the lighting design for an unamed film still in production, after a bit of trawling I managed to find a couple of stills of the finished light fittings.

It’s probably safe to say at this stage (as it’s due to premiere later this month) that the design was for Kirsten Sheridans new film Dollhouse. As the brief for the design is laid out in the original “Nude Tubes” post I won’t go over that again, It’s been over a year since my involvement, and it’s interesting to finally see some images.

More news on the actual film/plot here http://filmireland.net/2012/01/04/kirsten-sheridans-new-film-dollhouse-to-receive-world-premiere-at-berlin-film-festival/

So, yet another string to my bow comes to fruition, tho I’m uncertain of what title I’d be credited with (if at all) Either way, I’m happy (and a little proud) of the end results I’ve seen so far.

Underneath The Arches…

First off, If I was going to do this on an install, unless the clients wife insisted that red was her favourite colour, I wouldn’t use anything quite so garish (this was temporary for an event) It does however, serve quite a nice purpose in showing how mixing colour/colour temperature light sources can serve to add depth and dimension to an architectural feature.

Unfortunately The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham/IMMA is rarely open after dark, so the chances of me convincing Dublin Corporation to undertake an extensive overhaul of the pretty shoddy existing lighting (including some nice buried uplighters highlighting their wonderful arches) are somewhere between slim and sod all, but what is life without dreams.

For the lighting trainspotters amongst you, the uplighters used are Studio Due ArchiLED’s

Nude Tubes…

Ok, first up, yes I know it’s a bit of a Flavin rip off, but I like to consider it more “homage” (that’s how I sleep at night!)

Every so often I’m gifted by getting a job where I get to do a bit of “art”

This “feature wall” was part of a larger install involving a number of custom designed and built fluorescent light boxes commissioned for a film set.

The brief was pretty much “how do you light a room for a film without using film lights”

The shoot took place completely on location, in a house, one camera, handheld, following a group of teenagers systematically trashing the place, so all lighting had to come from fittings that would supply the required light levels without compromising the architectural integrity of the space.

Mainly this was achieved with the aforementioned light boxes, but coincidentally the art director had seen a  fluorescent install I’d created for a hotel and liked the idea of doing something on a smaller scale on one wall.

I know this is a bit of a teaser, but as the film’s in post production I don’t want to give too much away visually before it gets released, but I do hope to get some more overall shots at a later date.

So there you go! no rant, just a lot of love for the naked fluorescent tube in all it’s glory!

A tale of two light sources…

It was the best of lights, it was the worst of lights…sorry, couldn’t resist. First off I promise this is going to be the last post grumbling about crappy hotel lighting for a while, although I do have a particularly bad example up my sleeve I’m going to leave it for a while as this blog is in danger of becoming a flood of negativity.

These “2 in 1″ style fittings seem to be cropping up in hotel rooms all over the place, personally I find them aesthetically unappealing and more to the point I’ve yet to see one that actually performs both it’s required services with any degree of satisfaction. Basically they’re ugly and they don’t work. I don’t know of any interior or lighting designer that would have one in their own home as a bedside light, and if you realise the inherent flaws well enough to not use one yourself, why on earth force them on thousands of other people?

Anyway, on to the actual light…

Promising start! nice warm colour temp CFL. I was thinking to myself someones actually gone to the trouble of selecting the right bulb for this (on closer inspection there was no manufactures name but it was a Cfl, 15w 2700k lamp, nice and neat (i.e. didn’t stick out of the top of the shade) and until I inspected it thought it might actually be an incandescent (yes, it was THAT good)

OK, so someones obviously put some thought into this, let’s check out the “reading” light…

YIKES!! (and I promise there has been no Photoshop involved, it actually was that colour!!)

All my good and kindly thoughts washed away with a flick of a switch.

I tried to persevere, I really did, but after ten minutes trying to read under it my eyes hurt, my head hurt and my arms hurt. Yes, my arms…apart from the hideous colour temperature what you probably can’t tell from the photo is the beam angle was such a tight spot when pointed at a magazine page it only lit up the centre third of the page, to actually read by it I had to keep moving the magazine around to let the crisp blue light fall on the bit of the page I was trying to read.

It was some kind of LED, that much I know, but the manufacturer had the sense not to put any information as to who created the monstrosity, colour temperature, beam angle or wattage.

I want to force whoever spec’s these ugly, useless fittings to actually have them fitted on their bedside tables, it’s the only way I can think of to stop their insidious presence sweeping the hotel rooms of the world!

That is all. Promise there’s going to be some love up next post!

www.gasolinedesign.net

Radisson BLU forge ahead with bulb replacement…

You have to admire their ethics, unfortunately their aesthetics leave a lot to be desired!

Nice job of replacing incandescent bulbs with CFL’s but surely someone looked at it and thought “hang on, this is a prestige establishment, that just won’t do!”  or even “hmm…maybe we should get bigger shades…” Well apparently not…

You can’t blame the designer, I mean they’re by no means ugly fittings, they’re not particularly stunning or innovative, pretty bog standard hotel fare and probably look ok when they’re not fitted with a bulb that looks like a turtle sticking its head out of its shell! (that’s the polite analogy, I’m sure you can work out the other one!)

One can only hope this is the work of someone who doesn’t get paid enough to think and not company policy.

So come on Radisson Blu, Sligo, pull your finger out and either fit bulbs that don’t stick out like a literal sore thumb, or invest in some better shades!!

