Culture and Methods

of Lighting Design

Maurizio Rossi

Research Culture And Science Books series - Vol. 003

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RESEARCH CULTURE AND SCIENCE BOOKS (RCASB) series Vol. 003
ISSN: 2785-115X www.rcasb.eu

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Book Title: Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Author: Maurizio Rossi — Politecnico di Milano
DOI: 10.23738/RCASB.003
ISBN: 978-88-99513-16-0

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Published by Gruppo del Colore — Associazione Italiana Colore: December 2021
 Culture and Methods
of Lighting Design

Author
Maurizio Rossi

Research Culture And Science Books series - Vol. 003

GRUPPO DEL COLORE

ASSOCIAZIONE ITALIANA COLORE
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Table of contents

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Short biography of the author .........0.....cccccecee
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Chapter Lo e. ce cececeeeeccceccecceecceeeceseesseeseenecceecceeceacesaeeaeeceeeeaeeeseceseetseesseeesees 13
Lighting Design: culture and profession. ..............000::c::ccsceeeseeeseeeeeeeeeeteees 13
ADStr aC... cece ceeeec cee ceceeeeceeeseceeeeeeeeceetsaesaeseeeseeaeeceetersesseseeneeseeeeeaees 13
Keywords 2.2... ccc ccccceccesccececescesseeseceeeeceeeesceascessesseeesseesecesecscesacesaceasecstenees 13
1.1 Introduction to human beings and the sunlight Gods........................ 14
1.2 Light in the history of science ............e.ccecceeceeeceeeeeecceeeceeetesceeseenseeees 17
1.3 Light from physics to visual perception.................2.cce:ceeeeceeeeeeeeeeees 23
1.4 Lighting vs exhibition... 2... ceceeeceece cece ceseesccececescenseeeceseecseceseenseenees 25
1.5 Lighting and color for TV and Cinema...............0:.2:cce:cceseeeeeeeeeeeeeees 28
1.6 Social tasks and professional profile of the designer ........................ 32
DE COMIC IISTOUS tetas dt cascsclle Waratah aed ll Malta MalBbc ASE 36
1,8 ‘Confhet of interest déclaratOtec ecciovscccscassesenesemrarnieswaxasee: 36
1.9 Funding source declaration .................e:cceccceceesccececesceeseessceeceeenseenees 36
Acknowledgment ...............:ccecccescesceeeseeceesceeeeceecesceescesaeecseceseeneeesseeseeens 36
References oc... eeeccecceccecceseeeccseseceseeeeesceseeeceeceeseeseeseeeeeeseeceeeeeeeeeseeeeees 37
Chapter 2 ooo... ceceececceeeceescescceeecesecesceaceessecseeeseceeecneccescesaeaecaeeeseeseeeneeeseeess Al
Innovation and lighting design Work ..................cccccecesceescesceeeseeeeeeseeeeeeeees Al
PUPS ACT. st 218 cninnd NAIM the tlhe Mien Manat ieneiod Slat ttn Med censensiniscednlS teeta Al
Keywords 2.2... ccc ceccceccesccesccescesseesceeeeseeeeuscessceseeseecssceseeesecescesseesaeeeecseenees Al
2.1 Tntrod ction... eee eececcecceeceec cece eceeeeeeeeeceececeaeseseeeceesaseseeseeneeseeenees 42
2.2 Effects of research on lighting design.................2.c:cc:cesceeeceeeeeseeeeeeees 46
Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

2.3 The players of lighting design..................ccceceecceceeseeesceeeeeeeeeeenetenees 49

2.4 Research Centers 20.2.2... ceeecceseeceeceeceeccescecceseceeceeceeeeeeeecseeseeeeenteeens 50
2 SMA GOL VS OULD OR aise tiated Arata Nate lNn anaeenadtndaieatt 51
2.6 Roles and activities of the lighting designer ..................00.::cceeeeees 53
2.7 Innovation anid MeHOS.....c.nc.-.c.eecnennoseannersase tmenentinediedbanansneansanaencers 58
2.8 Conflict of interest declaration. ........0....c.ccceesceeceeseeeceseeteeseeeeeteeeeenees 68
2.9 Funding source declaration ...............cccccecceeseesceeceeescesseesseeeeeseestenees 68
Acknowléd
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PRE LCTEMC SS co cottla RO act harlem Mh ocr I celta i Ba acd cece 68
Chapter 3.0 2. ce cecceccceecccsccecceecceseceseecseesscenecceeccaeceacesaceseeeeecaeecseceseenseeseeneees 73
Perception of Light and Color .............2.ceccececeecceecceseeeeeeceeseeeeeeeeeeeseeseeeneees 73
ADStr act... ecceeceec cee ceceeeeceeeeeceeteeeseceetsaescecaeeseeateceaeeeeeseeeseneeseeneeaees 73
Keywords oo... cece cecceecceeceeeeeeeeceecesecescesseesaceseeceecesecesceeacesaeeeseeneeeeeeseeees 73
3.1 IMOdUC
HO Diss cascenecsserseeemener
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3.2 Vision: facts and illUsions ........ 2.0... cee ceeeceeeeeeeeeeceeceeeeeceeseeseeteeseeenens 76
3.3 Perceptual adaptation Of VISION ..............2.:.::secceeceeceeeececeeeseetteetseeteees 84
AC OO cree SP a a ac te sc a ce 88
3.5 Color Spaces........eeceeeceeceecceccesceeseeseeceeceeecscesacesceceseseseeseeeseeeseesseeesees 91
3.6 Limits of colorimetry «.............ccccccecccecceeccesceeecescecececeeeeseeeseeeseeseeeens 98
3.7 Light spectrum and Color .............ccccceceecceeccesceesceeeeseceeseeseeeseceeeeeaees 99
3.8 The color rendering open problem.....................2::c::ceeceeesesceeeseeeteees 104
3.9 Conclusions: real vs virtual perception .................:.:ceeceeeeeseeeeeeeeees 107
3.10 Conflict of interest declaration. .............:cccescescesceeeeeseeseeteeseeseeeenes 111
3.11 Funding source declaration ..................ccccecceeeceeceeeceeeceeseeeseeeeeeeeeees 111
AcknOWIEd SMMGNIS escccsecseecsseescepenennree
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References 2.2... cececeecceseeeeeseeeeesceseesceseceeceacesceceeseceesaeceeeeeteeeeseeeterenteess 111
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Lighting design constraints and methods...............:.0:cceccceceeeeeceeeeeeeeeeteeees 119
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

ADStr act... cece eceeceecceccesceeeceeeeeceeeeeeeeesesaesaesaceseeseeeeseeereeseesseneeseeaeens 119

Keywords oo... cece ceeceeecesceceeceeceecceeecescecsseeeeececesecscesacesaeeseceeeeseenseeeees 119
4.1 Introduction to regulatory bodies for lighting..............0....0::ceee 120
4.2 Framework of standards for lighting............0...0....ceccecceeeseeeeeeeeeeeees 124
ASS si Ent UT GT cscssercsece setae MS SINS SSE nella nea cUNE Sian 127
4.4 Lighting sustainability ......0...0.0. cee ceceeeceesceeseeeeececceeeceseeeeseeeeneeeeees 130
4.5 Lighting design methods and objectives ................::ceccceeseeeeeeeeeeees 138
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eva oa eaaE nye area 143
4.7 Conflict of interest declaration. .............c.:ccecesceeeeeeeeeeeeeeteeeeeeeeneeees 145
4.8 Funding source declaration.................c:cccecceseeecceecceseeeeseeeeeseeeeeeeees 145
Acknowledgment ...........0...:ccecccesceeceeeseeeceesecesecescesseesseeseeceecesecescenseenees 145
References oo... cececeecceseeeceeeeeeeceseesceseceeceacesceceeseceeseeceeceetesetseeeeseeeeneees 146
Culture and Methods of Lighting Design
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Preface
Lighting Design is a technical and creative activity influenced by cultural,
perceptual, technological, communicative, methodological, and economic
aspects. It is multidisciplinary. The need to manage a medium as intangible
as light presents technological and methodological difficulties in developing
projects. Today's lighting project requires operators capable of effectively
connecting the perceptive, technical, economic, and _ socio-cultural
dimensions and of starting from here to propose new design syntheses. In
this context, the most relevant changes are to be found in methodological
and technological innovations, represented by international standards, new
light sources, and innovative tools that information technology (IT) and the
Internet have made available to support the process of lighting design. Until
the advent of LEDs, the way of designing lighting evolved slowly over a
century, hand in hand with the development of technological innovation
typical of the electromechanical industry. In recent years, however,
companies in the lighting industry have been busy metabolizing the new
lighting technology represented by LEDs, which have almost replaced other
artificial light sources. LEDs are photoelectronic components and lighting
companies, accustomed for decades to working in the electromechanical
sector, had to quickly acquire skills in the electronics sector and adapt to the
rapid development of products in the electronics sector.
The first chapter introduces the culture of lighting design in the relationship
between human beings, understood as users or designers, and lighting. The
figure of the designer develops in the relationship between social tasks,
technical skills, and the definition of the professional profile of the Lighting
Designer. In the methodology of design, there are new drivers of
innovation, which in less than fifteen years have led to a radical change in
the working methods of the designer.
The second chapter focuses on the ways in which artificial electric lighting
has changed the lives of humans over the past century. It also analyzes the
leading areas of research and development in the field of lighting and the
consequent areas of intervention of the lighting design work in a period,
such as the current one, of strong innovation in tools and methods.
The past decade has seen the proliferation of new standards that define
quantitative requirements and introduce qualitative lighting criteria. In the

9
Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

third chapter, attention is paid to methods resulting from the environmental

sustainability issue, the aspects relating to energy savings, the end-of-life of
lighting products, and the regulatory situation.
The fourth chapter examines human beings and their visual perception.
Color and light are two aspects of the same visual sensation and must be
considered in the context of our visual system's perceptual adaptation. The
human visual system (HVS) is then placed in relation to the lighting
project's process aspects and the potential and limitations of virtual project
simulation to evaluate the qualitative and perceptual aspects of lighting.
This book was born from research at the Lab. Luce and teaching
experiences, gained since 1997 at the Politecnico di Milano, in addition to
experiences in the direction of the Master in Lighting Design & LED
Technology and the Master in Color Design & Technology.

Maurizio Rossi

10
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Short biography of the author

Full Professor of Design- tenured at the Design dept. of the Politecnico di
Milano since 2019. Previously, from 2002 to 2010, assistant professor and,
from 2010 to 2019, associate professor at the Politecnico di Milano.
Scientific Manager of the Laboratorio Luce of the Politecnico di Milano
since 2002. Since 1998 he has directed 25 research projects on light an color
funded by public tenders or research contracts/conventions, 24 at the
Politecnico di Milano. Member of the Faculty of the Ph.D. in Design of the
Politecnico di Milano.
At Politecnico di Milano he teaches in the courses of Lighting Design and
Design Methods. Since 2010 he has been the director of the Master in
Lighting Design & LED Technology of the Politecnico di Milano. Since
2014 he has been the director of the Master in Color Design & Technology
of the Politecnico di Milano. Director of 51 lifelong traming courses
organized firstly by the In.D.A.Co. Dept. and then by the Design dept. of
the Politecnico di Milano. Director of 33 higher education courses of the
Poli.Design consortium.
Vice-President of the AIC-International Colour Association 2022-2023.
President-Elect of the AIC-International Colour Association 2024-2025.
Since 2018 member of the Executive Committee of the AIC-International
Colour Association. Since 2021 he has been a member of the Board of
Directors of SID-Societa Italiana Design. President of the GdC-
Associazione Italiana Colore from 2012 to 2018. Since 2012 he has been a
member of the Board of Directors of GdC-Associazione Italiana Colore.
He has published 166 scientific publications, including 6 books as author,
16 as editor, 18 essays in books, 15 articles in international journals, 7
articles in ANVUR class A journals, and 20 in ANVUR scientific journals,
55 papers im international conference proceedings as well as other
publications. Since he 1s 2014 editor-in-chief of the Color Culture &
Science Journal. He was chair of 10 international conferences in the English
language. He was a speaker at 17 international conferences.
PhD in Computer Science at the Universita degli Studi di Milano in 2004.
Degree in SS.MM.FF.NN. at the Universita degli Studi di Milano in 1989.

11
Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

12
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Chapter 1
Lighting Design: culture and profession
Maurizio Rossi, Politecnico di Milano

Abstract
This chapter introduces the culture of lighting design in the relationship
between human beings, understood as users or designers, and lighting. The
relations between light and humans evolved over thousands of years from a
cultural and scientific point of view. The figure of the designer develops in
the relationship between social tasks, technical skills, and the definition of
the professional profile of the Lighting Designer. In the methodology of
lighting design, there are new drivers of innovation, which in less than
fifteen years have led to a radical change in the lighting designer's job.
Some of the most relevant drivers are IT tools for virtual design verification
and smart lighting control. Apart from technology, the designer's choices
can make any project unforgettable or sink its quality, invalidating the
efforts of all other figures involved in the design process. This is true for
general lighting and for the exhibition and show. In reality, this is a mix of
color and lighting design, with varied and fascinating contents that must be
known and valorized.

Keywords
Lighting design, light history, culture, science, entertainment

Book title: Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Book DOI 10.23738/RCASB.003
Book ISBN 978-88-995 13-16-0
Research Culture and Science Book Series Vol 3
Series ISSN 2785-115X www.rcasb.eu

13
Chapter I Lighting Design: culture and profession

1.1 Introduction to human beings and the sunlight Gods

Before talking about new methodologies and technologies, let us introduce
the historical-cultural aspects of the relationship between human beings and
light.
Light and vision, a natural phenomenon and a perceptual sense that
characterize the existence of human beings. How many people in daily life
grasp how much light permeates all of our activities? Although in modern
civilization light has become an object of scientific study explained
through various physical models, it is still as obvious as air, which does
not raise questions in most of us. This introduces the topic of light in
ancient cultures and how this light was related to the Sun. And even
without a scientific culture, the Sun was reasonably considered the origin
of life (Singh, 1993).
In the ancient Sumerian scriptures, the Mesopotamian Sun God Utu
reappeared illuminating the sky and Earth after the Great Flood, and
Ziusudra (Noah) then made an opening in the boat, through which Utu also
lighted the interior, thus defeating the darkness. Utu was worshipped for
more than 3000 years up to the end of the Mesopotamian culture, starting
from around 3500 BC.
In Heliopolis, the ancient Egyptians worshipped Ra, the Sun God, with a
hawk's head and human features, placing him at the center of their religious
culture. For the Egyptians, other likenesses of the God included Atum and
Kepri. In many situations Ra was represented as a hawk carrying the bright
disk of the Sun above his head. Some cultures identified the Sun crossing
the sky with the body of the Sun God, while others believed it to be his eye.
In its double meaning of God, Atum-Ra was a creator deity with the gift of
bestowing life: his tears were believed to have created the human race. In
the New Kingdom, in Thebes, the Sun God bearer of light was identified
with Ammon. He was also credited with the creation of intelligence and
reasoning. In fact, it was believed that during circumcision, by injuring his
phallus, Ammon lost drops of blood that would be transformed into the
authority Hu, and the intelligence Sia, which represented the intuitive
qualities of intelligence and the power of intellect.
In Buddhist mythology, Marici is the God, sometimes represented as a
Goddess riding a boar, representing the light and the Sun. Some of his
earliest iconographies are in India and Tibet, where Marici is depicted
driving a chariot pulled by seven horses, similar to the other Sun deity
Surya. In Chinese mythology, the cosmic Goddess of heaven, Doumit, from
the Tang dynasty of Chinese Buddhism was confused with the Goddess
Marict.

14
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

py
2____

Figure 1.1 - Ra, the Sun God of the ancient Egyptians represented with a hawk's
head surmounted by the Sun.

Figure 1.2 — A representation of the Nanahuatl God, from the Yoalli Ehécatl pre-
Columbian manuscript (around XV Century).

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Chapter I Lighting Design: culture and profession

In the empire of the Incas, born from the conquest of many tribes bordering
their own, religion assimilated many of the cultural traditions of the
conquered peoples. One of these was Inti, the Sun God. The latter was
considered the true creator of the Incas and it was Inti who, according to an
ancient legend, had given Manco Capac, the first Inca emperor, the golden
rod that would allow him to find the place where Cuczo, the ancient capital
of the empire, would be built.
According to Aztec mythology, the Nanahuatl God sacrificed himself in fire
in order to shine on Earth, thus becoming the fifth Sun God. They thought
that the previous four Sun had been destroyed by the hurrincanes, the
jaguars, the rain of fire and a great flood. In the legend of the serpent God
Quetzalcoatl, Nanahuatl helps him to obtain the first seeds of agriculture in
what will become the food of humanity, thus placing the Sun God at the
basis of agriculture and nutrition.
Among the Celts, the Druids, men of culture and priests of the ancient
people, have always claimed the paternity of Stonehenge in England. Still
today, every year, at dawn on June 21, the place is a destination for many
tourists and curious people, who go there to see the Sun rising at the
alignment between the Hell Stone and the center of the monument. For this
reason, scholars believe that the henge monument is a temple to the Sun
God. Belenus is the Proto-Celtic god of light and healing, whose cult
developed from the Italian peninsula to the British Isles. While Etain is the
Irish goddess, she is considered a solar deity. In the Celtic Baltic, Saulé is
the most powerful solar goddess among the deities because she is
responsible for heat, fertility, life, and health.
From the Neolithic, and perhaps even earlier, until the Roman age, the
pagan communities of Europe drew symbols, built shrines and fashioned
images corresponding to the daily and seasonal movement of the Sun, to its
essential properties as a source of light and heat, to its many positive values
for the life of human beings. Like Usil, the Etruscan solar deity is similar to
the Greek God Helios and the Roman God Sol. The image of the Sun God
in the Roman-Celtic Europe shows, at least in its most evolved forms,
functions that, in previous periods, were only implied: the powers of the
Sun govern the cosmos, protecting humans and animals, and it is always
these powers that regulate the main human activities, the reproduction of the
species, breeding and agriculture, death and rebirth in the afterlife.
The attitude of human beings in antiquity towards the Sun can perhaps be
compared to that of the great Flemish painter Vincent Van Gogh, who,
during the period of his life in Arles, was obsessed and fascinated by the
light and color of the Sun. It is in fact in the sudden awareness of the Sun as

16
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

a source of light that the great painter recognized the secret of life and
expressed his art.

1.2 Light in the history of science

Light is life. Without sunlight, with its alternating sunrises and sunsets,
there would be no life on earth. Light is also energy. All human activities
are directly or indirectly affected by light radiation (Rossi, 2019). If,
absurdly, the sun suddenly went out, all the most modern human
technologies would not be able to sustain the survival of our species.
By limiting the analysis of light to the aspects of visibility alone, the scope
of natural and artificial illumination nevertheless extends to all bases of
human culture. Visual communication, the perception of colors and shapes,
are possible only thanks to the information that light carries to our sensory
organs responsible for vision: the eyes and the brain (Zeki, 1993).
The images we perceive are the result of the brain's cognitive perception of
light reflected from the surfaces of objects to our eyes. When we see an
object, it is because it reflects light from other surfaces or emits its own
light. The same shapes can appear different depending on the type of light
they receive (Gregory, 2015); in fact, illumination can vary in terms of color
but also according to the set of directions from which it comes; in addition
to the geometric shape of objects, we can also consider the shape/direction
of light, but this is much more difficult to define and technically control
than geometric shapes. If we consider a sculpture such as Michelangelo's
Pieta, characterized by a marble surface with a homogeneous chromatic
aspect, we can observe that the perception of such a valuable work of art is
possible thanks to the presence of lights and shadows on its surface.
Assuming to illuminate the work through an absolutely uniform
ulumination on all its surface, the absence of different levels of illumination
and luminance perceived by the eyes of the observer would not make it
possible to identify points of reference on the statue and therefore would
make difficult also to perceive depth and shape.
For centuries, scientists have been trying to describe light using physical
and mathematical models. Observing that light does not go around obstacles
but propagates in a straight line, in the seventeenth century Isaac Newton
assumed that the only possible explanation was the one already proposed by
Pythagoreans almost 2000 years earlier. The light had to be composed of a
beam of tiny particles launched from the light source at very high speed;
these, hitting objects, made them appear illuminated. And this was the
theory he proposed in his famous treatise on Optics, published at the
beginning of eighteenth century (Newton, 1704).

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Chapter I Lighting Design: culture and profession

At that time the laws of reflection and refraction of light were

experimentally known and represented a good test to demonstrate the
validity of the various theories on the nature of light. The law of refraction
states that when a light ray crosses the separation surface between two
media, in which light can propagate, then the incident ray, the transmitted
ray and the normal lie in the same plane and the sine of the angle of
refraction is proportional to the sine of the angle of incidence according to
the difference in density of the two media. The law of reflection states that
the incident ray, the reflected ray and the normal to a surface at the point of
reflection lie in the same plane, and furthermore the angle of reflection is
equal to the angle of incidence.
Using the laws of corpuscular mechanics, Newton was able to describe the
phenomenon of light reflection. According to this model, light corpuscles
behave like spheres thrown against a well-smoothed rigid surface. Indeed, it
is possible to verify that if a sphere arrives on a rigid surface with a certain
angle of incidence it bounces with an angle equal to the angle from which it
comes. The different colors of light were explained by the different speed of
the corpuscles hitting the eye: for example the fastest corpuscles would give
the violet effect and the slowest corpuscles the red effect. Newton also tried
to explain the phenomenon of refraction of light with the corpuscular
model, but according to this model the speed of light had to be greater in the
most refracting media. Newton himself affirmed that if some experiment
had demonstrated the contrary, his corpuscular theory had to be abandoned;
nevertheless, considering the importance that at that ttrme Newton had as a
scientist and as a politician, his theory dominated for the entire century
following the publication of his work.
A contemporary of Newton, Christiaan Huygens, formulated the the wave
theory of light, stating that this should be composed of a set of small
vibrations and that the different colors of light should be attributed to
different wavelengths (Huygens, 1690). This theory explained well both the
phenomenon of reflection and refraction and also chromatic dispersion.
However, it raised at least two questions: if light is a wave, why do shadows
form? That is, why does it only propagate in a straight line? In fact, in the
seventeenth century many laws of acoustics were already known, in
particular that sound waves can propagate also with a spherical wavefront
as it happens with the waves originated from a stone thrown into a pond.
For Huygens the biggest problem was the fact that light also passed through
vacuum and therefore he asked himself what was the medium through
which the light wave propagated. To give an answer to this question, which
was of primary importance for the wave theory, a dogma of the ancient

18
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Greeks was revived, te. the existence of an imvisible and intangible

substance that permeates all creation: the ether. According to Huygens, light
would be a wave propagating through this substance.
Which of the two assumptions was correct? The corpuscular theory seemed
to interpret well the phenomenon of shadow formation while the undulatory
theory was able to explain most optical phenomena in an elegant way. Only
towards the middle of 1800 a French physicist (Fizeau, 1851), measuring
the speed of light in water, verified that it decreased in denser media;
therefore the corpuscular model for the description of refraction could not
be considered valid. Fizeau was the first to measure the speed of light in air
and water in 1849. Along with Focault, he was also the first to take a clear
photograph of the surface of the sun. At the beginning of 1800 other
experiments showed the prevalence of the wave theory on the corpuscular
one. These experiments were the work of the English scientist Thomas
Young and the French physicist Augustin Fresnel. Thomas Young, an
English physicist, physician and Egyptologist was also involved in studies
of the eye and the description of astigmatism; he also participated in the
decipherment of the Rosetta Stone.
j
| ;
|
1

Figure 1.3 - Thomas Young's experiment that showed the phenomenon of diffraction
and light interference.

In his experiment Young sent a beam of monochromatic light toward two

small slits a short distance apart. The light coming out of the holes did not
proceed in a straight line but widened to form two cones. The light collected
on a screen formed a region where the two light beams were superimposed
and not two individual illuminated areas, as it might be expected from
corpuscular theory. In addition, in the region where the beams overlapped,
the illumination did not appear more intense but very bright areas and areas
of darkness were observed (Young, 1804). Through this experience Young

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Chapter I Lighting Design: culture and profession

observed certain phenomena that proved to be fundamental in

understanding the nature of light. One phenomenon, i.e. the widening of
light beams, is called light diffraction and is a direct consequence of
Huygens' principle. A wave passing through the opening takes on a circular
appearance, propagating in directions oblique to that of arrival. Therefore,
one might think that light is a wave phenomenon like the waves of the sea.
Not only that, this hypothesis is strengthened by the observation of the
behavior of the encounter of two waves, where very high wave peaks and
lower ones can be observed. It should then be noted that a slit opening much
larger than the wavelength does not produce a significant effect. In his
experiment, Young used very small slits but with larger slits only two bright
spots appeared on the screen. The conclusion is that light is an undulatory
phenomenon with very small wavelength. If light produces shadows with
defined contours, it is because the objects around us are much larger than
the wavelength of the light.
The wave model was also considered, but for this to be acceptable, the
scientific method required the demonstration of the existence of the ether.
So towards the end of 1800 two American scientists, Albert Michelson,
Nobel prize for physics in 1907, and Edward Morley, proposed an
experiment to demonstrate the ether's existence. Their idea was based on the
consideration that the Earth, as it travels through space, must be subjected to
an apparent wind from the ether, and being able to measure the speed of this
wind would mean knowing the absolute speed of the Earth through space.
Humans are not able to perceive the apparent wind of the ether, contrary to
the light that is transported by the ether. According to this hypothesis then,
if a light ray is directed in the same direction of the ether wind, it should
travel faster than one that proceeds perpendicular to the ether. In the first
case the speed of light is added to the speed of the ether but not in the
second case. The following step would have been to measure the difference
between the speed of light with the ether wind in favor or across. The
experiment, repeated a large number of times in various conditions of
measurement and with increasingly precise instruments, failed continuously
so that they surrendered to the evidence and in 1887 they stated that the
speed of light with respect to the Earth is equal in all directions (Michelson
and Morley, 1887).
The Austrian scientist Ernst Mach, physicist and philosopher was one of the
leaders of modern positivism, preaching for science to get rid of religious
and metaphysical assumptions that for centuries had oppressed it, after
learning the results of Michelson and Morley, came to the fundamental
conclusion that the speed of light is equal in all directions because there is

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no ether wind and therefore the ether does not exist. But if countless
experiments and theories had confirmed that light phenomena had a wave
character, then what kind of waves was light made of? For a long time,
physicists dealing with electricity and magnetism had assumed that light
and electromagnetism were closely related. In fact, electrical and magnetic
forces, like light, could be exerted at a distance without the need for any
solid, liquid or gaseous substance. To explain this it was necessary to resort
to a new and fundamental concept: that of field of action of a force that can
be gravitational, electrical or magnetic.
It was Michael Faraday who first highlighted the link between the
oscillations of the electric field and those of the magnetic field and who,
towards the middle of the century, assumed that light was connected with
the propagation in space of these field (Faraday, 1851). In 1864 James Clerk
Maxwell was able to give a theoretical basis to Faraday's experiences
formulating a set of equations able to describe the phenomenon of
propagation of electromagnetic waves in all its aspects. These are precisely
Maxwell's equations, which have become the foundation of
electromagnetism and modern optics (Maxwell, 1864). According to the
theory of electromagnetism, light is an electromagnetic radiation with a
wavelength between 380 and 780 nm where the pure colors of the rainbow
correspond to monochromatic radiation of different wavelengths.
After Faraday and Maxwell it seemed that the theories about the nature of
light were complete, so that scientists of that time thought that in physics
there was nothing more to know. However, at the end of the nineteenth
century, the debate reopened. In particular, two experiments challenged
classical physics: the black body emission and the photoelectric effect.
The ideal blackbody is an object capable of fully absorbing light of all
possible frequencies, transforming light energy into heat. Around 1850, the
physicist Robert Kirchhoff discovered that a substance capable of absorbing
certain light frequencies emits the same frequencies if properly heated and,
therefore, following the physical laws of those times, if a black body is
brought to high temperature it should emit light energy equally divided
among all the frequencies (Kirchhoff, 1859). A few years later, the English
physicist Lord Rayleigh, Nobel laureate in physics in 1904, proposed that
intensity gradually increased with frequency. In reality, however, Kirchhoff
and Rayleigh's predictions turned out to be wrong. In fact, another German
physicist, Wilhelm Wien, Nobel Prize for Physics in 1911, analyzing the
spectral emission of a black body brought to different temperatures, found
that there was emission of all frequencies but not with constant intensity.
The Wien experiment had therefore disproved any possible prediction of

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blackbody emission obtained with the theoretical assumptions of those

times. The explanation of this phenomenon is due to Max Planck, Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1918. He hypothesized that, contrary to popular belief,
the probability of emission of an incandescent body was not the same for all
frequencies but decreased as the frequency increased. Planck's theories were
based on the hypothesis that light energy did not flow with continuous
values but thickened in quanta or packets of light (Planck, 1914).
At the end of the nineteenth century there was news of another experiment
that could not be explained by the wave theory of light. A German
physicist, Philipp von Lenard, Nobel prize for physics m 1905, had
discovered that a metal hit by a beam of monochromatic light emits
electrons: this phenomenon ts called photoelectric effect. In the experiment
he noted that there was no emission of electrons when the incident radiation
has a frequency below a certain threshold value, even with or very high
light intensity. In addition, by increasing the intensity of the light beam the
number of electrons emitted increased but the speed at which electrons
leave the metal was always the same. In order to increase the speed of
electrons, it was necessary to vary the frequency of light towards the violet
or ultraviolet region. The wave theory of light fails to explain the results of
this experiment. In fact, for the wave theory electrons can be emitted
whatever the frequency of light, as long as it is of sufficient intensity. Also,
contrary to experience, wave theory predicts an increase in the velocity of
emitted electrons as light intensity increases.
The one interpreting this phenomenon was Albert Einstein, Nobel prize for
physics in 1921, who resumed and expanded the hypothesis made years
before by Max Planck on black body emission. According to Emstein, not
only energy exchanges between radiation and matter occur in a quantized
manner, but the same radiant energy propagates in space grouped in many
packets called light quanta or photons. The photoelectric effect can be
interpreted as a collision between photons of light radiation and electrons of
matter; in this collision an electron, hit by a photon, can absorb its energy.
For the photoelectric effect to occur it is necessary that this energy,
transported by the photon and absorbed by the electron, is at least equal to
the work needed to extract electron from atom. As the intensity of light
radiation increases, if the frequency is kept fixed, the number of incident
photons increases and therefore the number of emitted electrons, but not
their energy. Thus, the light quantum hypothesis provides a satisfactory
model for the interpretation of the photoelectric effect (Eimstein, 1905).
The work of Planck and Einstein had the merit of clarifying the nature of
light: it has both wave and corpuscular aspects. There are phenomena that

22.
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

can be explained with both theories such as the rectilinear propagation of

light, while the phenomena of interaction of light with itself, such as
interference and diffraction, are interpreted with the wave theory. On the
other hand, the corpuscular theory is better suited to explain the interactions
between light and matter.
The seemingly irreconcilable contradiction between corpuscular and wave
theory of light has been clarified, and formalized in the twenties, by
physicists Werner Karl Heisenberg, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932, and
Erwin Schroedinger, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. This marked the birth
of quantum physics, an essential tool for the treatment of atomic processes.
With it we can also study large-scale phenomena, although the results to
which we are led are not very different from classical or Newtonian physics.
With these hypotheses, Newton's old idea of luminous corpuscles comes
back into play, although we now refer more to agglomerates of energy than
actual material projectiles.

1.3 Light from physics to visual perception

It is also thanks to theoretical studies of light that artificial light
technology, which has developed from the late 1800s to the present day,
has changed the human perception of the relationship between the Sun,
now considered a small star in the infinite universe, and light. In fact, light
now exists even without the Sun, so the styles and rhythms of life have
changed accordingly. The Sun is synonymous with health, the outdoors,
clean energy but also, unfortunately, harmful ultraviolet radiation (de
Gruijl, 1999). In some cases, excessive sunlight must even be made more
controllable and modifiable to facilitate work and leisure activities. The
continuous and constant development of artificial light sources has led to
a radical change in the image of the city in the evening and night hours,
but also to the possibility to illuminate, on command or automatically,
residential and working interiors, meeting, leisure and socialization
places. Artificial lighting has become a consumer good and is a
distinguishing element between modern and primitive societies. The
cultural, social, scientific and technological development of modern
society is closely related to artificial light. Light can provide simple visual
signals but also convey more structurally complex information, such as
reading a book or digital screen.
In order to be stimulating, artificial lighting must not be obsessive and
homogeneous, like the aseptic one created by electrical installers in the
slavish respect of the old norms, but it must rediscover the variability and
changeability of natural environments, respecting colors and_ the

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fundamental value of shadows, as well as the artistic values linked to the

use of light as an instrument of artistic representation.
The colors and shapes we see are an inner perceptual projection of the real
world (Zeki, 1993). Light transmits this information to the receptors in our
visual organs. If an object appears red to us, it is because it reflects light of a
certain type. If it appears spherical instead of cubic it is because the
variation of luminance of the light, reflected from the surface, allows us to
elaborate at a cerebral level the perception of the variation of the distances
of its parts from our eyes (Gregory, 2015).
With regard to form, we can also note that the visual perceptual sensation
can also be confirmed by touch; at least two different senses can comfort us
about the material nature of things. With regard to color, we can't say the
same. In the reality of physics, objects are not colored and light has no
color. For over a century we have been knowing that light does not have
chromatic characteristics but rather electromagnetic spectral characteristics
or, according to an even more modern theory, it is formed by photons: tiny
wave packets that in some cases behave as corpuscles and in others as
waves. Color is a psycho-perceptual sensation that our brain processes
according to the spectral characteristics of the light information it receives
from the surrounding environment as a whole. If a surface appears yellow to
us, it is because it reflects light by modifying its spectrum according to a
precise law of reflectance, with respect to the surrounding context. The
perception of this spectrum will produce the sensation of yellow in our
cerebral cortex. However, we cannot have any evidence that the same light
spectrum produces identical colorimetric stimuli in two different subjects.
Just as we don't know if the person sitting next to us perceives the world,
with the various senses, exactly as we do. Associating the perception of a
given spectrum with a color and name, yellow, is something we are taught
in our childhood, it is related to our cultural development.
Having accepted the association between the spectrum of light, the
perceived chromatic sensation and the name that we give to a color, the
question arises: why do we want to distinguish between chromatic and
spectral characteristics? The reason is that the human visual perceptual
system does not behave as a simple measuring instrument, associating
colors to spectra, but it rather interprets spectral information within a given
context and, from the analysis of the information received, produces the
color sensation. Evidence for this claim also comes from the introduction of
artificial light into human activities.
Sunlight, which we generally consider white, has an energy content
distributed fairly uniformly over all wavelengths of the visual spectrum;

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these, perceived separately, are the fundamental colors of the rainbow, the
pure colors. With natural lighting we perceive objects with colors such as
yellow, blue, red, green and all the intermediate hues, but also the magenta
hues that do not exist in the rainbow. If we illuminate the same objects with
the classic tungsten filament incandescent bulb, we perceive the same
colors, perhaps slightly yellowed, but we are still able to distinguish them.
However, the light spectra reflected from the same objects under the two
different types of illumination are substantially different. The spectrum of
light reflected from a surface actually depends both on its material and on
the spectrum of incident light. Additionally, it is known that, unlike
sunlight, incandescent bulb light emits little radiation in the blue and green
spectral regions and much more in the yellow and red spectral regions.
How then can the brain produce similar color sensations in the presence of
substantially different light spectra? Visual perception is an open research
topic worldwide and much remains to be discovered. Some believe,
however, that the reason for the human ability to compensate for the
dominant colors, due to different illuminating spectra, is a factor developed
with evolution, as the best possible tool to distinguish objects, colors and
dangers, in the struggle for survival under all types of natural illumiation:
from direct sunlight to that filtered by the green in the dense forest, to the
night light of the moon or torch fires. Edwin Land, founder of the Polaroid
Corporation, presented a theory according to which we do not distinguish
colors by directly assessing perceived light spectra, but rather by comparing
them instantaneously with the entire context in which they are perceived
(Land, 1977). This comparison operation makes it possible to greatly
attenuate the chromatic dominance due to illuminance, since this component
is uniformly distributed over all the perceived surfaces.

1.4 Lighting vs exhibition

The incredible influence of lighting on people has been known since the
days of classical theater. Still, the advent of artificial lighting made it
possible to bring the impact of light to levels never reached before
(Schielke, 2019). A striking example of the use of electric light in a scenic
context of propaganda was the well-known "Cathedral of light." In 1934,
at the Zeppelintribune in Nuremberg on the occasion of the
Reichsparteitag (the annual meeting of the Nazi party), Albert Speer,
Hitler's trusted architect, used 152 searchlights with a diameter of 150 cm,
loaned by the Luftwaffe to outline the frame of the immense stadium
capable of host over 340.000 people. The effect obtained left the
ambassadors of other states astonished (Speer, 1970), and the joint use of

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Richard Wagner's music, Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg, was what

consecrated the power expressed in that event (Moller, 1980). More than
the political content of the parade, it was the synaesthesia between light
and sound that forged the message of hegemonic power that would soon
become sadly known to the whole world.
Later, the introduction of color in lighting in entertainment events is
already documented in the postwar period in British theaters (Applebee,
1950). It even hypothesizes using these experiences to evaluate the
quantity and chromaticity of light for the commoners (Strange and Hewitt,
1956).
The study of the relationship between illumination and stage in show events
intensifies until it is finally formalized m 1970 (Reid, 1970). Time passed,
and technology evolved, and in 1980 the moving lights were introduced to
the market by Vari-Lite. The use of color becomes more and more
important in live performances, until, in 1988, the concerts of The Wall by
Pink Floyd, designed by Mark Brickman, traced a milestone for the lighting
of shows (Williams, 1988). Since then, technology has made great strides in
live performance, and manufacturers have incredibly evolved the luminaires
from those that were once used in the '80s in discos.
However, thinking about the most expressive form of lighting design, that
of the stage show, which influences the culture of design, numerous issues
must be taken into consideration.
Lighting design for on the stage is not a simple task. Thinking of it as a
series of operations that lead to a result, it could be possible to compare it to
an artistic or architectural activity. Despite the freedom granted to the
designer, numerous factors make the lights' preparation for a stage show an
actual race against time and, obviously, technology.
Designers are today faced with the need to prepare and test everything
before the installation. Working experience is essential in these cases;
beyond the ability to find optimal solutions to possible unforeseen issues,
knowing the venues where the lighting is required could be a big help for
the lighting designer. Software tools such Lighting CAD and live Wysiwyg
can somehow help to simulate the lighting installation. Still, as regards their
use, there are different opinions on the part of professionals. Few avoid
these systems entirely; others use them in the early phase, while others use
them more widely. These are mainly software packages that allow the
professional to virtually rebuild the place and virtually install existing
lighting systems. However, the algorithms used by these software tools are
not always very refined. Sometimes, the simulated venue does not have
enough correspondence with the result.

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The lighting designer's artistic sensibility remains the essential tool;

knowing how to read the venue's various nuisances and visually transpose
them, improving their emotional charge.
In addition to the venue's timing and the architectural characteristics, there
are other external variables to consider. When outdoors, the event can
begins while the Sun has not yet entirely set. Therefore, the luminous
envelope evolves throughout the exhibition, and it is necessary to tweak
artificial lights to adapt to the transition. These changes in the natural light
atmosphere's color depend on numerous factors; place, season, time, and
weather conditions. These are almost always variables that must be
evaluated before.
Another element that can significantly influence the Lighting Designer's
color choices is the light deriving from other element of the project: the now
constant presence of LED-walls sources that put in scene digital content not
always managed directly by the lighting designer.
In addition to external factors and variables, typical elements of the lighting
design usual creation have to be considered. Even just the type of
engagement of the lighting designer with the client, other figures in the
design process teams, and new technologies ,which obviously imposes
some constraints, can affect the professional's freedom of choice. These
constraints may not be huge, but they usually happen; in this case, the
designer must mediate them with his vision of the project.
With the advent of LED sources and IJoT, technology of lighting devices
continues to improve in years, providing more possibilities every day:
higher powers, more control, and bright full colors. However, the flip side
of the coin is that as the possibilities increase, so does the complexity
(Siniscalco, 2021). If we think of the lighting design of just some years ago,
everything was about using fixed white luminaires; flexibility was less, but
the design process time was lower.
At the extreme side of new exhibition lighting, moving lights allow an
extensive range of colors to be obtained, gobos to be implemented, light to
be profiled to remote control them, as new luminaires are potentially able to
carry out different lighting performance. Technology increased flexibility to
a level that that was unthinkable until not long ago, but such improvements
can be overwhelming for the designer. The possibility of obtaining
unlimited colors does not necessarily mean that this should be done. This
consideration does not mean that technology should be avoided. On the
contrary, today, more than ever, it is essential that professionals are
prepared for the possibilities that products and systems have to offer, always
keeping up to date to evaluate the best choices.

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Chapter 1 Lighting Design: culture and profession

Figure 1.4. A modern moving light produced by Claypaky (an Osram business). The
HY B-EYE K25, in addition to the typical features of motorized luminaires, allows
the control of every single LED, allowing countless kaleidoscopic projections.

Concerning advanced light sources, solid-state lighting has conquered its

position in the exhibition and more in the architectural lighting field. The
possibility to contain the power implied has LED manufacturers develop
many devices that mount this type of source.
Regarding hues, LED light sources can produce more saturated colors, not
in terms of the color rendition of illuminated materials, but the light beam's
appearance, when projected into the environment. In terms of entertainment,
the color white remains a weak point of LEDs, sometimes it is still less
brilliant than the one created with metal halide lamps. Some LED sources
are offered in RGBW format (Red, Green, Blue, and White) to give greater
chromatic flexibility, but the result is still not comparable with some
discharge lamps from a white point of view.

1.5 Lighting and color for TV and Cinema

Lighting for television and cinema has a very ancient history. Around the
one century ago, the use of artificial light in mdoor studios instead of
outdoor theaters led to a revolution of light in scenography, giving the great
masters of photography a whole new ground in which to experiment. One of
the most notable masterpieces that made this experiment the key to his

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success was Fritz Lang's Metropolis. In this movie, light assumes a semiotic
value, in the management of light and shadow, in the dynamic projections,
using electric discharges and luminous objects as scenographic
communication tools to amplify the scenes' affect human emotions (Roth,
1978). Lang drew his inspirations from Art Deco, Bauhaus, and Futurism
(Rutsky, 1993; Wolfe, 2020) applying them to light. On that occasion, the
design of light went from a scientific and technological subject to a
communicative, scenographic expression (Pooky, 2016).
The first and foremost difference between TV and cinema lighting is that
the illumination must meet the requirements also for the cameras than the
human observer. Even if sophisticated, these devices do not have the typical
processes of the visual system. Some technologies may attempt to copy
some visual system features; however, the complexity of human perception
cannot be easily replicated, and some corrections are necessary.
Concerning color, the immediate attention that the lighting design group
must have is to apply all the necessary technical procedures to balance the
CCT of all the light sources on the stage. It is fundamental to carry these
procedures following the white balance for digital cameras or stock of film
chosen.
A second fundamental task consists of introducing colored light for
aesthetic reasons or simulating specific light sources in the scene to support
the program's narrative.
Speaking of the world of cinema and television lighting, we can report that
some importance is given to the CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram. This
diagram, presented in details in a following chapter of this book, represents
the gamut of human visual perception. The colors all appear in their most
saturated version on the outside of the horseshoe. Of these colors, the most
peculiar ones lie on the line of the purples, which represents colors that are
obtainable only through the mixing of the extremes of the visible spectrum.
The most interesting component, however, is the one given by the central
space of the diagram. That is where the color saturation decreases until it
reaches the curve known as the Planckian locus, which represents the whites
in their various shades, namely the CCT.
Warm light to cold light, commonly measured in Kelvin, is well known and
widely used in workplaces' lighting. Still, the problem linked to this aspect,
in the TV-lighting field, is considered from a different point of view. When
lighting sources with multiple color temperatures are present simultaneously
in an environment, the human visual system tends to mitigate the dominant
colors by attenuating the perception of different colors; the light will appear
warmer or colder but still white.

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ee) O1 02 03 04 Os 06 07 os
x

Figure 1.5. The CIE 1931 chromatic diagram.

This phenomenon does not apply to equipment such as cameras. Whether

they are film stock or digital sensors, both Charge-Coupled Device and
Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor, they are not equipped with
the sophisticated correction methods typical of the human visual system.
They might have attenuation algorithms, but they will never be at the level
of our visual perception. Stock films, for example, are balanced at 3200K
(Tungsten light) or 5600K (Daylight); digital cameras, on the other hand,
can be set to a value of your choice between 3200K and 5600K, but always
and in any case only one CCT at the time. This means that when there are
whites with different color temperatures simultaneously in a scene, the
camera can only have a single white point as a reference; the others whites
will all appear more or less yellowish or bluish.
This situation is not acceptable when it comes to TV or cinema recordings,
and therefore, once the reference white has been established, some
correction operations on the sources must be adopted. On non-dynamic light
sources, it is possible to operate additively by summing other sources with
different color temperatures to balance. Alternatively, it is possible to use

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

subtraction, reducing the power of some components of the spectrum. This

result is usually obtained (at least partially) employing correction gel filters
named Color Temperature Orange (CTO), or Color Temperature Blue
(CTB). Filters have different mtensity levels and are designed to shift the
light along with the Planckian location. LED light sources can modify the
shade of white and colored light, with multi-chip sources or luminaires with
different phosphor panels. However, it is not uncommon to use filters even
on solid-state sources; general lighting designers sometimes use this
technique in specific fields such as the exhibition area (Murano, 2015).
Solid-state light sources have now also taken root in the entertainment
lighting sector. The efficiency of these sources is undoubtedly a plus for
anyone; however, one of the main reasons why LED technology is
particularly desirable (now that the emitted fluxes have become more than
reliable) is the possibility of controlling numerous parameters of every
single luminaire remotely. Indeed, some aspects will take some time to be
accepted, such as comparing LED with high-power HMI sources; the latter
are more available and less expensive for the same luminous flux. Still
talking about economic aspects, the productions are often reluctant to invest
in something that provides the same visual achievement that was obtained
with classic sources, looking only at the final result and not at man/hours
and better management control processes. Finally, the irruption of
electronics in a field historically dominated by electrical engineering leads
to the need for staff improvement, introducing skills that were not
widespread before; this requires a lengthy training process that often slows
down production in a sector where timing is essential. In addition to the
difficulties described above, there are other aspects to take into
consideration. The advent of LEDs has enriched the color palettes of
directors of photography. Numerous ways of standardizing color
coordinates have been studied to have a common vocabulary. However, this
made it even more evident that different cameras capture color in a slightly
different way from each other. In addition to this, the reproduction of
captured colors is done on devices, the user TV screens, that often have
inadequate gamuts. The light color can be created by adding different types
of LEDs or by conversion using phosphors. In order to complicate things,
these two approaches can include several methodologies and other
elements. In the various steps necessary for video reproduction, metameric
matches can frequently happen that, with the classic sources were less
common. In some aspects of the production, a high color rendering is
desirable: make-up, wardrobe, brand identity, commercial products, logos.
Their reproduction must not be distorted by light sources that are inadequate

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from a spectral point of view. Numerous efforts have been made to find a
way to describe the ability of a light source to render color; the color
rendering indexes have existed for several years. However, they present
some fundamental problems that make them unsuitable for the television
and cinema lighting sector.