Feel free to call for a consultation!

www.gasolinedesign.net

When good lighting goes bad…

Ok, I promise this is the last one of these for a while. I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that It’s a manifestation of a mild dose of Aspergers (or something akin to that) that makes me notice this stuff. And I’m not making light of anyone who suffers from it, according to the experts a lot of us would be classed as borderline sufferers if we took the tests, for it (and for the record crowds freak me out too)

Anyway, for your pleasure (or horror) I give you, Birmingham International Airport, LED cove lighting. I wonder how many people see this every day and think “hello, somethings amiss here”  Maybe nobody, maybe they neither notice, nor care, or maybe they’ve been on to whoever installed it trying to get them back to sort out the problem. If the latter is true I sympathise. I’ve been in this position and It’s horrible, trying to get installers back to remedy failures or their own cock-ups is a nightmare, particularly if they’ve been paid.

Beyond the obvious problem, whoever installed it should remember to take their boxing gloves off next time they do a job!

Sometimes I dispair…

…I really do!

I swear, I don’t go out looking for examples of bad lighting in an attempt to justify my own job/taste/genius/raison d’etre, they just seem to appear to me. I actually wish they didn’t, I wish mis-matched colour temperatures of flourescent tubes didn’t induce in me an incandescent rage (see what I did there…) But they do, and it does, and for that I can only apologise.

Here we have two prime examples of rubbish lighting, both could easily have been avoided by a little common sense, pride in ones work and/or actually observing the result.

Name and Shame:

First up, The Swindon Hilton, I can’t remember the room number, but someone obviously mis-read the internal memo stating that the hotel was implementing the phased replacement of incandescent lighting with cfl’s

Seriously!! What were they thinking (my guess is they weren’t!)

Next up, The Clarion Hotel, Limerick.

Prime example of the “greening” of hotels, going horribly wrong…

If you’re going to replace incandescent lighting with LED’s at the very least you have an obligation to make sure that the lighting still serves its primary function of to actually illuminate. (The clue’s in the name people, It’s not rocket science!!)

sharing a hotel room with a colleague (or partner, for that matter) can be fraught with the potential for anti-social behaviour, stumbling around in the dark while the other person sleeps, one is wary of switching on the bedside light for fear of flooding the room with light, thus disturbing the peaceful slumber of the other occupant. Well congratulations Clarion Limerick, with this bedside fitting you’ve certainly avoided that potential pitfall!

There are times I wish I carried my light meter with me everywhere I go, so I could actually give figures to attest to how bad the light output of this monstrosity is/was. Not even touching on the sheer ugliness of the thing, I tried taking pictures of it on in the dark, admittedly it was with the camera on my blackberry, but still, you’d expect to see SOMETHING, even in the half daylight of one curtain open this was the best result I could achieve, this is it on, in daylight, and it still triggered the automatic flash!

I attempted to discover the manufacturer of the bulbs, but with the genius of foresight they’d neglected to put any information on the bulbs, neither manufacturer, or wattage.

I only have words to describe the weak, muddy pool of “warm” light emitted from the LED cluster “spot” that I can only assume is supposed to be a reading light. In 25 years of entertainment and architectural lighting I swear I’ve never seen this colour light before! To describe it as brown would do injustice to the colour brown, in fact to describe it as a light is stretching the definition to breaking point.

I know, as designers, hoteliers, etc we have to embrace alternate forms of lighting, but this kind of shoddy, slapdash approach is doing no one any good, the general public will never warm to alternatives to incandescents when day-to-day they are faced with this sort of crap!

Are ewe listening?…

My absolute favourite stand from Light + Build 2010!  Humour (if a bit obscure) sheep in glasses, and mostimportantly of all fantastic tuneable LED “windows”

Now if I could remember whos stand it was part of I’d be a happy man!

What I do remember is whoever it was, they didn’t have any literature on the product anywhere on their stand, and I definately signed up on their mailing list, but I’ve yet to recieve anything from them.

Out of the many stands I requested literature from only iLight and Zumbotel have bothered responding to my request.

I want to use your products people, why do you make it so hard???

ARE YOU LISTENING ?!?!?!?!

Less is more (more or less)

Less is more, but the less still has to be really good! Thats the crux of it. As far as maxims for design go, it’s a pretty good one, unfortunately too often it’s chanted by lazy, sloppy designers (can you be a sloppy minimalist?) to paper over the cracks (see how I managed to crowbar in an interior design idiom there) in a design where all too often the designer has just run out of ideas (or they’re just not very good)

All this is just a preamble to the fact that at the moment I’m really loving industrial design, especially these fittings from Sammode lighting. Designed and spec’d for hardcore industrial environments I think they’re just beautiful. But then I do seem to have an almost unhealthy obsession with fluorescent tubes, thanks mainly to the impact of being brought to a shuddering halt in front of a Dan Flavin piece in the tate modern years ago.

Photo: © Georges Fessy, DPA, Adagp

And if you’ve never heard of Flavin and you’re in any way interested, inspired or just like light I urge you, nay beseech you to check out his work.

So there it is,

first proper post and it’s got art, architecture, lighting, fluorescent tubes and the deconstruction of a design myth in it, how on earth do I top that!

Photo: J.P. Degroot, © Sammode  and www.sammode.com

Photo: Alain Caste, © Sammode and www.sammode.com

Hello world!!!

ok, just to be clear, before we get going on this, the “we love daa” is short for we love design, art and architecture (not necessarily in that order) not we love the Dublin Airport Authority (although I’m sure they’re very loveable people) Mind you as this is the first post I’m sure no-one will get to read it, but just in case you’re ever wondering, it has been explained!!

Anyway, hello world!! be patient, the standard banner pic will be gone asap, and from then on, no looking back! (or sideways…well, ok, maybe sideways)