1.6 Social tasks and professional profile of the designer

For four decades, the Politecnico di Milano has hosted a line of
professional, but also scientific and cultural traming, which has set itself to
evolve the science, knowledge, and skills of the historical figure of the
lighting engineer to the modern figure of the lighting designer (Rossi,
2008). And in more recent times a training course has also been launched,
on the still less known, color designer (Rossi ef al., 2016)
Until the '70s, the lighting engineer was a niche technical figure, with a
degree in engineering or physics, more often a graduate or frequently self-
taught, with tasks of performance optimization for lighting plants and
systems managed by electric companies and lighting fixtures produced by
industries in the sector, at the service of collective users, related to the
world of services and work. The skills of this figure were only rarely taught
in universities, and in these cases were related to the scientific field of
environmental physics, with the teaching of lighting engineering, a subject
matter currently active in sporadic courses held by a few universities.
Starting from the 80's, aware of the role that light had in the cultural system
of the project, with the practices of art, architecture, design, urban and
environmental planning, a long path of cultural and disciplinary renewal has
been promoted. This led the Politecnico di Milano to start a didactic
experimentation within the Faculty of Architecture and then to develop it
within a new Faculty, today the School of Design, shifting the scientific axis
from exclusively technical-engineering disciplines to design ones, and
gradually focusing, both culturally and professionally, on the figure of the
Lighting Designer, in both its design fields, mutually mtegrated and
synergistic, the Lighting Designer and the Lighting Product Designer.
Today, the latter must also deal with the new technologies of solid-state
lighting, LEDs, and with the application of colored lighting, which is no
longer relegated to fairs and amusement parks, but finds a new position
linked to well-being, in interiors, and to temporary communicative set
design, in urban spaces.
With the first postgraduate course in "Lighting Design" activated within the
Faculty of Architecture, entrusted in 1978 to the direction of Marco Zanuso
and then to Alberto Seassaro, a long phase of didactic experimentation was

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initiated which progressively produced, at first, numerous courses in

Lighting Design, related to the scientific disciplinary sector of design,
within the degree courses in Architecture first and then within the degree
course in Industrial Design. Subsequently, an organic branch of light design
was established within this course of study, with a three-year learning path
that ended with company internships and dedicated dissertations, to arrive
finally from 2003 to the Master in Lighting Design & Technology of the
Politecnico di Milano, initially directed by Alberto Seassaro with deputy
director Maurizio Rossi and since 2010 directed by Maurizio Rossi. The
Master is entirely taught in English and is unique in the world in that it is
also held im a research laboratory, the Luce Lab of the Politecnico di
Milano, active since 2002 at the Department of Design. In these years of
teaching and didactic experimentation, but also of scientific research,
experimentation and technological transfer, more than a thousand of people,
practicing the profession of Lighting Designer or working in companies and
institutions in the lighting sector, have emerged from this multi-year
training experience. The wide diffusion of these professional figures and the
full recognition of the cultural, social and economic value of this field of
study and research, required to define the specific figure of the Lighting
Designer.
The more general scenario surrounding the Lighting Designer is that of a
mature society, affected by rapid and profound transformation processes,
which must deal with environmental imbalances caused by pollution due to
production processes, but also with the impact of non-renewable energy
sources. The improvement of the individual and social quality of life must
necessarily measure itself also with the aspects of visual comfort, not only
with the limits imposed by lighting technologies, but also, and inevitably,
with the problems of environmental nature (Pefia-Garcia, 2020). In fact, the
increasingly pressing environmental issue leads us to take into account all
the issues related to the proper use of energy resources and materials, in the
search for design solutions that enable the use of renewable materials and a
decrease in electricity consumption, both in the production and distribution
phase, as well as, and most importantly, in the operation of large lighting
systems of public and private places (Rossi, Siniscalco and Zanola, 2009).
Also the territory, in its various structures, think of urban centers with high
building density and large metropolitan infrastructures, is marked by
artificial light, often used incorrectly, without the necessary in-depth studies
and design elaborations on the biological impact (Gaston, Visser and
Holker, 2015). The continuous and pressing call, by astronomical
observatories, for the contamment of the deleterious effects of light

33
Chapter I Lighting Design: culture and profession

pollution, which is constantly increasing and prevents the observation of the

skies at night in the vicinity of population centers, should make us reflect on
the frequent episodes of bad and excessive lighting, in many cases the result
of the poor standardized methods of calculation for the sizing of the systems
(UNI, 2021). A more attentive lighting can be achieved with a more correct
methodology based on the integrated analysis of all aspects that contribute
to the determination of the optimal distribution of light in the spaces, from
light sources to the reflectance of building materials, up to differentiated
hourly flows for the finalization of primary visual tasks changing over the
twenty-four hours (Wright e¢ a/., 2013).
As a basic environmental factor to extend, beyond daylight hours, the use
and enjoyment of public and private spaces, artificial light plays a decisive
role in the construction of living spaces in modern society. In the interiors,
the daytime use of natural light is today increasingly under review, with the
study of solutions integrated with artificial light, in order to obtain levels of
illuminance that meet the ergonomic requirements of visual comfort,
established by the standards of the sector and according to the changing
climatic, seasonal and daylight conditions of natural light (Boyce, 2010).
The interior designer has always been a well-defined figure characterized by
professional skills different from those of the architect, who works on an
architectural scale. This figure must have skills in the field of design, as
well as an in-depth knowledge and the ability to design furniture and
interior design products, putting in relation the different objects to each
other, to the space, the light that embraces them and above all the human
activities. The interior design training must address all aspects of this
discipline: the design of domestic environments, the design of workplaces
and urban settings, the exhibit and museum design, while trying to develop
an awareness of the problem related to the management of light and how it
can affect the perception of living spaces.
However, the reality of Lighting Design presents problematic aspects that
require research and experimentation, in the design method and in the way
of dealing with the relationship between humans, light, spaces, shapes and
colors, in all their facets and technical, productive, environmental, social
and cultural implications (Castiglioni, Baldacci and Biondo, 1991). Lighting
Design, as illustrated above, is a design process that cannot take advantage
of the rapid and/or scale prototyping tools commonly used by designers.
Problems with a technological, but mainly a perceptive nature, prevent the
creation of scale prototypes of lighting projects that could be of any use for
a correct evaluation of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural and
artificial lighting.

34
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

The design of light requires operators capable of linking together the

perceptive, technical, economic and socio-cultural dimensions, and
starting from there to propose new design syntheses. In this context, the
most relevant changes are to be found in the technological innovations
represented by new light sources, new materials-colors and innovative
tools that computer graphics and IoT can make available to support the
lighting design process. Lighting CADs enable the management of virtual
project models simulating the physical reality of lighting, thus introducing
a virtual prototyping tool into the lighting design journey. The advantages
that virtual prototyping tools can offer in Lighting Design are countless,
from low costs to the simple possibility of doing something that is not
otherwise possible and, additionally, the enormous educational value that
they can have in the training of Lighting Designers. Only with these tools
it is in fact possible to combine the direct teaching of a subject matter with
a strong scientific and technological content, with the possibility of an
easy virtual practical experimentation of the fundamental assumptions and
design applications.
Another consequence of these technological innovations is_ the
increasing importance that project communication can take on. This
requires a consistent integration of the calculation methodologies and
techniques with those dealing with representation, typical of visual
communication in the field of design, in which the visualization of the
objective data of the project is combined with virtual photographs aimed
at a subjective evaluation of the appearance of the project. Often in the
project, due to the absence of prototyping tools, objective photometric
measurements and subjective quality evaluations (Veitch, 2001) are
carried out in the field only at the end of the implementation phase of
the lighting system. On the contrary, virtual prototyping tools make it
possible to insert this phase at the center of the design process, thus
providing an innovative tool for intermediate evaluation of the expected
results, according to the project specifications, as well as the possibility
to easily rework various types of different or variable solutions
according to changing visual tasks.
Virtual prototyping of lighting also enables a photorealistic three-
dimensional approach to the study of visual communication and
advertising strategies, for the realistic simulation of light-based
communication structures, and also the production of digital media on
the new fronts of multimedia communication, in the numerous
applications of interactive and hypermedia design as well as the design
and production of digital videos.
Chapter I Lighting Design: culture and profession

1.7 Conclusions
In this introductory chapter, historical, cultural, and scientific elements
were introduced on the theme of the relationship between human beings
and lighting, with the aim of channeling these themes into the lighting
designer profession. The subject matter is wide, from a cultural, physical,
and technological point of view. Still, the approaches are significantly
different, as are the terminologies and tools. This does not mean that there
is a discriminating factor to boast the title of lighting designer, freely used
both in the traditional lighting world and in entertainment. Attention must
be paid to the differences that characterize the various sectors,
approaching novelty with an open mind to better understand various
professional sectors. Overlaps, technologies involved, tools used, final
goals to be pursued, and the means to achieve them. Being able to
understand the design approaches of the various professional fields could
allow tackling every project, the lighting of buildings, shows, installations
but also retail, workplaces, etc., drawing multidisciplinary inspiration, to
obtain a final result which technically adequate, but also able to inspire
those who experience it.

1.8 Conflict of interest declaration

The author declares that nothing has affected his objectivity or
independence in the production of this chapter. Neither the author nor his
immediate family member has any financial interest in the people,
manufacturer or topics involved in this article. The author also declares that
no conflict of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationship
with other people and organizations, could inappropriately influence, or be
perceived to influence, this work.

1.9 Funding source declaration

This study did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the
public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgments
There are many people with whom I have had interesting sights on these
topics over the years. The first thanks go to the memory of Alberto
Seassaro. I would also like to thank Andrea Siniscalo, the researcher, and
the students of the Lab. Luce and interior design curses of the Design
School at Politecnico di Milano.
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

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Chapter I Lighting Design: culture and profession

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Chapter 2
Innovation and lighting design work
Maurizio Rossi, Politecnico di Milano

Abstract
This chapter focus the attention on the ways in which artificial electric
lighting has changed over the past century. It also analyzes the leading areas
of research and development in the field of lighting and the consequent
areas of intervention of the Lighting Designer in a period, such as the
current one, of strong innovation in tools and methods. Today's lighting
project requires operators capable of effectively connecting the perceptive,
technical, economic, and socio-cultural dimensions and of starting from
here to propose new design syntheses. In this context, the most relevant
changes are to be found in methodological and technological innovations,
represented by international standards, new light sources, and innovative
tools that information technology (IT) and the Internet have made available
to support the process of lighting design.

Keywords
Lighting design, CAD, BIM, lighting standard, IT

Book title: Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Book DOT 10.23738/RCASB.003
Book ISBN 978-88-995 13-1 6-0
Research Culture and Science Book Series Vol 3
Series ISSN 2785-115X www.rcasb.eu

41
Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

2.1 Introduction
Since ancient times, in the history of human constructions, the presence of
light has influenced and been an integral part of the development of the design
to help shape the functional and artistic aspects of structures. In the Roman
Villa, the center of activity took place around the impluvium where natural
light, direct from the sun or diffused by clouds, penetrated and then spread
into the adjacent living spaces, which had almost no windows. The purpose of
the impluvium, apart from collecting rain, was to capture and diffuse the light
inside the house. In the Middle Ages, the different historical and cultural
situations saw an example of the use of light in the large polychromatic
windows of Gothic cathedrals, where colored light rays helped to create a
mystical and imposing atmosphere of the structure. At the same time, in
residential spaces, little attention was paid to light, as if to emphasize the
obscurantism and closure of an era in which the need to protect the occupants
from the outside prevailed. During the Renaissance, the need for fortification
and defense of living spaces finally faded away, leaving room for the
development of windows facing outwards, towards the street in urban centers,
and inwards, overlooking a courtyard used as a vegetable garden or formal
garden, according to social status. This openness to light on both external
fronts of the living space reflected the cultural and social development of the
time; heavy metal gratings still protected the exterior entrances, and in many
places, this is still the case today. Since the Renaissance and until the advent
of artificial light, windows were closely related to functions of the various
imterior spaces in architectural design. On the lower floors, large openings
allowed more light to be captured, also in the presence of adjacent buildings.
Upstairs (and down in social status), windows became smaller due to the
presence of more natural light. The fumiture arrangement within the
individual rooms was aimed at using the natural light coming from the
windows according to the various visual tasks: activities such as sewing and
reading were organized near the windows. In contrast, other activities took
place in more internal and darker room areas.
Towards the end of the 18th century, gas lighting became widespread in
Europe in the most important areas of the most populated centers. This
technology replaced the dim public lighting that until then had been achieved
mainly with torches and oil lamps. Before the advent of electricity, artificial
lighting was still based on devices that produced a limited luminous flux.
Attempts to increase the illumination capacity were met with problems of fuel
supply, heat development, oxygen consumption, and the practical
impossibility of conveying and directing its light flow. Candles were costly
and reserved for use on special occasions by the wealthy classes.

42
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Figure 2.1 — Are lamp with clockwork mechanism for the automatic regulation of
the consumption of the electrodes.

In the 19th century, the discovery of electricity and the development of the
first arc lamps laid the foundations for the development of electric lighting,
which would become widespread in the following century. In the urban
centers of the time, the weak public lighting relied on oil or, mstead, gas
lamps. In Milan, on 18 March 1877, the first public lighting experiment
with an arc lamp was carried out in Piazza del Duomo. To a significant
scenic effect, all the gas lamps were switched off, and those present saw the
electric light suddenly burst from the top of a tower and illuminate the
square (AEM, 1993).
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan was also illuminated in 1881. Still,
the arc lamps used had a limited lifespan, and the carbon brushes from
which the light sparked wore out and had to be replaced daily. Despite a
series of technological improvements, arc lamps had several technical
limitations, which were only overcome with the advent of imcandescent
lamps for public lighting in the early 1900s. In 1883, the inauguration of the
opera season saw the electric lighting of La Scala by Edison, and in 1885
the municipality decided on public electric lighting m Piazza Duomo,
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, and Piazza Della Scala. However, the advent of
electric lighting did not supplant gas lighting, which continued to be
developed until it was abolished in 1924.

43
Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

Figure 2.2 — The electric lighting experiment with arc lamp in Piazza del Duomo in
Milan in 1887.

Interior lighting in the early twentieth century was divided between

functional, essential lighting in workplaces and decorative, artistic lighting
in the homes of the wealthier classes. The development of rationalist
thought, and the relationship between function and form found a
straightforward technological application in creating luminaires for
workplaces; simple, essential forms of suspended luminaires aimed at
projecting the flow of light into the area used for visual tasks. The same
shapes can still be found in series production today.
In the decorative production of interior lamps, the new incandescent source
was readily applied in the production of unique and valuable pieces,
enriched by materials such as alabaster and mother-of-pearl combined with
colored glass and gold silver-plated metals. The form was not induced by
functional but by scenographic requirements, which take their cue from
pictorial and sculptural productions as an expression of the artistic culture
of the time. For many years and even to this day, the cheaper productions
would continue to use forms from before the advent of electric light, such as
the chandelier, the abat-jour, and the lantern.

44
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Figure 2.3 — Luminaires from the early 1900s. On the night, pendant luminaire for
workplaces; on the left decorative luminaire for interiors.

Figure 2.4 — The 1927 film Metropolis by Fritz Lang. Considered one of the
masterpieces of world cinema, it was at the forefront also for the scenographically
dramatic use of light thanks to a careful study of photography based on cuts of light
and shadow that emphasized the halo of negativism of the industrial neo-culture.

45
Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

The development of mdustrial production and the assembly line, activities

that took place forcibly in closed environments, thanks to electric lighting,
could achieve constant production processes independent of the
geographical and environmental conditions in which these activities were
carried out. The development of the service sector and office activities were
facilitated by artificial lighting, as were commercial activities that, from the
shop window to the vast superstore areas, had precise requirements for
product display and the accessibility and safety of people.
However, until the 1920s, the efforts focused on the use of artificial light in
public places were mainly aimed at scientific and technological research to
improve the efficiency of lamps and luminaires for the production and
transfer of electrical energy. From this period onwards, cultural sensitivity
to lighting design as a fundamental element of architecture began to develop
(Neumann ef a/., 2011). More attention was paid to the effects produced on
the human perceptual system by different types of lighting. Photography
and Cinema also contributed in this regard (Bernstein, 2014). While still
without color, it testified to the development of a greater sensitivity to the
effects of black and white, the play of light, shade, penumbra and contrast,
and the psycho-perceptive effects they induce on the observer. At this time,
the ability of light to delimit spaces, contribute to scenography and
emphasize the drama of a scene was experimented with.
Architecture has designed human spaces for thousands of years under one
constant, natural light coming from above. Artificial light reversed this rule:
at night, public lighting projected onto streets, and facades spread out from
below and disappeared towards the top of buildings. Customs and lifestyles
changed, the city also existed at might, and now its perception is
fundamentally different from the daytime appearance or the ghostly
atmosphere made of halos and shadows before the development of electric
lighting.
The habit of such an elementary action as turning on a light with a switch,
part of our everyday life for more than two generations, makes us forget that
such convenience has been in the dreams of human beings for millennia.

2.2 Effects of research on lighting design

At the dawn of this product area, the incandescent lamp was a powerful and
unnatural source compared to the oil or gas sources of the time. There was a
strong need to tame it, make it safe, protect users from electric shock and
heat, and obtain specific performances in the luminous flux emission. On
the other hand, the luminaire acted as a mediator between the primary light
source and the user of the lighting function.

46
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Figure 2.5 — Examples of light sources. Above an induction lamp and a compact
fluorescent lamp. Below, a Philips system with light sources transmitted by optical
fibers and a white light LED.

Research and development in the field of light sources and accessories are
now focused on at least six main areas:

— Improved efficiency: lowering power consumption with the same

emitted luminous flux. An incandescent lamp has an average efficiency
of 13lm/W. This means that for every Watt of electricity consumed, it
can emit a luminous flux of 13lm. Thus, a classic 100W tungsten
filament lamp emits a luminous flux of 1300lm, while a compact
fluorescent lamp can reach over 60lm/W and a new LED source can
reach over 150lm/W (Xu and Chen, 2019).
— Increase in the average lifetime: hours of operation of sources. This
ranges from the average 1,000 hours of old incandescent lamps to
around 10,000 hours of compact fluorescent lamps and up to 50,000
hours or more of LEDs (Wang and Lu, 2014).

47
Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

— The reduction of infrared (IR) and ultraviolet radiation (UV) emissions is

harmful to living beings and many types of materials, particularly
artwork.
— Improved visual comfort by analyzing aspects related to the ergonomic,
evaluated today using the UGR factor (CIE, 2010), and color rendering
of light sources (CIE, 2017; IES, 2020).
— Reduced size to better control the light output. In fact, by using reflectors
or lenses to control the distribution of the direction of the luminous flux,
it is easier to meet the design requirements of the luminaire the smaller
the primary source is (Wu ef al., 2016; Yip, To and Wang, 2019). In the
case of fluorescent lamps, we now have tubes with diameters of 38 mm,
26 mm, 16 mm, and only 7 mm in compact fluorescent lamps, with
miniaturized electronic control gear. In the case of LEDs, the dimensions
have been further reduced.
— Environmental compatibility: respect for the environment at all stages
from production to use and end-of-life disposal of the light source. This is
assessed in the LCA (Tahkamé ef al., 2014; Casamayor, Su and Ren,
2018).

Following these lines of research has led to the development of light sources
and devices for various types of use, some of the main ones being:

— Compact fluorescent lamps with miniaturized electronic ballast

integrated into the screw connection (Rosillo, Castej6n and Egido, 2013).
They have replaced incandescent lamps in many residential and
decorative lighting applications with energy savings of up to 80% in
some cases compared to the old incandescent lamps. This research has
been carried out since the 1980s, for over thirty years, but today these
lamps have almost been replaced by LED ones.
— Electrode-free fluorescent induction lamps have an average life of more
than 100,000 hours (Wharmby, 1993; Hamady, Lister and Zissis, 2016).
— Optical fibers and light guides are used to direct illumination away from
the primary source to allow greater control of radiation and heat as well
as provide greater flexibility of use in lighting design (Deveau and Press,
2000; Logunov et a/., 2013) and convey the solar light (Lahiri et al,
2018).
— LMS light management systems for intelligent electronic control of
lighting according to various parameters such as daylight level, time of
day, and prediction of the type of visual task required (Tsesmelis ef al.,
2021).

48
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

— The imnovation of solid-state lighting: LEDs, is progressively replacing

all other lighting sources (Rea, 2010).

2.3 The players of lighting design

In the past in Italy, the design of luminaires was highly developed, as it was
more accessible from the standpoint of the required industrial investments,
compared to the high-tech design of the production of primary sources. In
recent years, characterized by a severe economic crisis, companies in the
lighting sector have been busy metabolizing the new lighting technology:
LEDs, which have almost completely replaced other artificial light sources
and changed the lighting industry supply chain (Highgate, 2015). LEDs are
photo-electronic components, and lighting companies, which have been
accustomed to working in the electromechanical sector for decades, have
been compelled to acquire expertise im the electronics sector i order to
continue producing luminaires (Meadows, 2018). This process,
indispensable for the survival of companies, has absorbed most of the
resources available for research and development.
Also important is the Italian cultural and artistic tradition, which finds in the
design of the luminaire an application that is also infeasible in the design of
light sources. It should be noted, however, that this Italian importance of
good form is being undermined by those countries that have strategically
invested in development, in the most complete sense of industrial design of
the project, understood as coordination between the form, the integration,
and the structuring of all the cultural, social, user-oriented, economic,
constructive and technological factors that contribute to the definition of the
production process of luminaires and systems.
In the last thirty years, the availability of increasingly technologically
advanced sources and luminaires made it possible to turn the attention of
Lighting Design more towards defining and achieving illuminance and
luminance levels according to the various visual tasks established in the
requirements phase. Followimg this logic thread, research has produced and
continues producing technological advancements on several fronts: on the
one hand, light sources manufacturers have improved the performance of
their products in terms of efficiency and color rendering. On the other hand,
designers and luminaire manufacturers are committed to designing and
enhancing photometric properties related to the requested illuminance
characteristics. Consequently, the Lighting Designer is an intermediate
figure between the architect and the engineer and engages in research into
the functional and perceptual aspects of lighting (Major and Speirs, 2006).
The lighting project must therefore follow a multidisciplmary process that

49
Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

develops through the analysis of the volumes assigned or being defined, of

the paths, areas, and materials that interact with the human actors who
benefit from the lighting service, but also through the analysis of technical
problems and the perceptive, physiological and psychological aspects of
visual perception (Boyce, 2014).
Another sector that has benefited from the results of research in lighting is
visual communication. Research in fields such as security, communication,
Cinema, and multimedia, which in today's society form the basis for the
conveyance of information, could not ignore the influences arising from the
potential of artificial lighting as the primary tool or medium for capturing
the attention of observers (Schielke, 2010). Video projections, light effects,
colors, contrasts, stroboscopic effects, and many other devices are
increasingly being tried out and used to support visual communication and
shows.

2.4 Research centers

In a sector such as artificial lighting, where the stimuli produced by
scientific and technological innovation are omnipresent, research has led to
continuous improvements in design tools and methods. In _ Italy,
unfortunately, the studies with a high scientific content have not developed
as they have in other countries, since they are not directly applied in
production and design because of the high investments needed for
development and also because of the lack of a business dimension capable
of bearing the costs. On a global level, however, thanks also to the far-
sightedness of social and organizational systems that base the primacy of
their economic system on investments in research, the technological
development resulting from theoretical studies has led to a continuous
improvement in the production of light sources, improving their color
rendering and efficiency. In addition, in the field of materials, research has
produced technologically relevant and cost-effective results for optical
applications thanks to the introduction of plastics and carbon fibers.
At a global level, research has seen significant contributions from
institutional bodies such as universities, government research institutes, and
industry associations. The Lighting Research Centre of the Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute is one of the most advanced centers for research and,
above all, for the dissemination of lighting technology. Its website provides
free access to a wealth of information on current research in various fields,
including lighting design criteria for the elderly and for health protection,
new types of light sources, the relationship between natural and artificial
lighting and sensors, and an extensive bibliography on the subject.

50
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

A historical example of the result of research in terms of luminaire

innovation is the Sivra produced by iGuzzini, whose Centro Studi e
Ricerca developed a system for automatic variable control of color and
lighting level in 2000; as well as contributing to other research into the
development of technologies and related equipment to enable the capture,
transport, and diffusion of natural light for the interiors of buildings aimed
at the well-being of workers (Centro studi e ricerca iGuzzini, 2007). Also
of interest are the contents offered by the Canadian National Research
Council's Institute for Research in Construction, which presents a great
deal of research on lighting design aspects in construction. The
Illumination Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) is a source
of numerous standards and recommendations, some of which are accepted
worldwide.
There are few public centers for design research on lighting systems for
different kinds of applications in Italy. The Laboratorio Luce of the
Politecnico di Milano has been operating since 2002 on lighting
engineering, colorimetry, visual perception, and lighting design at the
Milan-Bovisa site. In Turin, on the other hand, as part of a research project
co-financed by the MURST, a project for a lighting research and
experimentation center (CERSIL) was developed at the beginning of the
2000s at the Politecnico di Torino, aimed at research into natural and
artificial lighting and visual comfort. There is also the Laboratory of
Photometry and Lighting Technology at the University of Naples Federico
II that performs measures for assessing the quality of natural and artificial
light in relation to both energy saving and ergonomics of vision. They deal
with artworks' lighting with specific studies on exhibition and conservation
with models, monitoring, and simulations.

2.5 Indoor vs. outdoor

Research has shown that in lighting design for exteriors, many issues are
amplified compared to interiors. The installations must guarantee adequate
lighting levels for safety and/or scenic purposes while at the same time
reducing energy consumption and avoiding light pollution, te., the
dispersion of light towards the sky.
Technological developments in light sources and luminaires have made it
possible to increase the efficiency of lighting installations even in
unfavorable environmental conditions and reduce the amount of
maintenance required. The maintenance costs of an imstallation are one of
the variables that the designer cannot absolutely ignore, but rather must
highlight and, in many cases, are one of the project's specifications, carrying

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Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

out measurements and research on natural and artificial light (Marsden,

1993; Perry, 1999).
In outdoor lighting, technological innovation as a result of research has
progressively led to the definition of new sources and lighting fixtures, the
definition of lighting standards for personal safety, and the study and
definition of proper lighting for road traffic.
In the course of the 20th century, there was a gradual shift from models of
light sources placed on lampposts at the sides of roads for traffic and
pedestrian safety to light sources suspended in the middle of the road and
focused more on lighting vehicular traffic than on pavements. Nowadays,
thanks to new LED sources and the possibility of controlling the flow of
light more precisely, pole-mounted lighting fixtures have regained a
prominent position in urban and vehicular lighting. In fact, the subject of
lighting for vehicular traffic, both urban and extra-urban, has become an
almost independent area of research. In this area, the many aspects of design
are strongly influenced by the need to increase the degree of safety of road
traffic. Worldwide statistics and research have amply demonstrated that the
number of accidents is drastically reduced by the quality and effectiveness
of road lighting (Raynham ef a/l., 2020; Fotios, Robbins and Uttley, 2021).
In Scandinavia, street lighting systems are being tested, which switch on
instantly, providing maximum flux only when a vehicle is present and
following it along the road (Mclaughlin, 2018).
The sector of monument enhancement, combined with strategies for the
recovery and conservation of the existing building heritage and cultural
assets, has also witnessed the consolidation of greater attention towards a
culture of light. This aims to create scenic effects through the study and
research of the most appropriate lighting techniques for the various and
numerous types of cultural assets of our country. Light can enhance a given
cultural site and make it appreciable for a broad audience. However, as
research has shown, it needs to be controlled to avoid becoming a further
degradation element (CIE, 2004; CEN, 2014).
Therefore, the focus of research is also on how artificial lighting can
become an essential complement in the design of indoor and outdoor
spaces. In coordinating the various artistic and communicative elements
with usage needs, it is necessary to determine which tasks to entrust to light
and which results are to be achieved. Light can induce a spatial alteration in
perception, making a part stand out from the whole through the projection
of shadows and contrasts, or create an atmosphere of total objectivity
through an illuminating homogeneity similar to natural light (Holl,
Pallasmaa and Perez-Gomez, 2007; Duff, Kelly and Cuttle, 2017).

52
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

2.6 Roles and activities of the lighting designer

At the historical beginning of lighting design, the designer started from the
generic need to illuminate sufficiently to arrive at creating the most suitable
luminaire. Today, the availability on the market of luminaires for a vast
number of applications brings a different approach to the development of
the project: once the visual tasks have been established, the illuminance
levels that are most suitable for enhancing the desired perceptive effect are
selected, the most suitable luminaires and their spatial arrangement are
determined, also in function of the constraints induced by the regulatory and
architectural requirements. In this sense, the project represents one or more
solutions, preferably optimal ones, according to the criteria established in
the specifications. Often these requirements, depending on the project's
complexity, need to be broken down into subsets that refer to parts of the
project. This divide-and-conquer method is necessary due to the complexity
of the project and the increasing number of technological and regulatory
factors that influence design activity, such as the growing use of BIM
methodology.

Primary light sources and accessories "

(depending on the chosen luminaires) wu

Luminaires (choice, positioning and aiming) oH

Possible modular lighting system =n

(for indoor environments such as offices, schools ...) £ 5

Electrical system for lighting a

(pre-existing or created together with the lighting design) eu

Complements of the overall project a

(interior and exterior furnishings, non-masonry elements) "

Global structure for which the lighting design is developed Di

(building, exteriors) On

Figure 2.6 — Degrees of intervention by the designer in lighting intended as a subset

ofa global project.

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Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

Therefore, it can be seen that modern lighting design has many

methodological aspects that we could imagine as harvesting design work.
The project's first objective is to optimize the use of elements at various
levels of design complexity. These include, in decreasing order by global
application and increasing order by the amount of designer intervention and
flexibility of use:

1. The structure, ie., the lighting design, is a part of a building's

renovation, redevelopment, or new construction project. Depending
on the relationship established with the client, the lighting designer
can also have a say at this macro level to optimize, where possible,
the use of natural light or the harmonious integration of artificial
lighting systems in a determined architectural context. Often the
designer's intervention at this level does not occur, either because of
organizational/communication constraints or because the lighting
project is an autonomous activity applied to an existing structure that
needs to be enhanced or whose lighting system is obsolete or non-
standard.
The structure's interior and exterior furnishings. This level includes
all the objects complementary to the civil design of the structure, such
as movable surfaces, light-diffusing screens and curtains, skylight
materials, plants, furniture, and everything that contributes to the
definition of the architectural spaces and the distribution of lighting.
At this level, the designer can also contribute to the building project
by highlighting aspects related to the optimal use of light with respect
to forms, arrangements, and visual tasks according to lighting
regulations. It is helpful to note that at this level, there are many
interests that the lighting designer shares with the interior designer, so
much so that it is argued that for a complete technical and cultural
education, both need to assimilate a mutual set of skills.
The electrical system. In some cases, for the enhancement and
redevelopment of cultural sites or for aesthetic requirements, the
electrical system can be designed by the lighting designer to fit
harmoniously into the building project, respecting its aesthetics and at
the same time fulfilling its task according to the power requirements
by the luminaires. In other situations, the electrical system does not
exist, or it is present but may need to be modified or adapted. With
the advent of LED light sources, these often replace conventional
light sources in a retrofit perspective without intervening on the
electrical system.

54
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

The modular lighting system. In some cases, such as offices and work
areas, the luminaries are organized in modules. The system’s layout
will then be completed by defining the lighting points. In a way, the
system can be considered as a large integrated luminaire. In many
cases, this is not used. At this level and the following ones, the
lighting designer has a lot of autonomy within the design
requirements.

Figure 2.7 — Modular lighting systems. These devices provide support and electrical
power to various types of luminaires which are thus integrated into an aesthetically
homogeneous structure.

5. The luminaires. The luminaires' selection, arrangement, and orientation

are the central stages of lighting design. The designer expresses his
skills and creativity to meet the project's objectives within limits
defined in the specifications. In many cases, the layout is constrained
within the degrees of freedom represented by the structures of the

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Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

building project (Castiglioni, Baldacci and Biondo, 1991). The

luminaires must comply with a criterion of aesthetically correct
insertion while respecting the architecture of the space. From a
photometric standpoint, the ideal position for a luminaire is often
unsightly or impractical. The design of the luminaires themselves,
when they cannot be concealed, must fit harmoniously into the
architectural context to be lit. The designer must remember that the
lighting system with accessories, cables, poles, and luminaires is visible
even during the day under natural lighting and is therefore considered
an interior or urban furnishing accessory that must fit harmoniously
into a given architectural context with urban materials (Casciani and
Rossi, 2017). In other cases, depending on particular applications, the
lighting designer can also design one or more custom luminaires to
solve specific lighting problems

Figure 2.8 — Various types of luminaires for indoor and outdoor applications.

6. Primary light sources and accessories. The choice of which, within the
degree of freedom allowed by the luminaires used and according to
their arrangement and the amount of light required, provides the
lighting designer with an additional degree of freedom to compensate
for other design constraints connected with the building project. The
luminaire and the integrated, non-replaceable lamp are increasingly
becoming a single product with LED solutions.

56
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Another fundamental objective of the design process is customer

satisfaction. Several aspects can be highlighted regarding this objective.
Unfortunately, at a higher level, customer satisfaction 1s highest when the
lighting design in the building project envisages a minimal intervention
and the costs are low. Going down in the level and generally in
complexity and cost, in the influence on the building project, the lighting
designer has vast degrees of freedom regarding customer satisfaction.
Other aspects of customer satisfaction are related to achieving quantitative
and qualitative lighting levels for people in the spaces envisaged by the
project. While quantitative aspects are easily verifiable with practical
measurements after the project’s implementation, also in compliance with
lighting regulations (CEN, 2021), qualitative factors are much more
difficult to assess (Veitch, 2001). This is because they are subjective and
depend on a reasonable degree of expertise concerning lighting culture,
which is generally not widespread in the building design sector. And it is
precisely on the qualitative and perceptual aspects that the function of the
lighting designer is expressed in its differentiation from an electrical
engineer or installer. This is where his training comes into play, making
the lighting designer capable of managing both the technical-production
aspects and the socio-cultural and aesthetic sides of lighting design (Aries,
2020).
In designing a lighting system, which is generally characterized by
installations specific to the project, the harvesting approach has several
advantages in relation to cost containment in the design and
implementation phase. In fact, a from-scratch design of every single part
of the lighting system is impractical in the hypothesis of a single
implementation, which is almost a constant in this sector. Also, in the
design of luminaires produced by lighting companies, the drafting
approach is applied at a lower level to the various components of the
product design, adopting economies of scale that make it possible to
contain costs and times. This is possible thanks to the re-use of
components and parts of the products previously developed by the
manufacturer or third-party suppliers.
A reflection on the very nature of lighting design leads us to observe that
its primary purpose is to manage, organize and optimize specific resources
in the presence of assigned constraints. These constraints can be expected
requirements, functionality, costs, laws, standards, and much more. But in
some cases, constraints are not all set, and in this case, it is the designer
who sets them. Generally speaking, constraints can be grouped into two
categories: external constraints typically imposed by the client,

Sa
Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

regulations, and suppliers, and internal constraints self-imposed by the

designer and which, in short, constitute a set of rules, including formal
ones, that characterize the designer's operating methodology and may
evolve over time as the designer matures professionally.

2.7 Innovation and methods

The lighting designer must therefore be able to understand and master a
series of miultidisciplinary, scientific-technological, psychological-
perceptual, cultural, social, and even economic aspects, which make his task
take on the characteristics of a product/service-system that is integrated into
a set of correlated systems, rather than a single project-object isolated from
its context (Sakao and Lindahl, 2009). It is also from this perspective that in
the future, the lighting designer will have to increasingly integrate his work
into the BIM methodology, even though there are no software tools yet to
manage the technical aspects of lighting and color. The nature of
illumination, strongly impregnated with technological contents in constant
innovative evolution and influenced by the high number of relationships
between the components that affect the final result, makes lighting design
an activity characterized by the management of large quantities of
information. This aspect is also influenced by a continuous revision of the
steps involved in the design development methodology, which undoubtedly
implies a burden on the lighting designer's permanent training and daily
practice but are nevertheless facilitated by the use of new information and
communication technologies. In some respects, the personal IT revolution
since 1980 and the networked communication revolution in the 21" century
have, as in many other sectors, influenced the development of innovation in
lighting design.
Memory is sometimes short, and this is especially true in introducing new
technologies that enter our daily routine. In fact, we can do a simple
experiment to understand how much innovation permeates the majority of
us; let's take a sheet of paper and try to remember and write down the years
of our lives when we first started using the following tools: personal
computer, CD-Audio, CD-Rom, MP3 player, mobile phone, Web, email,
smartphone, and tablet. Next to the dates, let’s also try to write down the
salient events in our lives during that period. On re-reading the list, we will
be surprised to observe that, actually, many innovations have only become
commonplace relatively recently, and we will wonder how we could
conduct our professional activities and our daily lives without smartphones,
PCs, and email. The answer is that our actions were still going on, but most
probably less efficient. Many people view new technologies with reserve

58
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

and suspicion, but they are not ultimately good or bad; our use of them
allows us to evaluate them. The use of smartphones enables mobile
communication that helps us plan our activities dynamically, according to
the events of the day; it is fair to consider this a convenience that cuts
unnecessary waiting periods and consequently allows us to have more free
time. The same concept applies to the Web, which will enable us to do
banking or postal operations without going to the bank or post office with
the associated transfer and waiting times. Time is the most precious thing in
our lives. Why waste it? A question remains: is the time we can save
through the use of new technologies extra time for our leisure time or extra
time for more work? The answer is up to each individual.

Lighting
technologies

Training of the Lighting design

lighting designer methodology

Information
technologies

Innovation
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSeSSSSEsSesesseSesesesessesesseseseseseseseseeeaa SSssss===

Figure 2.9 - Role of IT versus innovation in the training of lighting designers.

Over the years, a further push towards innovation in the lighting sector has
also come from public innovation players, 1.e., local, national, and
international institutions. The institutions, less constrained than companies
by the objective of immediate profit, have made a fundamental contribution
to the development of innovation processes through public infrastructure
development projects and the enactment of laws and regulations relating to
the safety and functionality aspects of public and private lighting.
International organizations such as the CIE and national organizations such
as CEI and UNI (in Italy) have experimented through working groups with
methods and definitions of optimal lighting conditions for most visual
functions of human activities, indoors or outdoors, whether in public places,
such as museums, football pitches, and workplaces, or private ones, such as
residential environments. The main parameters underlying these criteria
include illuminance level, glare control through the UGR factor (CIE,
2010), and color rendering of light sources (CIE, 2017; IES, 2020) for
visual comfort. The fruit of this research, also concerning the safety of

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Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

lighting systems and luminaires, is now available in a series of up-to-date

standards and recommendations, representing a set of constraints to be
fulfilled to develop an organized and coordinated methodology for the
process of lighting design (Boyce, 2019).
Indeed, mnovation in industrial processes is certainly more weighted and
linked to economic factors that have their assessment parameters: the
containment of production costs, the efficiency of production processes,
competitiveness on the market, and, ultimately, profit maximization. The
lighting designer is often a freelancer, or a small design studio, for whom
the use of new technologies and methodologies represents an investment in
terms of training and updating. Whether these mnovations are to be used in
the installation or tools to support the design process is an expensive
activity. On the one hand, therefore, technological innovation in lighting
requires continuous efforts to keep abreast of available systems' state of the
art. On the other, IT tools support the design process, which the designer
must deal with in a way that is sometimes problematic, depending on his
cultural, scientific, and technological background. It should be noted that, in
lighting design, the use of IT tools to support project development and
management involves a methodological change in the design process that
has only recently taken place on a massive scale. Also, thinking to BIM, the
reasons for this inertia in introducing IT systems lie precisely because their
use involves a different approach to the design process and the objective
difficulty of finding suitable software tools.
Today there are software, Lighting CADs, to support the work of the
lighting designer; however, even the most advanced tools available are not
magic boxes that accept input specifications to produce the output design.
Actually, their use requires a wealth of technical skills im several
disciplines, ranging from design, lighting technology, computer graphics,
and visual perception, with expertise that often straddles the line between
technological application and scientific research, with the aim of a correct
interpretation of the results that can be produced. These tools enable a
quantitative verification of the photometric quantities of the lighting design
and digital images that are a support tool for the qualitative evaluation of
light, which, however, must be read taking into account the limits of these
tools in the reproduction of the visual perception of the lighting.
Over the last ten years, companies have gradually reduced the number of
printed catalogs in favor of digital documents and websites dedicated to
ever-changing product lists. The photometric characteristics of luminaires
used in Lighting CADs can also be found and downloaded free on these
sites. Other exciting aspects of support for the designer's work, provided by

60
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

IT, lie in managing helpful information flows concerning the harvesting

connotation of the lighting project process. The technical data for
luminaires are now increasingly accessible directly in the multi-brand
electronic catalog, available in Lighting CAD tools.

Input data to the design process, specifications, objectives

’ '
Skills in drawing

Skills in lighting engineering IT tools

Mt
Lighting
designer
Skills in computer graphics

Skills in visual perception

Lighting project
to support
the design
process

Figure 2.10 - Skills of the lighting designer with respect to software tools in the
lighting design process.

The use of application programs also allows network communication to be

managed. This facilitates the exchange and retrieval of information regarding
the various levels of intervention of the designer in his relationship with the
design team, the customer, and the companies supplying the devices that are
the building blocks of the design harvesting activity. The Internet also
provides valuable support in finding regulatory and legislative information by
accessing the websites of entities promoting standards and recommendations
and governmental organizations. Today, data on technological innovations
presented by companies can be found on the Internet via web pages or by
subscribing to specialized mailing lists that periodically send out bulletins on
the state of scientific, technological, and regulatory experimentation in the
lighting sector.
Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

IT tools also enable a collaborative approach to project development at the

network level. More and more today, the project has to be the result of a
shared and integrated work of a team of people, both at lighting and building
project level, developed by one or more project actors specialized in different
areas of intervention and geographically distant, as is the case with the BIM
methodology.
However, the most innovative aspect of the lighting design process essentially
concerns the tools supporting the quantitative and qualitative assessment of
light distribution in indoor and outdoor environments. Based on the
computational and visual aspects of virtual reality, the PC workstation has
become an indispensable tool for lighting calculations in the last ten years to
the extent that it provides precise results concerning the requirements of
national and international standards. Indeed, the old CIE calculation
recommendations only provide for regular parallelepiped-shaped interiors but
with limitations on the possible arrangements of luminaires (CIE, 1982).
In an area of constant technological change such as lighting, the use of IT
systems in support of the project provides help in several areas:

1. Lighting calculations for the quantitative assessment of light distribution.

The old CIE recommendations setting out the methodologies for
calculating illuminance and luminance were presented between the 1970s
and 1980s, at the dawn of the development of personal IT, and were used
for a manual calculation. For this reason, and to simplify the calculation
procedures as much as possible, they were developed based on numerous
simplifying assumptions. While this has made it possible for years to
carry out lighting calculations in the absence of a PC, this approach is
only applicable to austere environments in which the presence of
furniture or uneven distributions of light sources are not even considered.
However, the gradual and steady increase in PC's power has made it
possible to redefine and use more accurate calculation models borrowed
from radiometry and computer graphics. With these new models, of
which Radiosity (Goral et al., 1984), Monte-Carlo Ray Tracing (Shirley,
Wang and Zimmerman, 1996), and Photon-Mapping (Jensen, 1996) are
the primary examples, the calculation of direct and indirect light
distribution can be done much more accurately for environments of
arbitrary complexity and for all kinds of luminaires. An upper limit to the
possibilities of these new calculation models is typically only represented
by the level of complexity of the geometric models, the number of light
sources, and the parameters defined by the designer, which control the
accuracy of the calculations.

62
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

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Figure 2.11 - Comparison between the illuminance levels (on the work-plane at the
height of 85 cm), calculated with the CIE52 method (left) and radiosity (right). The
elementary room model shown above has a lighting fixture equipped with two linear
fluorescent lamps of 33501m. The CIE calculation method ignores the shadows cast
by the furniture elements and tends to overestimate the illuminance in the room's
corners.
De The creation of near-photorealistic digital images for the qualitative
assessment of the lighting design and, more generally, a building
project. In this case, we speak of virtual prototyping of the project, Le.,
an approach aimed at creating prototypes using virtual reality and
computer graphics techniques that can be used in all those cases where
the physical prototypes are not feasible due to technological, visual-
perceptive, or even budget constraints. The greater its visual perceptual

63
Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

Figure 2.12 - Photorealistic rendering for the qualitative evaluation of light.

Comparison between artificial and natural lighting vs only artificial lighting.

64
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

authenticity, compared to the reality it wants to represent, the greater

the value of a virtual prototype. However, the value of a virtual
prototype in the design process is even more significant as the
expectation of the informational-visual capability required of it
increases, and this is precisely the context of the qualitative evaluation
of lighting design. In PC-supported lighting design practice, the virtual
prototype is also completed through quantitative evaluation and
analysis integrated with qualitative evaluation.

f|
I

i
|

Figure 2.13 - Verification of the distribution of light rays in a reflector using CAD
software for lighting product photometric test.

3. The verification of luminaires. Alongside tools to support the

development of lighting design, software tools dedicated to testing
reflectors and lenses for lighting product design have also come to the
fore in the last 20 years. Using these tools, it 1s possible to simulate
photometric calculations based on the characteristics of the bare
lighting bodies and the materials and shapes of the reflectors and
optics of the luminaire. This is an operation usually carried out in the
laboratory using a goniophotometer and a working physical prototype
of the luminaire at much higher costs. For this type of software, too,
the working methodology is based on virtual prototypes, which do not
represent complex environments as in the previous cases, but rather
single luminaires. Their modeling is performed using the usual
CAD/CAM software and then imported into the verification tool. The
evaluation that can be carried out is generally quantitative and
concerns the photometric and radiometric characteristics, leaving that
of a qualitative nature to more traditional instruments. Alongside
these, there are also tools for verifying thermal performance, which

65
Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

enable the sizing of heat dissipation surfaces essential for the correct
operation of LED sources.
4. The support of harvesting lighting design by network information
tools, databases and workgroup tools. It should be noted that the
availability and use of information systems are equally essential and
complementary to the aspects discussed above. On the Internet, they
provide access to regulatory, technological, and promotional
information on tools and methods that can support the development of
lighting projects. In cases where the project is produced by a
workgroup, at the local level, workgroup tools provide valuable
means for a collaborative approach by managing communications,
project development versions, design process phases, and
organizational-management aspects of the work. The future of the
lighting designer will increasingly have to be integrated into the BIM
methodology. If this has not yet happened, it is because there are no
software tools available to support BIM in managing lighting and
color calculations.
5. Visual communication in project presentation thanks to multimedia
and integrated information management. Now that the development
of information technology provides advanced support tools useful for
the project's virtual prototyping, it is reductive to consider relying
solely on paper-based project presentation tools. In addition, the
software programs that can be used for design work often provide
functionalities helpful in producing parts of multimedia presentations,
such as digital video and three-dimensional models of environments
or objects that can be navigated and explored interactively on the
network (Web3D, 2020). A hypermedia presentation based on web
technologies or digital video can be more easily created in this
context. The fundamental media used in its composition are part of
the computer-assisted lighting design process's intermediate and final
products.
6. Management and control of lighting installations. The use of the LMS
with management capabilities and interfaces to control large lighting
systems has become widespread. The lighting can be switched on, off,
and modulated according to various parameters to save energy and
create special scenic effects with varying levels of illuminance and
chromaticity. There are now apps for smartphones and tablets for
residential and personal applications integrated into the IoT to control
smart light sources. Innovation in this area is also moving toward
lighting control for people's well-being (Rossi, 2019).

66
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Networked information systems are constant throughout the design

process. At the same time, the other types of IT tools seen above find their
place with different degrees of use in the various phases of the project
development process. Hypermedia visual communication tools supporting
the presentation of the project to the customer intervene almost
exclusively in the final stage of the project, except for their use for
presentation or evaluation of limited parts in earlier phases. While LMSs
are used for commissioning and managing the lighting system when it is
fully operational and for monitoring and maintaining the system.

Quantitative
assessment tools

Qualitative msual tion

assessment tools oa unicatio
tools

Testing tools

Local and networked information systems

Design process time

Figure 2.14 - Degree of use of IT tools in the project development time.

In the initial phase of the design process, using Lighting CAD for the
quantitative evaluation of the project and for the verification of equipment
is predominant. In this phase, the lighting designer has to face the
photometric constraints and problems without forgoing, however, the first
tool supports the qualitative idea evaluation. In fact, these make it possible
to observe at an early stage if the project's technical constraints do not
distort the project's poetic and artistic ideas. As the design process
progresses, this relationship is reversed, with a more decisive intervention in
the qualitative aspects and reserving the quantitative elements to check the
constraints: the photometric requirements. Such a situation is influenced by
lighting design's highly technical and scientific nature. It is worth
remembering that what is being evaluated here is the degree of use of the IT
tools. At the same time, development in the designer's mind proceeds in an
integrated form based on the information provided by the available tools. In

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Chapter 2 Innovation and lighting design work

design before the advent of IT, the two roles of quantitative vs. qualitative,
in using tools in the design phase, were sometimes reversed. In the past, the
limited number of modeling tools available did not allow for a systematic
and integrated approach as made available by today's design support tools.

2.8 Conflict of interest declaration

The author declares that nothing has affected his objectivity or
independence in the production of this chapter. Neither the author nor his
immediate family member has any financial interest in the people,
manufacturer or topics involved in this article. The author also declares that
no conflict of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationship
with other people and organizations, could inappropriately influence, or be
perceived to influence, this work.

2.9 Funding source declaration

This study did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the
public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgment
There are many people with whom I have had interesting insights on these
topics over the years. The first thanks goes Andrea Siniscalco and Fulvio
Musante. I wish also tanks the many lighting designer that had lectures in
the Master in Lighting Design & Technology at Politecnico di Milano.

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72.
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Chapter 3
Perception of Light and Color
Maurizio Rossi — Politecnico di Milano

Abstract
As illustrated in the previous chapters, Lighting Design is not a mere matter
of exclusive engineering compliance with international lighting standards.
Cultural aspects move the lighting designer between the artistic experience,
the project development methodology, the new technologies, and, equally
important, the visual perception that humans have of light and color. This
topic will be explored in this chapter, from the perceived effects of the real
world to the virtual one of rendering.

Keywords
Light, lighting, color, visual perception

Book title: Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Book DOI 10.23738/RCASB.003
Book ISBN 978-88-995 13-16-0
Research Culture and Science Book Series Vol 3
Series ISSN 2785-115X www.rcasb.eu
Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

3.1 Introduction
Light is the basis of life on our planet. Without sunlight, with the alternating
sunrises and sunsets, there would be no life on Earth. Light is also energy.
The lives of human beings are directly or indirectly influenced by sunlight
(Begemann, van den Beld and Tenner, 1997; Gochenour and Andersen,
2009). Without the Sun, all the most modern human technologies would
still not be able to guarantee the survival of our species, plants would die as
well as phytoplankton production (Field et a/., 1998), and thus the oxygen
production and the food chain for all living things would be interrupted.
The wave-particle model of light photons was defined with quantum
physics, essential for the treatment of atomic processes. However, the idea
of designing lighting using quantum physics methods is unrealistic and
pointless. For all that concerns lighting design, light is considered
electromagnetic radiation, and its study falls within the scope of radiometry
and photometry. This simplification concerning photon theory does not
entail any loss of precision in practical terms, for several reasons that can be
summarised as follows:

— In everyday applications, objects stand still or move at speeds several

orders of magnitude slower than the speed of light.
— The size of these objects is much greater than the wavelength of light.
— The mass of the objects is much lower than that of the Sun or black
holes that can deflect light from its straight path.
— The photoelectric effect produced on metallic objects is of no interest to
lighting management purposes.
— The physical behavior of the ideal black body is of limited interest only
for producing artificial light by heating Tungsten. This phenomenon is
used for the production of old classic incandescent light bulbs.

Even under the assumption of considering light as electromagnetic

radiation, handling the calculations to describe its behavior is still highly
complex. Indeed, although vector differential equations describe the
behavior of the electromagnetic field (Maxwell, 1864), they are challenging
to solve in practice for applications that deviate from some ideal cases of
physics. In particular, two aspects complicate the description and simulation
of the behavior of light even if the PC is used for solving the calculations.
Light is described as a set of electromagnetic waves of wavelengths
between 380 and 780nm, so each ray of light would have to be defined by a
spectral vector function. In addition, the interaction of light with objects

74
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

should be described mathematically in terms of geometric and micro-

geometric elements as well as physical and chemical aspects. This
information is difficult to manage and rarely found in lighting design
practice.

380 450 500 550 600 650 700 780nm

Figure 3.1 — Example of a representation of the spectrum of a beam of light. The
spectral power distribution (SPD) indicates the contribution of monochromatic
components at various wavelengths within the visible spectrum between 380 and
780nm.

Dielectric material Conductor material

Light rays Light rays

Figure 3.2 - When calculating the interaction between light and matter, it is
impossible to give an exact geometric description of the surface's actual micro-
roughness that contributes to the visual appearance of materials.

75
Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

For these and other reasons, simplifying assumptions are made about the
nature of materials and light, which on the one hand allow practical
problems to be solved, but on the other mtroduce a considerable margin of
error into the results that can be obtained. So that they cannot be considered
valid from the standpoimt of physical correctness but are helpful for the
analysis of lighting design parameters.
In general, an intuitive rule applies, which can be stated as follows: the
more simplified a calculation concerning the description of light is, the
greater the error in the results. In this sense, using a PC instead of manual
calculation methods already represents a major step forward in evaluating
the quantitative aspects of lighting. On the other hand, concerning the
aesthetic and qualitative factors, the PC, although indispensable, makes it
possible to obtain good results, which do not have absolute validity but
must be interpreted. This is due to a series of phenomena linked to the
human visual (HVS) perception that we will see in this chapter.

3.2 Vision: facts and illusions

Perceiving the world around us is not just a simple collection of sensory
data (Gibson, 1966). Through our senses, and in this particular context, our
vision, we are able to create a mental representation of the world around us.
Vision is the primary human sensory system (Gregory, 2015). Our visual
system has evolved in such a way as to best mterpret the informative
richness of images (Land, 1977), thus developing sensitivity and adaptation
characteristics that are interesting to analyze.
Vision is a process that begins in the eyes and is completed in the cerebral
cortex. Rather than a separate, autonomous sensor that transmits data to the
brain for further processing, the eyes can be understood as a part of the
nervous system, working with the cerebral cortex to adapt and process
visual information (Conway, 2002).
The cerebral cortex does not receive a faithful copy of the stimulus received
from the outside world but largely unknown processing of the original
optical information.
Each stage operates on particular stimulus characteristics, such as color,
shape, movement, and depth, activating under certain conditions to process
the signals it receives (Zeki, 1993). Therefore, there is no specific area of
the brain interpreting what we see. Still, visual processing takes place
simultaneously in several different regions of the cerebral cortex located in
the occipital region. It is, therefore, more appropriate to speak of a
perception process. Let us now look at some of the characteristics of this
process, starting with the structure of its first component, the eye.

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Choroid

Ciliary body Sclera

Vitreous humor

Anterior
chamber

Retina

Figure 3.3 - Representation of the eye.

The eye is formed by the eyeball, which is located in the orbital cavity of
the skull. It can be considered a small camera: the eyeball wall is covered
on the outside by a robust white membrane called the sclera. This
membrane becomes transparent and more curved on the front, forming the
cornea. Immediately below the sclerotic membrane is the choroid
membrane, which anteriorly has an opening, the pupil, with an adjustable
diaphragm, the iris, which has the same functions like the diaphragm of a
photo camera. Behind the pupil, the opening is the crystalline lens, a
biconvex lens-shaped body made up of transparent cells that, by deforming
through the ciliary muscles, allow the image to be focused on the retina.

208°

Stereo

(a) (b)

Figure 3.4 - Horizontal (a) and vertical (b) human field of vision.

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

Congenital problems with the shape of the eyeball or crystalline lens result
in the classic visual defects of myopia (excessively elongated eyeball),
hypermetropia (excessively shortened eyeball) and astigmatism
(asymmetrical crystalline lens). Age-related degeneration also reduces the
ability of the crystalline lens to change shape to adapt the focus, causing
presbyopia. It is interesting to note that the lateral visual field of the two
eyes is about 208° and the vertical one about 120°, as is the angle of both
eyes in stereoscopic vision, which helps i depth perception.

Amacrine
cells
Bipolar Horizontal
Cones Rods Pigmented
Ganglion cells , cells

Light rays

Figure 3.5 - Structure of photosensitive and neural cells in the retina.

The innermost layer of the eyeball is the retina, which contains nerve cells
of various types, including light-sensitive receptors, cones, and rods. The
cones react to high light stimuli mainly in daytime vision (Photopic), while
the rods are also active in low light conditions typical of night vision
(Scotopic). Cones and rods, stimulated by light, generate electrical signals
through biochemical processes. These impulses pass, also in the retina,
through a series of specialized nerve cells: the amacrine, ganglion, bipolar
and horizontal cells, which then convey them to the optic nerve and,
through the latter, to the cerebral cortex.
There are three types of cones sensitive to different wavelengths. Each cone
type has its own spectral sensitivity for varying wavelengths. The
combination of the three different sensitivities guarantees coverage of a
light spectrum in the range 380-780nm, the so-called visible spectrum.
Having three different signals available, depending on the frequency of the
light received, enables the perception of color, as we will see in detail later.
In contrast, the rods are all of the same type and only perceive light levels in
colorless vision.

78
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

ImiW 1800
K', = 1700 mw
1600|_

1400|-

1200|- K'(A)
Luminous efficacy K

1000|-

800 |}-
K, = 683 mW
600}
400|-

200 |-
N'=505
in !
400 500 600 700 nm
Figure 3.6 - The photopic K(A) and scotopic K'(A) spectral luminous efficacy curves
define humans' photopic and scotopic visual sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation.

Another critical aspect is that humans are sensitive to radiation in the

electromagnetic spectrum according to wavelength. Outside the range 380-
780nm, the visible light, we do not perceive anything, which is why we are
unable to see infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Within the light
spectrum, we are more sensitive to the frequencies that produce the stimulus
of green and yellow than those producing blue and red. This effect was
described by the CIE in 1924 with the definition of the photopic luminous
efficacy K(\) of the standard observer, determined as an experimental mean
value on some human subjects, which defines the basis of photometry and
colorimetry (CIE, 2018).
Photometry is the science of describing the human visual perception of
electromagnetic waves, that 1s, light. Considering light as electromagnetic
radiation allows us to study it within the framework of radiometry, while
photometry tells us how this radiation is percetved. Each spectral,
radiometric quantity can be associated with the analogous photometric
quantity, e.g. the radiance L,(1) corresponds to the luminance L,.
K(A) 1s, therefore, the basis for the definition of all photometric quantities,
based on the perception of electromagnetic waves, which are in turn
described by radiometric quantities. The main ones are:

79
Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

— Luminous flux. Obtained from the radiant flux. Describes the amount
of light energy that flows in one second and describes how much light
comes out of a light source. It is measured in lumens [lm].
— Luminous intensity. Obtained from the radiant intensity. Describes how
the flux varies with respect to the angular direction in which the light
exits a source. It is measured in candelas [cd]. The set of values of the
luminous intensities in the space around a light source defines its
photometric solid.
— Illuminance. Obtained from irradiance Describes the amount of flux
arriving over an area of one square meter and is used to describe how
much light gets on a surface. It is measured in lux [Ix]
— Luminance. Obtained from radiance. Describes the amount of flux from
a surface, visible through a certain solid angle, and is used to describe
the sensation of brightness percetved by the human eye or a generic
sensor. It is measured in candelas on square meters [cd/m’].

K(A) is only valid for photopic vision, 1.e., for perceived average luminance
levels above 3cd/m’, i.c., in the case of daytime vision. If the average
perceived luminance is less than 0.001cd/m” , this is called scotopic vision
K'(A), which can be seen at night under a starry sky. For imtermediate
luminance values, we have mesopic vision.
The scotopic spectral luminous efficacy curve differs from the photopic
curve in two respects. The maximum value K'y,x=-1700 Im/W is much higher
than the maximum photopic sensitivity Ky,x= 683 Im/W. This means that
we have, on average, a two and a half times higher sensitivity to light
radiation for low luminance levels. Maximum photopic sensitivity occurs
for the 555nm wavelength, which corresponds to the yellow zone, while
scotopic sensitivity occurs for 507nm, which shifts towards the green area
of the spectrum. This means that we are more sensitive to colors tending to
yellow for high luminance levels, while for low luminance levels, we are
more sensitive to green. This difference can be easily observed by
normalizing the effectiveness to obtain the corresponding efficiency curves:

V(A)= KQ) Vi(A)= —S K'()

ma 683 mW" 1700 ImW*

The arrangement of photosensitive cells on the retina is not uniform. There

are about six million cones, and they are concentrated in the central area of
the retina, the fovea, which corresponds to the optical center of the eye.
There are about one hundred and twenty million rods in the peripheral

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

regions. The distribution of cones and rods is therefore inversely

proportional. There are more cones and fewer rods in the center of the
retina, while at the periphery of the retina, the proportion is reversed
(Bertelli, 2019).

4000}- Rods
r\
Number of receptors per 0.001 mm?

3200—

24001
Blind spot

1600}~
Ss
Ss
2

a 1 2. n

20° 15° 10° «5° 0° «§° 10° 15° 20°

Figure 3.7 - The distribution of photoreceptors with respect to the visual angle
centered on the fovea.

The fact that most of the cones reside in the central part has the
consequence that human vision is active. To observe something well, we
have to look for it with our eyes. An image or film is not viewed passively
but actively observed. On an image, the gaze travels along paths to collect
visual information. These paths mainly follow the edge areas and, in any
case, areas with high visual information content.
This scanning mechanism also serves to refresh the contrast of an image.
This is because, to perceive detail through contrast, it is necessary to look
through the fovea, where there is the greatest density of cones responsible
for the spatial resolution capacity of our visual system. Contrast Sensitivity
Function (CSF) describes the contrast sensitivity of the HSV as the
observed spatial frequency varies, 1.e., when the linear size of the image
details changes (Tatler et a/., 2010).
The minimum perceivable contrast values are related to a given level of
brightness, so it must be taken into account that the contrast sensitivity
characteristics vary with the general brightness of the scene. In addition,
near transition zones, there is often an effect known as Mach band that, in
order to highlight the contrast between different zones, makes us perceive a
greater difference in brightness levels than the actual one (Mach, 1959;
Ratliff, 1965).

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

Figure 3.8 - Left and center: the observation paths of the eye focus on the areas of
variation of contrasts to perceive the image. The image on the right represents a
shaded disc. If you fix your eyes perfectly still for a few seconds on the central black
dot, the circular shape tends to disappear due to the loss of contrast and eyes
movements.
Lightness

Figure 3.9 - Mach bands. At the top, there is a regular greyscale of uniform color.
The diagram below illustrates the illusion of varying perceived lightness: near the
left edge, each tile appears lighter and at the right edge darker. The overall
perception is that each tile is not uniform but degrades from left to right.

The cause of this effect lies in the joint action, called action-inhibition, of
the receptive fields of the visual system. A receptive field is a visual field
region that collects a set of interacting photoreceptors. The action-inhibition
mechanism, called center-periphery, occurs in two ways: center-
excited/periphery-inhibited or center-inhibited/periphery-excited and
enhances the response in transition regions, i.e., where the image changes
from one luminance level to a different one. The perceptual consequence is

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

an enhancement of contrasts. Another example of this phenomenon is

Hermann's optical illusion, which presents a regular grid of dark squares on
a light background. At the intersection of the white stripes between the
black squares, the action-inhibition mechanism makes us perceive grey
areas that do not exist (Hermann, 1870; Schrauf, Lingelbach and Wist,
1997).

Th lf

Figure 3.10 - Hermann's optical illusion: demonstration of the action-inhibition

mechanism of receptive fields.

Like that of the Mach bands, this effect is explained by the diagram in the
figure, in which two zones are taken as examples. The circles indicate two
receptive fields; in the left field, the amount of light signal (white areas)
falling in the inhibition region (marked with the minus sign, the circular
crown) is compensated by the dark areas falling in the same region. The
opposite is true in the right field, where the extensive light areas in the
inhibition region contrast with the activation signal in the central region,
creating the sensation of a non-existent dark area.
Each receptive field is therefore composed of a certain number of
photosensitive cells, but this number varies depending on the position on the
retina. Particularly in the central part of the retina, the fovea, receptive
fields are made up of a minimal number of cells, making it possible to
distinguish small details of images. In contrast, n the rest of the retina, the
receptive fields are made up of a much larger number of photoreceptors and
are therefore unable to distinguish image details.
We can demonstrate this physiological structure of the retina with a simple
experiment: we try to fix our gaze on a word of this text and, without
moving our eyes from that word, we try to read the adjacent words. We
notice that as the distance increases, the words become more and more
confused and indistinguishable.
Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

Figure 3.11 - The changing smile of Leonardo's Mona Lisa.

But this organization of receptive fields is also said to be at the basis of one
of the most famous optical illusions: the smile on Leonardo's Mona Lisa,
which appears and disappears depending on how one looks at the painting
(Livingstone, 2000). If we look directly at the lips of the Mona Lisa, we
notice that the smile is very thin, almost absent. However, if we look at her
eyes, her smile changes and appears much wider. This is because by staring
into the eyes, the mouth falls into the periphery of the field of vision, and
we are no longer able to distinguish the detail of the mouth but only the
shading at its sides, which makes her smile appear much larger.

3.3 Perceptual adaptation of vision

Returning to the examination of the structure of the retina, it is interesting to
note that light does not directly hit the cones and rods directed towards the
brain but is also reflected from the bottom of the retina. The light passes
through layers of blood-rich tissue during this journey, but we do not see a
red or pink world. The reason lies in the multiple adaptation mechanisms of
our visual system, which we will analyze in detail later. This orientation of
the photoreceptors imposes a particular configuration: the bundle of cells'
axons, which must reach the cerebral cortex, gathers towards the center of
the eye in the optical nerve and exits the eyeball at an area known as the

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

blind spot. Our retina has no photoreceptors in this area, but despite this, we
do not have the sensation of having areas of the visual field without a
signal. The brain completes the missing visual field in the blind spot.

Figure 3.12 — Simple experiment confirming the existence of the blind spot.

To verify this phenomenon, simply perform the following experiment.

Covering your left eye, fix the dot in the left of the figure, then move the
book in front of you, still using one eye and, keeping your attention on the
cross, look for the distance (around 20cm) where the cross will disappear. It
disappears because you have found the correct distance so that the cross's
projection on your retina 1s exactly on the blind spot. The brain reconstructs
what is missing in the blind spot, with the background or using what is
around it. In this case, a continuous vertical line is percetved
Adaptation mechanisms provoke phenomena identified with the name of
perceptual constancy, thanks to which a scene is perceived in the same way
even when lighting conditions change within fairly wide limits. The
perceptual constancy, related to brightness, lightness, and color, allows us to

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

see the world stably under the most diverse observation conditions (Land,
1977).
All this points to a discrepancy between the physical visual information we
receive about the world around us and how we perceive it (Hering, 1964).
In other words, the HVS is undoubtedly an effective tool for extracting
visual information, but since it adapts to the environment, it is certainly not
a measuring instrument.
Lightness constancy adapts the visual system to variations in lighting,
which in natural scenarios can vary by more than six orders of magnitude,
from a sunny day to the darkness of a forest. In each context, our visual
system tries to produce a similar stimulus after an adaptation phase, and the
adaptation time varies according to luminosity (MacEvoy and Paradiso,
2001).

Figure 3.13 — Simultaneous contrast. The small central square, identical in all four
cases, is perceived as lighter or darker depending on the grey surrounding it. The
lighter the background color, the darker the center appears, and vice versa.

Figure 3.14 - Simultaneity contrast with colored figures.

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Therefore, the feeling of the lightness of a surface is not a measure of the

amount of light reflected directly from it but is somewhat linked to the
relationship of this lightness to its surroundings. This principle of adaptation
is at the basis of a classical optical illusion, called simultaneous contrast,
which makes us perceive the same surface with different levels of
brightness as the background changes.
Color constancy is the ability of the human visual system to compensate for
apparent changes in the color of objects due to spectral variations in the
light source (Monge, 1789). The signal that reaches our visual system
results from the interaction between the light that illuminates the object and
its reflective properties. Consequently, a white sheet illuminated by a red
light and a red sheet illuminated by a white light reflect similar light spectra.
In reality, thanks to the phenomenon of color constancy, our visual system
can adapt to a possible chromatic dominance, due to the light source and
attenuate it considerably. To understand the effects of this adaptation, we
can look at the figure, in which we see four photographs of a shot taken
under four different illuminants. In the picture, which captures physical
reality, it is possible to see how the dominant colors due to lighting alter the
colors in the frame. The same experiment, observed in person, would allow
us to see the different colors better, as our visual system attenuates the
dominant colors due to lighting.

Figure 3.15 - Left: colored reflection. Right: Variation of illuminants on the same
surface, in clockwise order from the top, left fluorescent lamp, incandescent lamp,
sunlight filtered by clouds, incandescent lamp with a red filter.

This experience is familiar to anyone who has taken photographs in

artificially lit environments using sunlight settings. The photograph takes on
a strong yellow-orange dominance with incandescent lamps, while a strong
green-blue dominance can emerge with fluorescent lights. However, when
we look at the scene, the dominant is not perceptible, not because it is not
present, but because the visual system adapts by eliminating it.

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

3.4 Color
At the beginning of the 20th century, with the spread of lithographic
printing in visual communication and the production of colored paints, the
problem of describing color unambiguously arose. Until then, for centuries,
the model used was the artistic model of painters. In this model, the primary
colors arranged in a circle were desaturated by adding white in the center of
the palette. Lightness obviously depended on the amount of light reflecting
off-color and was partly modulated by adding black. In this artistic model,
color is defined by the three parameters of hue, saturation, and lightness.
Based on the observation of the characteristics of the human visual system,
the researchers then attempted to describe color in an unambiguous
numerical way using hue, saturation, and lightness values,
The rods have a higher absolute sensitivity to light radiation, are responsible
for the scotopic vision for low levels of illumination, and produce colorless
vision based only on differences in lightness. The sensation of color is only
perceptible with sufficient illumination levels in photopic vision. It results
from the fact that there are three different types of cones, each characterized
by pigments with different spectral absorption curves.

°
>
3
2
@
g£
¢
E3
rs
°
a
a
&
eee NEN RAMEN ER
400 450 500 550 600 650 =o nm
350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700

Figure 3.16 - Absorption of cones, absolute (left), and normalized value (right).

The first type of cone, L, has a sensitivity range in the longer wavelengths,
with a maximum of 564nm, in the red zone. The second type of cone, M,
has a range of sensitivity that is more shifted to the middle region of the
spectrum, with a maximum of 533 nm, in the green-yellow zone. Finally,
the third type of cone, S, is sensitive to the short wavelength region, with a
maximum sensitivity of 437 nm, in the blue zone.
The fact that the sensitivity of S-cones is much lower does not mean that
they are less sensitive to light, but rather that the number of S-cones is only
about 10% of the total.

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

The different sensitivities and quantities of cones result in different

wavelength discrimination abilities. To measure it, experiments of color
matching have been carried out (Wright, 1929; Guild, 1931). A circle is
divided into two halves; on one half, monochromatic light of known
wavelength is projected; on the other half, three monochromatic red, green,
and blue lights are projected, varying the amount until the observer begins
to perceive the same color in the two halves of the circle.

screen

White
screen
A
Monochromatic
light

Figure 3.17 - The color-matching experiment by Wright and Guild in the 1920s
demonstrates the tristimulus theory. The choice of the wavelength of the three
monochromatic primary sources is critical in the experiment. These must be linearly
independent, i.e., none of the three must be reproducible by modulating the other
two.

The role of the three types of cones in forming the color signal was first
identified by von Helmholtz. Through experiments carried out in the mid-
19th century, he demonstrated the ability of cones to react to light stimuli of
different wavelengths (Helmholtz, 1867). As a result of these studies,
several models of color perception have been formulated, the main one
being the Tristimulus model. The tristimulus model lends itself to
mathematical processing and accurate quantitative representation of the
color. To understand this, we can start with the description of the
experiments by David Wright and John Guild. In these experiments, a

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

person observed an area divided in two. In one half of the visual field, a
sample of monochromatic light of known wavelength was projected, and in
the other half, three monochromatic lights of varying intensity were
projected. By adjusting the powers of these three colored lights, the
observer had to try to reproduce a color that looked the same as projected in
the other half of the visual field. The result of these experiments, which
seems obvious today, was surprising at the time. By mixing just three
colors, it was possible to obtain nearly all the monochromatic colors of the
visible spectrum. Indeed, for some particular wavelengths, even modulating
the three primary sources in all possible ways, an equivalent perception
could not be achieved. However, perceptual equivalence could be attained
by adding small amounts of one of the three primaries to the sample source.
In the graph resulting from the experiment, this means that one of the three
primary lights is shown with a negative value for some wavelengths, which
would not make sense from a physical standpoint.

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2
Red

Green 3
3
a2
406 418 431 447 465 488 515 550 596 65977747

Figure 3.18 - Results of Wright's experiment conducted on various human observers.

The ordinates show the tuning level of the three primary monochromatic sources,
which were chosen by Wright at wavelengths of 460 nm for blue, 530 nm for green,
and 630 nm for red.

Light radiation is absorbed in different percentages by the photopigments in

the three types of cones and stimulates them in different ways. Along the
visible wavelength spectrum, each group of photoreceptors of the same kind
receives electromagnetic radiation according to its sensitivity and adds it to
the other types of photoreceptors. The colors of the lights we see are thus

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

associated with the different percentages of stimulation of the three types of

cones, which explains why many different color nuances can be perceived
with only three types of receptors. In this way, any spectral distribution of
light energy is summarised in three values, known as tristimulus, and each
perceived color results from a particular triplet. However, since the basic
operation of perception is an integration in the frequency domain of the
spectrum, this entails a loss of information. It may happen that different
spectral energy distributions give rise to the same tristimulus. In these cases,
known as metamerism, the perceived color is the same for a diverse light
spectrum (Wyszecki and Stiles, 2000).
Considering that the spectral distribution that hits the eye is the result of the
interaction between illumination and spectral reflectance at the observed
point, it can happen that under some illuminants, two objects with different
reflectance generate the same tristimulus values, i.e., they are metamers,
while they would not be under other illuminants. For example, two fabrics
may appear to have the same color under the artificial lighting of a retail
store while appearing different when viewed under sunlight.

—y)

0
350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 750 800nm

Figure 3.19 - The spectral color sensitivity curves of the CIE standard observer
defined in 1931.

3.5 Color spaces

Based on the experiments of Wright and Guild, the CIE defined the average
color perception characteristics of humans in 1931 by defining the three
sensitivity curves of the standard observer (ISO/CIE, 2019):

x(A), VA), 2A)

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

These are different from those measured experimentally. For reasons of

mathematical convenience, these were obtained by transforming the original
Wright and Guild curves to eliminate the negative sensitivity values that do
not make sense from a physical standpoint, imposing that:

V(A)= KA)

and making sure that the area under the three curves was equal for reasons
of energy balance (CIE, 2018).

Figure 3.20 - Schematic representation of the tristimulus theory. Electromagnetic

radiation with a spectrum L,(A) is associated with the tristimulus XYZ, which are
the area values subtended by the three curves: red, green, and blue.

Their usefulness lies in the fact that they provide a straightforward method
for converting the spectral radiance of electromagnetic radiation within the
light spectrum into three real numbers XYZ, called tristimulus values. After
assigning a spectral radiance L,(A) it is possible to obtain the tristimulus
values XY Z, via the three integrations:

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

X=K.. [-L.wraaa
380
; Y=K,,.[ L,a)y(AdA
380
; Z=K,,.( L,A)zdA
380

Where K,,,,=683lm/W is the maximum value of the photopic efficacy

curve. Based on the above and with mathematical steps that we omit, it can
be shown that the tristimulus value Y thus corresponds to the photometric
luminance associated with the received spectral radiance. Tristimulus values
represent the stimulation that a light signal produces on the three types of
LMS cones. These values vary depending on the amount of energy
associated with the spectrum.
0.9

0.8

0.7

0.6

500
0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.0
380
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
x

Figure 3.21 - The CIE chromaticity diagram resembles a schematic representation of

a painter's palette. In the center is the achromatic color. The colors saturate towards
the edges until they become pure, corresponding to monochromatic radiation. The
wavelengths of the spectrum corresponding to the pure colors are shown on the
border. With the diagram, hue (fundamental wavelength) and saturation (distance
from the center) can be determined for color with chromaticity coordinates xy.

To separate the energy information of perceived light from the chromaticity

information, the CIE then introduced the xy chromaticity coordinates. The
chromaticity coordinates are obtained from the tristimulus values using the
following relationships:

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

x =X/(X+Y4+Z) ; y=Y/(X+Y+Z)

The characteristics of a light signal can be identified by the value triplet

(xyY), which identifies color using the two chromaticity coordinates and
luminance Y.
The purpose of the presented steps was to obtain three numerical values
representing the three fundamental dimensions of color: hue, saturation, and
lightness. In this sense, Y, the luminance, is related to the intuitive concept
of lightness for surfaces that reflect light or brightness for those that emit it.
Unfortunately, xy are not hue and saturation, but they can be linked to these
by the chromaticity diagram, which looks surprisingly like a painter's
palette. The chromaticity diagram represents hues and saturation levels at
constant, unified luminance (1.e., constant energy).

¥
0,8

0,6

0,4

0,2

Figure 3.22 - Representation of MacAdam ellipses on the CIE 1931 chromaticity

diagram.

The xy value pairs and the XYZ tristimulus values can also be considered
the coordinates of a plane or space. In this case, we speak of color space.
The CIE XYZ color space is an absolute color space based on
observations and experiments on the human visual system. Still,
unfortunately, it is not linear in color discrimination and does not lend

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

itself to a perceptual evaluation of the difference between two colors. In

other words, equal distances in space do not correspond to similar
perceptual color differences, which also applies to the chromaticity
diagram. This is clearly visible in the MacAdam ellipses, which indicate
certain experimentally determined areas of color that cannot be
distinguished (MacAdam, 1942).
Since each point on the chromaticity diagram corresponds to a color, it
can be deduced that in the areas of green compared to blue, more xy
values produce the same color sensation. This is not to say that humans
are less sensitive to green than to blue, but rather that the functions that
map the spectral distribution in tristimulus values are not perceptually
linear.
One solution to this problem was to modify the functions to deform the
CIEXYZ space to obtain a perceptually more linear color space. In 1976,
two other color spaces were proposed, CIELUV and CIELAB, obtained
from XYZ using mathematical transformations.
In addition to the absolute CIEXYZ color space, the relative RGB and
CMY color spaces are commonly used. In fact, when reproducing images,
RGB additive synthesis is used on displays, which adds the components of
the three colors red, green, and blue to black, and CMY subtractive
synthesis for printing, which subtracts the three complementary colors
cyan, magenta, and yellow from white. However, the characteristic of
these color spaces is that they are relative, i.e., dependent on the color
characteristics of the reproduction device used. Indeed, it is very common
to find two displays with different color characteristics of the RGB
primaries. In this case, the color representation of the same digital image
will be slightly different on the two screens. The same applies to inks used
in paper printing (Hunt, 2004).

Figure 3.23 - Additive (left) and subtractive (right) color synthesis.

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

What is important to note about relative color spaces is that the definition of
a color made in them 1s only correct in the context in which the color space
is defined. Unfortunately, this is not the case in everyday practice, and this
is one of the open problems of digital color reproduction. In typical
computer-aided design (CAD) applications, color is always defined and
reproduced in terms of RGB space regardless of the displays used, with the
result that correct color reproduction cannot be guaranteed on different
workstations. CAD often also allows color to be defined using the HLS
(Hue, Lightness Saturation) space or the analogous HSV (Hue, Saturation,
Value) model, where V is the lightness. However, even these are relative
color spaces obtained by mathematical transformations of RGB space.
Some graphics programs allow the color to be defined in the CIEXYZ and
CIELAB absolute spaces. Still, to guarantee color correctness, the software
is aware of the displays' color characteristics through the information
available in the operating system thanks to color calibration procedures.
Unfortunately, it is common practice to use CAD and other graphics
programs to define colors in terms of RGB spaces and transfer them to
different PDs and displays, with the unfortunate result of reproducing
different color hues and saturation.
For this reason, with the advent of the WWW, the sRGB color space was
introduced, which should be adopted by manufacturers of computer displays
and other devices (IEC, 1999). This color space defines:

— The color coordinates of the three RGB primary colors that a display
conforming to the standard should have. In reality, virtually no sRGB-
compliant display meets this requirement 100%, even right out of the
factory, so a color calibration procedure is necessary, which can be
done with a colorimeter. This calibration must also be repeated
periodically, at least every 6 months.
— The transformation between the CIEXYZ space and the sRGB space.
— The reference white is defined by the standard illuminant D65. This is
standard defining daylight with a CCT of 6500K, i.e., with color
coordinates similar to a black body heated to 6500 degrees Kelvin
(ISO/CIE, 2007).
— The conditions for viewing images on displays are defined by the
following five conditions:
1. the average luminance level of the display is approximately
80cd/m?:
2. the average reflectance level of the visible surfaces adjacent to the
display is around 0.2;

96
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

3. the display has an anti-reflection surface;

4. the display is equipped with black screens that protect against
direct light from above and the sides;
5. the ambient light where the display is located should have a CCT
of 5000K.

Figure 3.24 - The standard sRGB color space is represented by the triangle within
the CIE1931 color space. It can only represent a subset of the hue and saturation
levels theoretically perceivable by the human eye.

Figure 3.25 - An sRGB monitor set up at a workstation.

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

3.6 Limits of colorimetry

The basic CIE tristimulus model is still the reference model for color spaces
used in colorimetry. Unfortunately, it has limitations and cannot handle
perceptual phenomena such as color constancy (Rizzi, 2021).
Ewald Hering proposed a six-channel model to better explain certain
perceptual phenomena: three channels of opposing black-white, red-green,
and yellow-blue signals are added to the classical XYZ (Hering, 1964). This
model, also supported by physiological studies, tries to explain the fact that
the extremes of the two opposite color pairs cannot be perceived
simultaneously (Conway, 2002). Namely, one cannot perceive a greenish-
red, a bluish-yellow, and so on. Hering's model, in fact, is one of the
guidelines for the definition of perceptual spaces such as CIELAB, in which
the chromatic coordinates ab represent, with positive or negative values, the
red-green, and yellow-blue color oppositions, respectively.
The illumination adaptation mechanism of the human visual system, known
as color constancy, is another perceptual aspect that is not covered by the
tristimulus model (Monge, 1789; Judd, 1940). Chromatic constancy is the
ability to perceive a given surface color even under different lightig spectra,
given that the signal that the eye receives derives from the interaction
between the spectral reflectance of a surface and the spectral distribution of
illuminance (Fairchild, 2013). It follows that chromatic constancy can be
considered the ability to receive similar color sensations from an object,
even if different spectral distributions come from it due to changes in
illuminance. According to this principle, the perceived color of a surface is
no longer strictly dependent on the received spectral radiation. Therefore,
the tristimulus model is inadequate with its univocity between spectrum and
stimulus triplet.
A remarkable aspect of visual perception is that we can retrieve information
about the chromaticity of an object regardless of illumination. This is a
simple mathematical operation if you know the spectral distribution of the
lighting, but the human visual system does this without any prior
information about the observed scene. To do this, the perceptual system
binds the signal coming from a surface with all signals coming from other
objects in the scene and, by comparing them, separates the component due
to the illuminant. In other words, if there is more red because of the
illuminant, there will be more red on all objects in the scene. Once detected,
this component is subtracted from all colors in the scene. This operation is
partially justified by the von Kries principle, according to which a
chromatic dominant causes a linear shift on each of the tristimulus channels.
However, this is an approximation only applicable to weak color

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

dominance. Although the principle remains valid, in reality, there are even
more complex non-linearities because the illumination of objects is never
uniform. So the color sensation does not derive directly from the retinal
signal but is the result of complex cognitive processing of this signal.
To isolate the chromatic dominant, the most common approach is white
normalization: for each XYZ color channel, the lightest values in the image
are sought, and if they are not already at their maximum value, all channel
values are normalized to their maximum value. The principle behind this
method is that our visual system maximizes the dynamics of the received
visual signal, considering the brightest area of the perceived image as the
reference white. Think of a scene containing a sheet of paper, even if it is
not perfectly white. If nothing is brighter, it will appear white to us (Marini,
Rizzi and Rossi, 1999). In digital cameras, this is called white balance.

3.7 Light spectrum and color

Based on the above, color is not a characteristic of light or objects but a
cognitive-perceptual sensation processed by the cerebral cortex. Light is
characterized by radiance spectra and surfaces by spectral reflectance. There
is a loss of information in the perception of the color sensation associated with
the spectrum of a light ray. This is also why the phenomenon of metamerism
occurs.
A great deal has been written about the effects of color perception on the
human psyche (Xin et al., 1998; Gao and Xin, 2006; Ou ef al., 2018; Giines
and Olguntiirk, 2020), even in disciplines that have nothing in common with
the scientific method. There is also a divergence between the physiology and
psychology research methods.
Today, it is not yet possible to give definite answers or formulate exact
descriptive models of the human perception of colors and the effects this has
on human beings' emotional states because the functioning mechanisms of the
brain remain in many respects unknown. Therefore, in this text, we will limit
ourselves to the known, objective aspects of lighting and mention some
subjective aspects of color.
Since the main requirements of lighting design are based on photometry, we
can observe that the current design methodology does not consider two
critical aspects of human perception. In the standards, light is described under
the assumption that the observer is always in a photopic vision condition. And
this is not always true. Furthermore, considering only the photopic hypothesis
and ignoring the shape of the light spectrum can lead to incorrect assessments
of color rendering index (CRI)(CIE, 2017), the actual efficiency of light
sources, and the psycho-physiological effects light can have on humans.

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

To further complicate the picture outlined above, it should also be noted

that between photopic perception, which mainly involves the cones, and
scotopic perception, which involves the rods primarily, there is also an
intermediate level called mesopic.

8000 8000

6000 ~ 1 1 | { | 6000+

luminanza
a
4000 - 4000 +

2000 2000 —

é att , | a!
350 «400 «6450 «6500 «6550 ©6600 §=6650 6700 §=6750 = 800 nm 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 750 9800

Figure 3.26 - SPD of two lights. On the left is yellow-red dominant radiation. On the
right is a green-blue dominant one. The two lights have the same luminance,
L=0.001398cd/m?, on the borderline between scotopic and mesopic vision. For this
reason, the blue-green one will appear brighter.

Experiments have shown, for example, that for the visual tasks in night-time
driving, which involve the periphery of the visual field, where there are more
rods, to detect the arrival of moving obstacles on the road, white light is better
than yellowish light (Akashi, Rea and Bullough, 2007). This is because
yellow light is less perceptible at low (nearly mesopic) luminance levels than
white light, which is more visible at night. This contrasts with the efficiency
levels advertised in the past by manufacturers, who presented sodium lamps
as much more efficient than white metal halide lamps. Actually, the
comparison between the efficiency levels of the two lamps is made in
photometric terms. Therefore, it does not take into account that the vision of
the areas illuminated by the sources may be in mesopic or scotopic vision
conditions (Rea et al., 2004). Today, with the advent of LEDs, this diatribe
has been superseded, and the use of white light in street lighting is now a
given.
To evaluate aspects of color perception, it is interesting to analyze how light
interacts with materials. We have already seen, talking about color constancy,
that the HVS compensates for the effects of color dominance due to lighting.
This effectively eliminates most of the color variation caused by the spectra of
light sources. In fact, if you look at the spectral emissions of commonly used
white light sources, you will see that they are highly different from each other
and even more different from natural light. As already mentioned, our
perceptual system can compensate for most of these effects, and a clear
demonstration of this phenomenon is in the vision of the color white.

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

400 500 600 700 500 600 700

Figure 3.27 - Relative SPD of light emitted by a tungsten incandescent source (left)
with CCT=2700K and natural light (ight) with CCT=6500K.

400 500 600 700 400 500 600 700

Figure 3.28 - Relative SPD emitted by white fluorescent lamps. Right CCT=3000K,
left CCT=5000K.
The concept of absolute white is purely theoretical since the various sources
of white light have different spectral distributions, with warm hues such as
red and yellow or cool hues such as blue and green predominating.
However, in all cases, if a surface reflects all wavelengths of the spectrum
in the same proportion, we will perceive it as white. Perhaps warm white if
lit with warm tones or cool white if lit with cold tones, but still white.
The hue of the white light source is associated with the CCT parameter. A
source with a CCT=2700K is perceived as warmer than a 5000K source.
It is highly complex to determine which CCT is the most appropriate for the
various visible tasks. The aspects to be considered when choosing the CCT
of lamps to depend on many parameters, but two are the main ones. The

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

colors of the objects in the room to be lit and the type of psycho-perceptual
effect you want to stimulate the observers.

1.36
4030 K / 85 CRI
/ 28 R9 / -0.0033 Duv
Watts/nm (10*-3)

360 400 450 500 600 650 700 750 800 830
Wavelength (nm)

Figure 3.29 - Power spectrum emitted by a white LED with CCT=4030K and
CRI-85.
For the first aspect, reference can be made to the established lighting design
practice in the various artificial lighting applications (Flynn and Spencer,
1977). If, for example, you want to enhance the color characteristics of
objects or structures, you can follow the rule that divides surface colors into
three groups:

— To illuminate predominantly warm colors such as red, orange, and

yellow, i.e., wavelengths above 565nm, it is preferable to use lamps
with a warm hue and CCT between 2500K-3300K.
— For the lighting of predominantly cool colors such as violet, blue, light
blue, cyan, and green, i.e., wavelengths shorter than 565nm, it is
preferable to use lamps with cold tones and CCT between 5000K-
6000K.
— For objects and rooms without a marked warm or cold color
preponderance, it is preferable to use lamps with an intermediate CCT
between 3400K-S000K.

Following the old Kruithof rule, warm-toned light sources make people see
better at lower illuminance levels than cool-toned ones, and vice versa
(Kruithof, 1941), even if some researchers disagree with this assumption
(Fotios, 2001; Viola et al., 2008; Viénot, Durand and Mahler, 2009).
In a room characterized by intense, highly saturated colors, the use of warm
color sources increases the characterization and strength of the room. In

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

contrast, cool tones soften the perception and increase the spaciousness
feeling. In addition, using low-saturated light-colored materials for
structures and furnishings facilitates diffuse inter-reflections of lighting, 1.e.,
the diffusion of indirect light that softens the cut of the shadows (Long,
1937). In the opposite case, there are scenographic effects of sharply cut
lighting and shadows, increasing the dramatic perception and the 3D
perception of the world (Moon and Spencer, 1951).
The ceiling reflectance deserves a special mention (Levin, 1987). In
workplaces, this should be bright so as not to overwhelm the occupants with
a sense of oppression, without however indulging in the opposite extreme
with a mimetic and elusive appearance that can produce a feeling of escape
into immense spaces in which the occupant cannot carve out his own
comfortable working space (Kiiller ef a/., 2006). In subjects predisposed to
these disorders, in the first case, limited latent effects of claustrophobia can
be induced, while in the second, agoraphobia. Light, through direct or
indirect illumination, with the ceiling as its reference point, can emphasise
or lower these sensations. A floor that is too light and a ceiling that is too
dark, reversing the natural light conditions under which we evolved, can
generate a perceptual feeling of disorientation and vertigo (Flynn ef al.,
1979).
Having established that light can emphasize or soften the color tones of an
environment, it can be observed that many authors associate subjective
emotional feelings with various colors (Kwallek ef a/., 1996; Kiiller et al.,
2006; Odabasioglu and Olguntiirk, 2015; Tantanatewin and Inkarojrit,
2016). However, it should be noted that this is a very controversial issue
and is still the subject of research in psychology (Valdez and Mehrabian,
1994; So and Leung, 1998; Wilms and Oberfeld, 2018).
But above all, it is imbued with strong cultural values, and therefore it
changes according to countries and continents (Kiiller et a/., 2006; Gao et
al., 2007). Red is associated with strong but ambivalent feelings, which can
represent danger or the warm welcome of the hearth (Elliot et a/., 2007).
Green, the color of nature, induces feelings of calm and balance (Harleman,
Werner and Billger, 2007), but in some cases, it can also be associated with
anger (Hupka ef al., 1997). Yellow symbolizes joy and life (Pastoureau,
2019), while blue, like black and other dark colors, might be associated with
negative feelings (Elliot, 2015). Still, it depends on the application context
because, in fashion, they are considered elegant (Koh, 2019). Orange, which
mediates between the intense feelings of red and the joy of yellow, is
associated with triumph, positive mystical glorification (Bortoli and Maroto,
2008) and, like blue, vastness.

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

However, white and strongly desaturated light colors play a significant role
in interior and exterior design (Miller, 1997). Being colors with high
reflectance factor, they are helpful for light reflection and diffusion and are
also considered stimulating for intellectual activities in the attention
restoration theory (Stevenson, Schilhab and Bentsen, 2018). However,
going back to cultural meanings of colors, for example in China, white is
considered the color of mourning.

3.8 The color rendering open problem

A critical parameter for describing the colorimetric characteristics of light
sources is the CRI. This represents the ability of a light source to render the
color of objects compared to the color rendering under a reference source.
Typically, natural light has the highest color rendering, whereas a low-
pressure sodium lamp has the lowest CRI=0. In artificial sources, color
rendering and efficiency are generally inversely proportional. For example,
incandescent and halogen lamps, which are the least efficient, have the best
CRIs. This index is evaluated based on the ability to render a set of 8 colors
chosen in the Munsell color system against a CCT-dependent reference
source. The method calculates the chromaticity differences of the color
samples as the illuminant changes from the reference source to the test
source. If the CCT<5000K, the reference source is the blackbody spectrum
of equal CCT, but if the CCT>5000K, the reference source chosen is a
daylight D-series illuminant (ISO/CIE, 2007) with a CCT similar to that of
the tested lamp.

SERGEEE
TCS02 TCS03 TCS04 TCS05 TCS06 TCS07 TCS08

Ref.

Test |

TCS09 TCS010 Tcs11 TCS12 TCS13 TCs14 TCS15

Figure 3.30 - Top: The eight colors from the Munsell atlas used to calculate the CRI.
Below are the seven additional colors.

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

The CRI of natural light and a halogen lamp is considered the best and have
CRI=100. In contrast, the color rendering of a low-pressure sodium vapor
lamp, which has an almost monochromatic spectral output, is zero. The
color rendering index can intuitively be imagined as a valuable tool in
assessing the spectral completeness of a light source: the more irregular and
discontinuous a spectrum, the lower the CRI.
However, it is essential to note that the CRI, although still widely used as a
reference standard, is a tool considered obsolete by many researchers
because it cannot adequately describe the actual color rendering of the new
LED sources. It has been challenged by many scientific studies (CIE, 2007;
Davis and Ohno, 2010; Fumagalli, Bonanomi and Rizzi, 2015). Indeed, the
CRI was defined many years ago, when there were only a fraction of the
light sources available on the market today. Within the CIE, working groups
have been set up over the last 20 years to define a new method for
describing the color rendering of artificial light sources. Still, no results
have been achieved, as there are significant commercial interests in
maintaining the status quo represented by the CRI.
In the USA, a new method of describing color rendering was adopted in
2015 and updated in 2020, with the TM-30-20 standard, likely to become
the de-facto standard worldwide (IES, 2020).

CIE CRI (1974) TM-30 (2020)

eee ey
calculations
CIE UVW 1964 CIECAMO2 (2002)
Number of colors used 8 99
Indexes used to describe . ainnbres: Bi By in satan
: 1 alone: Ra to the graphical
the yield :
representation
. ‘ Black body or daylight with
Reference illuminant ae pio aie gradual variation between
P 4500K and 5500K
Figure 3.31 - The main differences between the two standards CIE CRI and IES
TM-30-20.
In particular, this method describes the color rendering using two indexes.
The first Rg, with values from 0 to 100, represents the fidelity with which a
light source allows us to see colors without changing the hue. The second
index R,, with values less than or greater than 100, will enable us to assess
whether a light source can increase or decrease the level of saturation with
which we perceive colors. In addition to these two indexes, there is a color
distortion icon graph.

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

Figure 32 - The TM-30 color distortion icon of a commercial light source

characterized by R81 and R,=94. The blue graph represents the chromaticity
coordinates of the color samples illuminated by the reference source. The red graph
represents the chromaticity coordinates of the colors under the test source. When
there is a rotation in the position of the vertices (colors), it means that we are losing
hue fidelity. When a color moves inwards within the blue circle, it loses saturation
(Rg<100), but if it moves outwards within the blue circle, the light source is
increasing its saturation (Rg>100).

In an attempt to remove the well-known problems of the CRI, the

researchers of the European Broadcasting Union, based on some
preliminary studies (Sproson and Taylor, 1971), developed two indexes for
the television sector, the Television Lighting Consistency Index (TLCI) in
2012 and the Television Luminaire Matching Factor (TLMF) in 2013
(EBU, 2012, 2016).
TLCI-2012 removes the human observer regarding color discrimination,
entrusting the evaluation to a spectral, radiometric measurement of a
sample, the first 18 patches of the Macbeth ColorChecker (excluded the
greyscale), compared with a reference sample. The chromaticity of the
reference used can be on the Planckian locus, if the test source CCT is
below 3400K, on the Daylight locus, if above S5O00K, or a linear
interpolation between the two, if the test 1s between 3400 and 5000 K. The
measured values are then processed by a specific software that simulates the
typical characteristics of the cameras and displays where the image will be
played. For cameras, the considered parameters are responsivity curves,
linear matrix, and optoelectronic transfer function or gamma-correction. As
for the displays, instead, the parameters are the non-linearity or electro-

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

optical transfer function, the chromaticities of the set of primaries, and the
white balance point. Once the calculations have been performed, the
software returns a unique value, Qa, from 0 to 100, which indicates how
feasible it is to attempt a chromatic correction on the source. The results
must be interpreted according to the type of production; for example, film-
type shots have a much more restrictive reading than live shots with
different cameras.
The TLMF-2013 is very similar to the previous one. The main difference is
that instead of an ideal reference source, a real one is used, which can be
chosen according to the type of test source and specified in the results. The
aim is to be more direct than TLCI in evaluating the mix between different
sources. While TLCI is helpful for equipment manufacturers, TLFM is
aimed at practitioners to predict a combination of sources before arriving in
the studio, where it is usually too late to intervene (Wood, 2013).
A further index is the Spectral Similarity Index (SSD, developed in 2016 by
experts from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (SMPTE,
2020). In the SSI, to avoid the excess of variability given by the human
evaluation or numerous and different cameras (which may have spectral
sensitivities that reach out of the visible spectrum), the variance of the test
source related to the reference source is taken into account. Therefore, the
spectral sensitivities of the various devices are not considered, but instead,
how much, in some areas of the spectrum, the test source spectrum differs
from that of the reference source: incandescent or daylight. The purpose
was to create a so-called "confidence factor." The result is an index (0-100)
on the probabilities of the test source to render the colors in the same way as
the reference.

3.9 Conclusions: real vs virtual perception

From what has been illustrated in this and previous chapters, the
development of the lighting design methodology over the last 20 years has
radically changed due to the introduction of IT into the design process,
including the introduction of virtual reality.
In computer graphics, many texts are available that explain the mathematics
used to produce colored renderings. However, even the best technologies
available today are severely limited in their ability to deal with the
radiometric and colorimetric aspects of light. The reason for these
limitations lies in the extreme mathematical complexity of the models in
question, which get simplified to the detriment of precision, thus moving
away from the main objective of rendering used in the design process:
photorealism to achieve virtual prototyping. To define the problem, we state

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Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

that a synthetic image is only perfectly photorealistic if it produces in the

human observer a visual stimulus equal to that produced by the reality that
the image is intended to represent. It should be made clear that a system
capable of delivering perfectly photorealistic renderings for environments of
arbitrary complexity has not yet been created.
However, the common thread in the description of the image synthesis
problem is the calculation of light radiance, which is distributed over an
environment. In everyday reality, light transports information that the
human observer receives to perceive the brightness and chromaticity of
images.

Light sources: Environment: ticaine:oliesever

>| -9 y py.) Human obse! :
- artificial light
natural light - light matter interaction ~ Image perception

Figure 3.33 - System describing the process of image perception in reality.

Light is produced by natural sources, such as the Sun, or artificial ones,

such as luminaires, then interacts with the environment characterized by the
presence of different materials, with arbitrary shapes, and finally reaches the
retina of the human observer who, from the section of a conical beam of
rays, processes the light signal to produce the psycho-physiological cerebral
sensation known as an image.

Light sources: Environment: Virtual ob _ | * |Output device:

Human observer:
- luminaires He|- geometric modeling tp» ins 5 a - digital color
- image perception
- daylight - global lighting model . ees reproduction model

Figure 3.34 - System describing the light path in photorealistic rendering. In the
transition from the virtual observer to the output device, light is not defined by the
SPD but by a triple value in the relative digital RGB color space, resulting in a loss
of information, shown in the figure by a *.

This process has to be simulated in photorealistic rendering, starting from a

set of photometric, radiometric and geometric data assigned by the designer.
These describe reality to produce the same visual sensation that one would
have of the real world described by the data through a digital output device
(Marini, Rizzi and Rossi, 1999). This process can be described by five
steps:

1. Since light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength range of

380-780nm, the data on light sources can be described using the
standards of lighting technology, which is based on photometry and
radiometry.

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

2. The foundations of the geometric description of the environment are

based on analytical geometry, which allows arbitrary shapes to be
modeled using parametric surfaces. Under the assumption of an ideal
surface, the interaction between light and matter can be described in
physics using the Fresnel functions for dielectrics and conductors. Still,
these are difficult to deal with in the case of real materials. In the more
general case of real surfaces, it is described m radiometry using
reflectometry functions such as the Bidirectional Reflectance
Distribution Function (BRDF). Unfortunately, this is not known
analytically and is expensive and difficult to measure for surfaces of
everyday design.
3. The HVS can be described by the CIE tristimulus theory, which is the
basis of colorimetry. Light is colorimetrically defined as a triplet of
RGB values in the software. Colorimetry is not enough: cognitive
perception should also be considered (McCann and Rizzi, 2011).
4. Unfortunately, the digital RGB color space used to generate colored
light on displays is relative. In the transition from the virtual observer
to the output device, the light is described by spectral radiance but with
a triple value, leading to a loss of information and problems with color
correctness.
5. For each sample point of the rendering, the human observer receives,
from the display, the light levels of the three color classes, which are
integrated by the HVS to obtain the perceived image.

Today, a wide range of software CAD is available that allows objects and
environments to be geometrically described and rendered. On the one hand,
these systems offer considerable potential in describing geometry, allowing
objects of arbitrarily complex shapes to be modeled using parametric
surfaces. On the other hand, however, they have significant limitations in
the photorealism of the renderings that can be obtained in terms of the
chromatic appearance of the materials and light distribution. In fact, these
systems allow us to get stunning renderings from an impressionistic point of
view, but with low information value concerning the reality we want to
represent.
The reasons why these commercial software CADs provide a low level of
photorealism are the need to produce images in a limited time or even in
real-time for the realization of animations at 25 frames per second, and this
has led to the development of simplified and empirically formulated global
illumination models, without relying on a physically correct approach to the
calculation of light-matter interaction.

109
Chapter 3 Perception of Light and Color

Figure 3.35 — Rendering an interior design project using the Photon Mapping
calculation method. Courtesy Juan Manuel Torres.

In practical implementation, since the displays are based on the additive

synthesis of the three RGB colors, light and materials are not described by
their spectral characteristics but by triplets of values that try to describe the
color and reflectance characteristics of the material. With this technique,
light sources, materials, and the lighting model are expressed in terms of the
representation model, which is based on the RGB digital color space. This
simplification allows images to be calculated very quickly. Still, because it
expresses real-world phenomena and physical characteristics in terms of
tristimulus elements, it cannot calculate the distribution of light in a
physically correct way. In radiometric reality, the interaction between light
and materials is not in colorimetric terms.
Another crucial aspect influencing photorealistic rendering is the calculation
of global illumination. Objects are illuminated not only by the light coming
directly from lighting sources but also by the light reflected by or
transmitted from other surfaces. This component is referred to as indirect
iuluminance and, in some cases, can account for more than 50% of the
illuminance in a room. For this reason, the physically correct calculation of
the global illumination model is of primary importance in software systems
supporting the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of lighting design,
while it is often ignored in software in order to create beautiful images.
The calculation of global illuminance requires the use of software that
applies complex global illumination models such as radiosity (Goral et al.,

110
 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

1984), Monte-Carlo Ray Tracing (Shirley, Wang and Zimmerman, 1996), and
Photon-Mapping (Jensen, 1996). These enable the calculation of specular
and diffuse inter-reflections of light between objects and transparent media.
Today, these models have been integrated into the solution of the so-called
rendering equation (Kajiya, 1986).
This book does not detail the mentioned global lighting models but instead
describes how these IT tools have changed the lighting design process.

3.10 Conflict of interest declaration

The author declares that nothing has affected his objectivity or
independence in the production of this chapter. Neither the author nor his
immediate family member has any financial interest in the people,
manufacturer or topics involved in this article. The author also declares that
no conflict of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationship
with other people and organizations, could inappropriately influence, or be
perceived to influence, this work.

3.11 Funding source declaration

This study did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the
public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. No form of third party
financing has affected the contents of this chapter.

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Andrea Siniscalco and Fulvio Musante at the Lab. Luce -
Politecnico di Milano. I also wish to thank Alessandro Rizzi and Daniele
Marini of the Lab. Eidomatica — Universita degli Studi di Milano.

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SMPTE (2020) ‘ST 2122:2020 - SMPTE Standard - Spectral Similarity Index

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Chapter 4
Lighting design constraints and methods
Maurizio Rossi, Politecnico di Milano

Abstract
This chapter focuses on the constraints that exist and shape the lighting
design process. The past decade has seen the update and proliferation of
new standards that define quantitative requirements and introduce
qualitative lighting criteria. This chapter also pays attention to methods
resulting from the environmental sustainability issue, the aspects relating to
energy savings, the end-of-life of lighting products, and the regulatory
situation. Finally, we will see how all these constraints affect the objectives
and methods of lighting design.

Keywords
Lighting standard, sustainability, light pollution, design methods

Book title: Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Book DOT 10.23738/RCASB.003
Book ISBN 978-88-995 13-1 6-0
Research Culture and Science Book Series Vol 3
Series ISSN 2785-115X www.rcasb.eu

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Chapter 4 Lighting design constraints and methods

4.1 Introduction to regulatory bodies for lighting

According to the Gaia hypothesis, living organisms on Earth interact with
the surrounding inorganic components to form a complex synergistic and
self-regulating system, which helps maintain and perpetuate the conditions
for life on the planet (Lovelock and Margulis, 1974; Lovelock, 2000).
The optimization of resources according to pre-assigned constraints is the
principal activity of the lighting design process. Thinking also about Gaia,
external constraints come from the environment understood as a set of
related subsystems:

— Sociosphere: covers cultural and social aspects in the organization of

human activities.
— Technosphere: defines the economic, scientific, and technological
aspects of human culture.
— Biosphere: is the environment in which we live, understood as the set
of renewable and non-renewable natural biological resources.
— Geosphere: covers aspects related to the territory and its management in
relation to other subsystems.

Other so-called internal constraints are self-imposed by the designer on his

own working methods and strongly contribute to characterizing the
designer's style.
Within the framework of external constraints induced by the socio-
economic sphere, a distinction can be made between those imperative, such
as legal obligations, and those of a voluntary or incentive nature represented
by industry regulations.
European, Italian and regional legislation on lighting design is highly
fragmented, with a series of laws, law decrees, and ministerial circulars that,
in some cases, leave room for doubts about interpretation and clash with the
technical regulations of the same sector. The central theme of safety and
health of the spaces to be illuminated with artificial and/or natural light is
the main thread common to all legislation. However, it can be observed that
this 1s divided into three areas of intervention concerning lighting criteria:
the electrical supply system, fire prevention systems, and the elimination of
architectural barriers. This legislation 1s constantly evolving.
The most consolidated part of the sector's legislation relates to the area of
electrical installations, which implements the directives of the European
Union concerning the safety of power supply systems and electrical
equipment and, therefore, affects both lighting designers and manufacturers.

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In Italy and other countries, some ministerial circulars and decrees focus on
fire prevention and eliminating architectural barriers, including lighting
aspects.
The external constraints coming mainly from the technosphere and partly
from the sociosphere are represented by rules, recommendations, and
standards issued by various standardization, unification, and research bodies
at the national and international levels. It should be noted that although
standards are generally of a voluntary and incentivizing nature, they are the
foundation for any project activity. Exceptions to this are standards issued
on behalf of the European Commission, complementing directives, which
are in any case mandatory in the member states. Therefore, the production
and exchange of goods in the global market and, thus, the adherence of
products and projects to regulations or, in some cases, even the ability to
anticipate rules rather than having to chase them, represent an opportunity
and a stimulus from the perspective of innovation, which produces positive
results in competitiveness (EU, 2012). The continuous evolution of
scientific research in the field of lighting and the consequent activity of
updating or publishing new standards are, in fact, one of the stimuli
provided by public actors for lighting innovation.
The area of lighting regulation is complicated by the number of bodies
involved in researching, drafting, publishing standards, and
recommendations. First of all, three different levels of competence can be
observed in administrative terms: World, European, and Italian. At these
levels, the three general standardization bodies are ISO (International
Organization for Standardization), CEN (Comité Européen de
Normalisation), and UNI (Ente Nazionale Italiano di Unificazione). As in a
game of Russian dolls, UNI participates in the works of CEN, and CEN, in
turn, participates in the works of ISO. Directives issued by ISO are
transposed by CEN, and those published by CEN in the EU are transposed
by UNI in Italy. The general rule is that a standardization entity at a lower
level cannot issue a standard on its own initiative on a subject for which a
similar standard has already been published or is being developed at a
higher level, as it is obliged to transpose it. A standardization entity could
work and publish a standard only in the absence of a higher standard.
To complicate the situation even further, the two areas of lighting and
electrical engineering are affiliated to other sectoral bodies at various levels,
which participate in the works of the committees of the three main bodies
ISO, CEN, and UNI. For the electrical engineering sector, IEC
(International Electrotechnical Commission) exists at world level,
CENELEC (Comité Européen de Normalisation Electrotechnique) at the

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European level, and CEI (Comitato Elettrotecnico Italiano) at the national

level. For the lighting and photometric sector there is the CIE (Commission
Internationale de I'Eclairage) at world level and at Italian level AIDI
(Associazione Italiana di Illuminazione) in collaboration with ASSIL
(Associazione Nazionale Produttori II}uminazione) participates in the work
of the CIE.

Entities that publish standards and recommendations

Light & Electric &

Ambit General n
Lighting Luminaires

ISO IEC
World CIE
(TC274) (TC34, SC34x)
CEN CENELEC
Europe
(TC169) (CLC/TC34)
; UNI CEl
Italian ee AIDI/ASSIL (CT34, SC34D)

Figure 4.1 — Organizations at the World, European and Italian levels dealing with
lighting and luminaires.

In order to understand which sources to draw on for the relevant

regulations, it is also appropriate to outline the relationship between these
bodies on lighting topics. The ISO works on light and lighting for a few
scientific standards published with CIE. The CIE is mainly concerned with
research and scientific essay on light, lighting, color, and visual perception,
published in scientific papers, technical reports, and mternational standards.
The CEN prepares European standards, on behalf of the European
Commission, also based on the scientific publications of CIE. UNI
participates in the work of CEN, transposes its standards, publishes them in
Italy, and prepares new standards only in case of the absence of CEN
standards. In addition, some standards promulgated by CEN on behalf of
the European Commission take on the role of EU laws, with which the EU
member states must comply. Other CEN standards are voluntary and mainly
aimed at harmonizing the EU market. The scientific activity coordinated at
the World level within CIE sees in Italy the participation of the CIE
National Committee through AIDI in collaboration with ASSIL.

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The work of these bodies is also divided into technical committees and
sometimes even subcommittees. The ISO technical committee 274 works on
light and lighting for some World standards published together with CIE.
Within CEN, the technical committee TC169, which started its works in
1990, is responsible for light and lighting. These committee results are often
slow due to the time it takes to obtain the consensus of all EU member
states. Also, in 1990, within UNI, the technical commission U29, now
renamed "CT023 Luce e illuminazione", began its work on topics
concerning light and illumination in the fields of vision, photometry, and
colorimetry. This involves natural and artificial radiation in the spectral
regions of the ultraviolet, visible, and infrared, regarding the applications
involving all uses of light indoors and outdoors, including environmental
and aesthetic effects. In particular:

— Terminology and quality criteria of lighting technology.

— Lighting for homes, workplaces, schools, sports facilities and
environments, roads and tunnels.
— Reference lighting bodies for colorimetry.
— Photometry of luminaires and general photometric criteria.
— Catadioptric reflection.
— Light pollution.

To give a complete picture of the areas of intervention of the standards in

the lighting sector, we observe that these activities are carried out by UNI
CT023 commission, divided into fifteen working groups plus a central
coordination group:

— GLO1 General terms and quality criteria — Definitions.

— GLO02 Lighting of work and school premises.
— GLO03 Emergency lighting in buildings (UNI - CEI mixed).
— GL04 Sports lighting.
— GLO05 Street lighting (mixed Light and Lighting / Road construction
and civil infrastructure works).
— GL06 Gallery lighting.
— GLO07 Photometry and colorimetry.
— GL08 Light pollution.
— GL10 Energy saving in buildings.
— GLI1 Daylight.
— GlUL12 Lighting design.

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— GL13 Photometric performance.

— GL14 Cultural Heritage Lighting (mixed Light and Lighting / Cultural
Heritage).
— GLI15 Regulatory activity in the field of non-regulated professional
activities (APNR): Lighting Designer.
— GL16 Validation methodologies of lighting CAD software.

4.2 Framework of standards for lighting

The works of the CT023 committee have produced several already published
standards, and work on new draft standards is also ongoing. A crucial aspect
of the regulatory framework is that these standards have only been published
in the last fifteen years. Most of them, 1.¢., those most interesting for lighting
design, has been updated in recent years. These standards can be divided into
five main categories: general lighting standards, luminaire measurement
standards, indoor lighting standards, outdoor lighting standards, and standards
for materials and colors concerning lighting. Few lighting designers know
them all in detail, but it is undoubtedly helpful to know what they are to have
reference points for lighting design in various applications. Some of them are
only in the Italian language.

General lighting standards:

— UNI11630:2016 Luce e illuminazione - Criteri per la stesura del
progetto illuminotecnico.
— UNTIEN 12665:2018 Light and lighting - Basic terms and criteria for
specifying lighting requirements.
— ISO 80000-7:2019 Quantities and units Light and radiation
— UNTI11142:2004 Luce e illuminazione - Fotometri portatili -
Caratteristiche prestazionall.

Luminaire measurement standards:

— EN 13032-1:2004+A1:2012 Light and lighting - Measurement and
presentation of photometric data of lamps and luminaires - Part 1:
Measurement and file format.
— EN 13032-2:2017 Light and lighting - Measurement and presentation
of photometric data of lamps and luminaires - Part 2: Presentation of
data for indoor and outdoor work places.
— EN 13032-3:2007 Light and lighting - Measurement and presentation
of photometric data of lamps and luminaires - Part 3: Presentation of
data for emergency lighting of work places.

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EN 13032-4:2015+A1:2019 Light and lighting - Measurement and

presentation of photometric data of lamps and luminaires - Part 4: LED
lamps, modules and luminaires.

Indoor lighting standards:

EN 15193-1:2017+A1:2021 Energy performance of buildings - Energy
requirements for lighting - Part 1: Specifications, Module M9.
CEN/TR 15193-2:2017 Energy performance of buildings - Energy
requirements for lighting - Part 2: Explanation and justification of EN
15193-1, Module M9.
EN 1838:2013 Lighting applications. Emergency lighting.
UNI CEI 11222:2013 Luce e illuminazione - Impianti di illuminazione
di sicurezza degli edifici - Procedure per la verifica e la manutenzione
periodica.
EN 12464-1:2021 Light and lighting - Lighting of work places - Part 1:
Indoor work places.
EN 1837:2020 Safety of machinery - Integral lighting of machines.
UNI 10840:2007 Luce e illuminazione - Locali scolastici - Criteri
generali per l'illuminazione artificiale e naturale.
UNI 11165:2005 Luce e illuminazione - Illuminazione di interni -
Valutazione dell'abbagliamento molesto con il metodo UGR.
UNI 8097:2004 Metropolitane - Il!}uminazione delle metropolitane mn
sotterranea ed in superficie.

Outdoor lighting standards:

EC 1-2017 UNI 11248:2016 Ilumimazione stradale - Selezione delle
categorie illuminotecniche.
UNI/TS 11690:2017 Illuminazione stradale - Definizione e valutazione
del “fattore di visibilita di oggetti” (FVO) in impianti di illuminazione
stradale realizzati secondo la UNI 11248.
EN 13201-2:2015 Road lighting - Part 2: Performance requirements.
EN 13201-3:2015 Road lighting - Part 3: Calculation of performance.
EN 13201-4:2015 Road lighting - Part 4: Methods of measuring
lighting performance.
EN 13201-5:2015 Road lighting - Part 5: Energy performance
indicators.
EN 12464-2:2014 Light and lighting - Lighting of work places - Part 2:
Outdoor work places.
EN 16276:2013 Evacuation Lighting in Road Tunnels.

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Chapter 4 Lighting design constraints and methods

— UNTI11095:2021 Luce e illuminazione - Illuminazione delle gallerie

stradali.
— UNI11431:2021 Luce e illuminazione - Applicazione in ambito
stradale dei dispositivi regolatori di flusso luminoso.
— EN 12193:2018 Light and lighting - Sports lighting.
— UNI10819:2021 Luce e illuminazione - Impianti di iluminazione
esterna - grandezze illuminotecniche e procedure di calcolo per la
valutazione della dispersione verso l'alto del flusso luminoso.

Standards for materials and colors:

— ENISO/CIE 11664-1:2019 Colorimetry - Part 1: CIE standard
colorimetric observers.
— ENISO 18314-1:2018 Analytical colorimetry - Part 1: Practical colour
measurement.
— EN ISO 18314-3:2018 Analytical colorimetry - Part 3: Special indices.
— EN 16268:2013 Perfomance of reflecting surfaces for luminaires.
— UNI10701:1999 Colorimetria - Campione di Riferimento Secondario
(CRS) - Interpretazione ed utilizzo dei dati colorimetrici all'atto della
richiesta di un prodotto con colore a campione.
— UNI10623:1998 Colorimetria - Compensazione delle differenze di
brillantezza (gloss) nella misurazione del colore delle superfici.
— UNI9810:1991 Denominazione dei colori.
— CNRUNI 10017:1991 Illumimotecnica. Iluminanti A e D65 per la
colorimetria.
— CNRUNI 10019:1991 Illuminotecnica. Osservatori CIE per la
colorimetria.
— UNI 7948:1987 Colorimetria. Termini e definizioni.
— UNI 8813:1986 Edilizia. Sistema di specificazione del colore.

Out of these, we can identify 4 as fundamental to the lighting designer's

skill set out of these standards.
The recently updated EN 12464-1:2021 standard provides the requirements
for executing, operating, and verifying artificial lighting systems in civil and
industrial interiors, excluding environments and areas concerned by specific
regulations. It applies entirely to new installations and to radical
conversions of existing installations. It sets out how to choose, evaluate and
measure the photo-colorimetric quantities needed to define the
characteristics of an artificial lighting system for interiors. The
measurement and evaluation can cover both the verification of the design of

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new installations and the control of existing ones to achieve homogeneous

quality levels concerning the different visual tasks.
As far as exteriors are concerned, the EN 13201 and UNI 11248:2016 series
of standards indicate the quantity and quality requirements for street
lighting design, testing, and maintenance of a lighting system. These
requirements are expressed in terms of the level and uniformity of
lumimance of the road surface, roadside lighting, glare limitation, and
optical guidance. They are provided according to the road class, which is
defined concerning the type and density of vehicular traffic. Also critical is
the "UNI 11630:2016 Light and Lighting - Criteria for drawing up a
lighting design" standard, which we will discuss in more detail later.
The framework of standards and inter-agency relationships outlined so far
only applies to the performance and photometric aspects of lighting, as
everything related to electrical safety falls within the scope of IEC,
CENELEC, and CEI. For some years now, the Italian CEI standards have
coincided with those issued by CENELEC and are published in Italian and
English. The works of IEC are organized in many committees. The one of
most significant interest for lighting applications is TC34 Lighting, which in
turn is divided into four subcommittees:

— SC 34A Electric light sources.

— SC 34B Lamp caps and holders.
— SC 34C Auxiliaries for lamps.
— $C 34D Luminaires.

To date, dozens of standards are available from the work of the TC34
committee and its subcommittees, which define many requirements and
characteristics of luminaires. These standards are of specific interest to
manufacturers in the industry and to lighting product designers. It is not the
purpose of this text to list them, but it may be helpful to know that they can
be easily found also on the CEI website dedicated to standards; by entering
the acronym CEI 34 as a search keyword, it is possible to obtain a list of the
standards to which the technical committee 34 and its subcommittees have
collaborated.

4.3 Light pollution

The UNI 10819:2021 standard deals with the issue of light pollution that
prevents the night vision of the sky (Riegel, 1973) and has adverse
biological effects, too (Longcore and Rich, 2004; Navara and Nelson,

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Chapter 4 Lighting design constraints and methods

2007). It prescribes requirements for assessing outdoor lighting installations

to limit the upward dispersion of luminous flux. It does not consider the
limitation of the night sky luminance due to the reflection of illuminated
surfaces or special local conditions such as air pollution. The standard only
applies to new outdoor lighting installations. Street lighting aims to promote
the safety of pedestrians, property, and, of course, vehicular traffic at night.
However, even with professionally designed and constructed lighting
systems, there is always a partial light emission into the sky. This is due to
the natural reflection of light on the road surface and buildings. In
particular, it is estimated that 10% of the light received is reflected upwards
by the dry, or more, on wet, asphalt (Frederiksen and Serensen, 1976;
Bodmann and Schmidt, 1989). Some of the upward luminous flux can also
escape directly from luminaires used in public lighting. The light dispersed
upwards diffuses among the atmospheric dust also depends on the humidity
level in the air and is partly sent back down to the ground. The result of this
phenomenon is that at night the background luminance of the sky can
become higher than that of the sky, preventing the vision of the stars. This is
even more true near large public lighting systems in urban areas. Indeed it is
not the light that pollutes, but the light highlights the dust pollution in the
air. Light pollution also generates costs for the negative impacts on wildlife,
health, astronomy, and wasted energy (Gallaway, Olsen and Mitchell,
2010).

Figure 4.2 — Night photograph of Europe as seen from space.

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

The level of light pollution is now such that it is incompatible with

astronomical observation. In particular, there are at least two schools of
thought on the subject (Clanton, 2014). The first one argues that light
pollution is inevitable, and therefore the solution is to move astronomical
observatories to mountain tops, as in the Andes near the Atacama Desert in
Chile, away from plains and population centers. The other believes that
although light pollution cannot be eliminated, it must be contained while
still safeguarding the basic principles underlying public lighting. The UNI
10819:2021 standard works from this perspective.
On the one hand, the safety aspects and social phenomena associated with
the lighting and night-time enhancement of built-up areas must be
safeguarded. Still, on the other hand, it is not acceptable to have adverse
biological effects and that we can no longer see the stars. One of the options
that can be tried out on an experimental basis is lighting that varies during
the night according to the needs of safety and usability of public spaces,
with the added benefit of energy savings (Mclaughlin, 2018).
Italian national legislation is silent on light pollution, but many regions have
started to legislate independently on the subject, sometimes with
controversial results. In particular, the first version of the Lombardy
regional law no. 199 of 31 May 2000, "Urgent measures on energy saving
for outdoor lighting and combating light pollution," caused concern. In fact,
this law makes technical assumptions considered inappropriate by experts.
Three aspects, in particular, are contested, and which illustrate an often
simplistic approach to the subject by people who are not experts in the field
of lighting:

1. Requiring the use of luminaires with zero light emission above the
horizontal plane. Unfortunately, this is only possible with luminaires
with horizontally arranged flat glass; these luminaires have a narrower
beam than cup-shaped luminaires, and therefore more must be used
with higher electricity consumption. In addition, the more vertical
lighting angle means that more light is reflected upwards from the
ground.
2. Imposing the use of maximum efficiency sources. These were low-
pressure sodium lamps in the street lighting, but they are large, and the
flux is difficult to control; 1t would be more correct to speak of
maximum efficiency luminaires.
3. Imposing the limitation of lighting during the various parts of the dark
hours within limits is indispensable for safety. This does not consider
all the cases in which lighting meets requirements other than the simple

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safety of citizens, such as the enhancement of cultural sites and

historical centers or the promotion of social activities during the dark
hours, which for many months in winter begin as early as mid-
afternoon or earlier in northern countries.

Apart from the technical objections, the Lombardy law of 2000 had two
important objectives: to reduce light pollution and electricity consumption.
Later, this law was replaced by the new Regional Law no. 31 of 5.10.2015
(Lombardia, 2015). This introduces new concepts such as a dedicated
registry for monitoring and analyzing outdoor public lighting data and a
strong push towards administrative simplification. In addition, the
Municipal Lighting Master Plan (PRIC) has been replaced by the Outdoor
Lighting Analysis Document (DAIE). The DAIE should enable the
monitoring of the state of the mstallations and, based on the information
contained therein, it will be possible to evaluate the opportunities and the
modalities of efficiency improvement, upgrading, and acquisition of the
installations. In addition, the new law promotes the use of materials and
technologies that enable the provision of services that are complementary to
public lightings, such as video surveillance, Wi-Fi connections, and traffic
light management, with a view to the smart city. Thanks to the information
collected and the interconnection between services, the law aims to reduce
the risk of light pollution. Municipalities are tasked with managing the
supervisory and control function regarding outdoor public lighting,
monitoring violations, and applying sanctions.
The fact remains that in the absence of national law, the situation in Italy is
patchy, with different rules in the various regions and autonomous
provinces. Whereas in France and other European countries, there are laws
and regulations at the national level. Outside the EU, there are also relevant
examples such as the Chilean law 34/2012 to protect the night sky, as Chile
is home to the world's most important telescopes, located in the Andes.

4.4 Lighting sustainability

Artificial lighting affects the environment, the biosphere, and the geosphere
in three main ways:

1. The already mentioned problem of light pollution.

The consumption of electricity, the production of which leads to the
destruction of non-renewable resources and pollution.
3. The environmental impact of lamp production and disposal.

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

Since the referendums on nuclear energy, following the catastrophic

incidents in the power plants of Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011,
electricity in Italy has been obtained mainly by thermal means through the
consumption of fossil fuels, with the result that it costs 30% to 40% more
than in the rest of Europe. Italy imports up to 13% of it from Switzerland,
France, and other countries using nuclear power plants. Using hydrocarbons
in thermal power stations also causes air pollution from sulfur dioxide,
nitrogen oxides, benzene, particulates, and dust. According to the "Kyoto"
protocol (UNFCCC, 1997), for reducing greenhouse gases, Europe, in the
period 2005 to 2020, should have reduced emissions into the atmosphere by
8%, which in Italy is 6.5%. On the other hand, assuming average economic
growth of close to 2% over the period, emissions increased by 12% instead
of decreasing by 6.5%. Italy is also poor in fossil fuels and is therefore
forced to import them, with the result that our economy 1s strongly
influenced by changes in oil and gas prices.
This picture shows how valuable electricity is, although, according to ENEL
sources, lighting consumes less than 7% of the electricity produced in Italy.
This raises the question of whether it is really worthwhile tackling energy
consumption in the lighting sector. The answer is still yes! And for several
reasons. First of all, it is logically and ethically correct that all sectors
contribute their share to reducing consumption and pollution. In addition,
the need for public lighting is growing steadily, and this policy of
intervention in general lighting should not be nipped in the bud by fears of
increased energy consumption. For both the environment and the economy,
a further important aspect is found in the range of activities related to the
production and installation of new energy-efficient lighting systems
contributing to the global economy as we emerge from a protracted
economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
A lighting designer can achieve excellent results in terms of energy savings
by working on many aspects that go far beyond the simple use of energy-
efficient light sources:

— Correct selection and sizing of lighting parameters in design. For most

lighting applications, it is absolutely ineffectual to illuminate more than
necessary or where it is not needed. To achieve these objectives, a
decisive contribution is made by the new IT tools to support the design
process (Carter, 1981; Krupinski, 2020).
— Maximum use of natural lighting in conjunction with artificial lighting
in interiors (Borile et a/., 2017). This implies the analysis and the
intervention of the lighting designer also on the architectural and

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urbanistic aspects, in perspective already discussed in paragraph 2.6,

which listed the levels of intervention of the lighting designer on the
building project.
— The automatic programming, also based on environmental detection
parameters, of even partial switch-on of indoor (Tan ef a/., 2018) and
outdoor lighting systems (Mclaughlin, 2018). This activity also
depends on the correct use and programming of IT control systems.
— Optimum operation of lighting installations. I-e., proper scheduling of
maintenance, cleaning, lamp replacement, wall painting, checking and
calibrating automatic devices, and, in general, all activities contribute
to keeping the lighting system in good working order (Perry, 1999;
Tetri et al., 2017).
— Use new light sources and devices with high efficiency, high durability,
low power consumption, and small size. These include the wave of new
LED lighting products for indoor and outdoor use that have appeared in
recent years, together with electronic devices for power supply and
intelligent lighting control (Siniscalco, 2021). Reducing the size of
LED light sources has also been of paramount importance as it enables
the design and production of luminaires that better control the
distribution of light flow.

When it comes to the pure efficiency of the light source, low-pressure

sodium lamps have long been the most efficient artificial light sources
(Jack, 1978). They were invented in 1932, but they have been further
improved through new technological processes and electronic power
supplies in recent years. They are so efficient that they can produce up to
200 lumens of luminous flux per Watt of absorbed power (Sprengers,
Campbell and Kostlin, 1985); this 1s because the emission is nearly
monochromatic, concentrated almost entirely at a wavelength close to 600
nm, i.e., in the area of the electromagnetic spectrum where human beings
are most sensitive to light radiation; for this very reason, however,
monochromatic lighting of this type involves almost no perception of
colors. Therefore, these lamps have been used in lighting for vehicular and
industrial traffic, where good color perception was not required. In addition,
they are generally large in size, making it challenging to design luminaires
that control the distribution of luminous flux. LEDs have overtaken them in
terms of efficiency and color rendering (Huang ef al., 2020).
In addition to efficiency and durability, LEDs also outperform other light
sources because of their control flexibility (Protzman and Houser, 2006).
They can be dimmed, have an instantaneous switch-on (unlike discharge

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lamps), and can be switched on and off countless times without affecting
their service life (Malik, Ray and Mazumdar, 2020).
The correct positioning and choice of luminaires is the core activity of the
lighting project (CIE, 2019; CEN, 2021). In addition to the aspects already
dealt with in this text concerning the methodological approach based on IT
tools and compliance with the listed standards, for which reference should
be made to the specific manuals, three general aspects can be mentioned
that may influence a conservative and correct use of electrical energy: the
proper distribution of lighting levels according to the intended visual clarity
(Vrabel, Bernecker and Mistrick, 1998) and performances (Vrabel,
Bernecker and Mistrick, 1995), the choice of favoring a significant ratio of
direct lighting, as long as it is comfortable, over imdirect lighting,
characterized by poorer efficiency (Fostervold and Nersveen, 2008), and the
use of high-efficiency luminaires capable of conveying the light flow only
where required and to the extent necessary (Cuttle, 2020).

Figure 4.3 — Operation diagram of a system consisting of a refractor with double-

glazed window that deflects the light towards the ceiling where appropriate
reflectors distribute it inside.

For all workplaces and residential environments, the method that may
appear to be the most straightforward and economical way to reduce energy
consumption is the use of daylight (Borile et a/., 2017; Turan ef al., 2020).
Daylight has positive effects on office workers (Borisuit et al., 2015);
however, it has several limitations: it is difficult to control, can easily cause
glare, and in summer causes overheating; it depends on meteorological and
spatial factors; it also depends on the architecture, urbanization, and the
orientation of spaces concerning the cardinal points (Wienold ef al., 2019).
For years, experiments have been carried out for the correct and effective
control of solar illumination (Littlefair, 1990). These include light pipes and
the introduction of dioptric plates inserted into the windows double glazing,
which reflect sunlight towards the ceiling of the room where, in addition,

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suitably shaped baffle plates can be provided for the distribution of light in
the room. Obviously, these systems must be supplemented by devices that
automatically adjust the artificial lighting according to the illuminance
levels in the various areas of the room detected by sensors (Caicedo, Li and
Pandharipande, 2017; Tan ef al., 2018). Unfortunately, these hybrid lighting
systems are not yet widespread and should be encouraged by legislative and
regulatory measures.

Figure 4.4 — Solar powered street lamps.

Sunlight can be used for direct lighting during daylight hours and stored in
electrical energy for use at night. One of the first historical examples of this
type of technology was its application in the province of Brindisi for a
network of 2300 photovoltaic street lights to illuminate long stretches of the
local road network. The street lights used were capable of providing a
luminous flux of 35001m, powered by two 70W photovoltaic cell systems
for the conversion of sunlight into electrical energy that is stored in two
12V lead batteries, managed by a microprocessor charge controller with a
programmable clock. The street light switches on automatically at dusk.
Still, after 6 hours of operation, the microprocessor checks the actual
charging state of the batteries and disconnects the sodium lamp in the event
of insufficient charge. The microprocessor controller solves the problems

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

that affect most lighting systems of this type, which tend to discharge the
batteries entirely during the night, damaging them and impairing the
functionality of the lighting system. If the battery still has a sufficient
charge after the first six hours of lighting, lighting is continued until dawn.
This feature ensures that the lamp is switched on during peak traffic hours,
even during winter periods with reduced energy storage due to prolonged
bad weather, except that it is switched on until dawn as soon as the bad
weather ceases.
Another crucial aspect of this type of installation is the independence from a
power supply network and associated wiring. In fact, thanks to their ability
to recharge daily, the lights can easily be placed even in extremely isolated
and inaccessible places where there is no electricity distribution. However,
if there is a mains supply, this can be used to replace the power supply of
the batteries when they run down.

Efficiency and color rendering of light sources

Source type Efficiency [Im/W] eal aie

Incandescent 8-15 100

Halogen 17-25 100

High pressure mercury 40 - 60 50 - 40

Compact fluorescent 50 - 80 85

Metal halides 60 - 80 90

Linear fluorescent 70 - 96 85 - 75

White LED 50 - 150 95 - 70

Low pressure sodium 140 - 180 0

Figure 4.5 — The light sources' efficiency and CIE color rendering index are
inversely proportional. The LEDs have elevated both of these parameters.

Concerning high-efficiency light sources, it can be noted that their use is not
yet applicable to all lighting needs. Unfortunately, in general, the higher the
efficiency of a light source, the lower the color rendering, 1.e., the ability to
illuminate in such a way as to enable a correct perception of colors by the

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human visual system. CIE recommends using high color rendering sources
between 90 and 100 for perceptual well-being for residential applications
and, in general, for all meeting and entertamment environments (Boyce,
2014; CIE, 2017).

Figure 4.6 — High efficiency light sources. 1: LED. 2: Metal halide lamps with
ceramic bumer. 3: Linear fluorescent lamps. 4: Sodium lamps for outdoors..

Linear fluorescent lamps have been used in workplaces for decades, as they
combine high efficiency with good color properties. In the last thirty years,
technological advances have led to the continuous improvement of compact
fluorescent lamps in terms of miniaturization and improved color properties,
making them a viable and efficient alternative to incandescent lamps, even
in interior lighting. Moreover, since 2009, the European Directive
2005/32/EC, also known as Eco-Design EUP, has progressively banned
incandescent lamps, various types of halogen lamps, and, in the future,
compact fluorescent lamps from production. Finally, LED sources have
almost completely replaced the others thanks to falling prices.
Initially, the main obstacle to the broader use of LED lamps was the
purchase price, which could be five to ten times higher than that of the
classic incandescent or compact fluorescent bulb (Rea, 2010). This is in
addition to a different appearance that has now been restored to the iconic
status of the classic incandescent light bulb (Lin, 2015).
In the past, higher efficiency lamps were used where a good color
assessment was not required, e.g., low or high-pressure sodium lamps were
used in street lighting or for surveillance purposes. Other lamp types, such
as metal halide lamps, offer a good compromise between efficiency and

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

color rendering for applications such as sports facilities and production

plants. Still, even these sources are losing ground to the LED wave
innovation.

Old fluorescent
lamp SL
|Heating|

oe si
of the metal i iaeiniamiaiciisea RE trig materia”
fixing materials
cs caps Cooling down |}

. Separation of the fluorescent material

Compressed air
removal of the
old fluorescent

a . : a elisa
Pure glass Fluorescent powders and mercury

Figure 4.7 — The process that ensures the recycling of fluorescent powders, mercury,
glass and all materials used in the production of fluorescent lamps.

Another aspect of environmental impact concerns the production and

disposal of artificial lighting sources. The production aspects obviously do
not involve the lighting designer except in his ability to favor ecological
products. However, as far as manufacturing companies are concerned, ISO
14000 standard has long since outlined the environmental management
system and the tools and procedures for introducing the ecological aspect
into company management (ISO, 2015). However, this is a cross-cutting
standard, 1.e., applicable to all sectors. Italian legislation addressed waste
disposal issues with Legislative Decree no. 22/1997 (Ronchi Decree), later
repealed and replaced by Legislative Decree no. 152/2006 (Environmental
Unified Code), for hazardous waste containing mercury. While LEDs are
electronic devices and fall under the WEEE (waste electrical and electronic
equipment) type of waste. Their end-of-life is regulated by European
Directive 2012/19/EU, implemented in Italy by Legislative Decree no. 49 of
14 March 2014. These electronic products should be recovered separately
because, even in small quantities, they contain valuable and/or polluting
materials such as iron, steel, copper, aluminum, lead, mercury, silver, gold,
and glass.
Despite the widespread use of LEDs, the focus of the lighting industry
today is still on fluorescent lamps. Still today, these account for most
sources installed in public interiors because of their efficiency and cost-

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Chapter 4 Lighting design constraints and methods

effectiveness (Tahkam6 ef a/., 2014). Thanks to well-established production

processes and new recycling methods, based on developing a network of
collection sites for used lamps, companies have long since made the
installer sector aware of the need to dispose of highly polluting fluorescent
lamps (Bruni, 1999). The various technological factors that allow the latest
fluorescent lamps to be identified as recyclable and environmentally
friendly include:

— The decrease in the amount of mercury from 15 thousandths of a gram

to 3 thousandths of a gram.
— The use of glass absorbs less mercury and is thus able to limit the decay
of the luminous flux over the life of the lamp.
— The use of new phosphorescent powders that last longer and can be
recovered and regenerated.
— The use of new high-frequency electronic ballasts can double the
lamps' average life.

These aspects have also taken on a promotional value that is publicized

through the green insert in the lamp socket as a symbol of environmental
certification.

4.5 Lighting design methods and objectives

Lighting Design has the task to prefigure the whole and detail of the
elements, structures, and actions suitable for the implementation of the
lighting systems, respecting the legislative, regulatory, architectural, and
functional constraints, compatibly with the objectives formulated by the
customer. Since artificial lighting mvolves a system installed in an existing
or planned site, the latter is obviously the starting poimt of the design
process.
The project starts with a careful survey and analysis of the site to be
illuminated. If the site already exists, the activity will be mainly aimed at
studying and analyzing its current state. If the site does not exist, the
analysis will focus on the building blueprint unless the lighting designer,
who also has expertise in the field of natural light, is called upon to provide
his opinions on the building project itself to make better use of daylight.
The primary external constraints that will influence the design activity are
defined in this phase. For this reason, the survey and analysis activity must
be careful and focused on the features of the considered site. The survey and
analysis work can be divided into the following aspects:

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

— Dimensions, geometry, and architectural/aesthetic aspects of interiors,

exteriors, or parts to be lit.
— Daylighting at the site and related parameters, such as geographical
location, orientation, and the presence of other neighboring structures
that may affect sunlight and skylight.
— Types of human activities taking place on the site with particular
attention to required visual tasks.
— Communication aspects related to the site to be illuminated.
— Research the laws and regulations concerning the type of lighting
intervention according to the visual tasks involved.
— Types of materials and levels of reflection present or envisaged for the
site.
— The situation of any pre-existing lighting and electrical installations.
— Environmental parameters such as humidity or the presence of dust can
affect luminaires' operativity.

IT can offer many useful tools for organizing the work in the survey phase.
In fact, they enable easy storage and cataloging of various types of data,
from dimensions to descriptive data of the multiple entities considered, as
well as facilitating the management and analysis of drawings with CAD
and/or BIM support software of the building project or pre-existing
structure. Another necessary support comes from researching and viewing
online databases for relevant legislation and regulations and _ the
communication between the customer and the designer concerning the
project's development. In the third millennium Covid19 era, it is not unusual
for the customer and the designer to be in different countries, thousands of
kilometers apart, and manage their contacts by videoconference and sharing
design material via Cloud services (Comacchio, 2021).
Once the survey and analysis of the site have been completed, the following
step is to define the objectives. The objectives induced by the customer,
those deriving from the constraints and the design method that the lighting
designer imposes on himself. These are based on the functional, visual
perceptive, and aesthetic goals the lighting system must pursue. In this
sense, objectives can be divided imto two main categories:
functional/technical objectives and qualifying/aesthetic objectives.
The first category includes objectives aimed at ensuring the safety of all the
lighting system components. Guaranteeing the efficiency and durability of
the lighting service, facilitating its installation and maintenance, limiting
energy consumption, and adapting the system to the changing performance
required by the lighting needs of the site, 1e., all the exhibition design

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spaces that require continuous reconfiguration according to continuous

changes in the layouts.
The second category includes objectives aimed at ensuring the
communicative and perceptual aesthetic aspects of the lighting system, even
when it is switched off. In addition to the aesthetics of the lighting, the
aesthetics of the luminaires and the system, in general, must be considered,
as they can also be visible during the day when they are switched off and
must respect the architectural context in which they are installed. There are
also objectives to meet the required visual tasks and promote efficient and
comfortable vision. In this case, the term comfort is understood as visual
comfort. Simply complying with the luminance levels for visual tasks laid
down in the regulations does not guarantee visual comfort, which does not
depend solely on exact lighting levels provided on surfaces, but on the
quality of lighting throughout the environment, which must be aimed at
containing visual fatigue and disturbances caused by the effects of various
types of glare: disturbing or disabling, direct or indirect. The introduction of
the UGR index for interiors was also decisive in this context (Eble-Hankins
and Waters, 2005; CIE, 2010). This does not assess comfort based only on
the characteristics of the luminaires, as was the case with the old Sollner
curves (Akashi and Kanaya, 1991), but the environment as a whole and the
reflection factors and the colors of indoor materials or outdoor material
(Casciani and Rossi, 2017). Also, the possible positions of users m the
interior under consideration play a role in the assessment. Due to the large
number of parameters involved, the UGR method can easily be calculated
using a Lighting CAD (Son et al., 2015). The lower the UGR, the more
visually comfortable the environment is considered to be. The standard also
establishes these ranges of recommended UGR values for typical indoors
hosting various types of activities:

— 13+16 Drawing, CAD, layout, and graphic processing.

— 16-19 Test work, checks, controls.
— 19+22 Writing and reading activities at the desk.
— 22+25 Medium-duty industrial work.
— 25+28 Heavy-duty industrial work.

In recent years, it has become apparent that the lighting design methodology
is changing, shifting the focus more towards two factors that were
previously not adequately considered. The human being is understood not
only as a visual person but also as the environment with its materials and
colors. In fact, the mdoor lighting regulation (CEN, 2021) has less stringent

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

constraints on design requirements than the previous regulation, thus

leaving more room for interpretation to the lighting designer. However, it
also introduces guidelines on the reflective-colorimetric characteristics of
the materials planned by the interior design since they also influence visual
comfort. Although the topic of joint lighting and color design indoor is still
not very popular among designers, this topic will likely be further
developed in the future. This could be when new IT tools will be available
to support collaborative BIM design, which will make it possible to manage
the actual characteristics of materials and light sources at the various levels
of the project.
After defining the objectives, the phase of formulating possible solutions
begins, which, while respecting internal and external constraints, leads to
the achievement of the set goals. At this stage, designers, using their
technical, scientific, cultural, and methodological skills, apply their
experience and intuitive ability to quantitatively and qualitatively predict
the final result in terms of lighting. In this sense, the difference between a
classic licensed electrician and a lighting designer lies in the combination of
scientific and technological preparation that the latter has acquired during
his training in close relation to the cultural growth of inventiveness, artistic
imagination, and the ability to explore the social and communicative aspects
of light.
The solution(s) formulated is expressed using a graphic description, through
technical drawings and text, of the lighting system, 1.e., the drafting of the
project that must include light sources, luminaires, accessories, power
supply, and any structures aimed at managing natural light, complete with
topological and editorial helpful information for their procurement and
installation by qualified installers.
Historically, in this major phase of project development, the lighting
designer has not had the representative and evaluative tools typical of
prototyping available to other areas of industrial design. Many lighting
designers base their methodology on a wealth of experience and intuition,
which requires a long process of training and practical application. And it is
precisely at this crucial stage of the project process that the innovation
represented by the use of new IT calculation tools and virtual reality has
simplified the lighting calculation methodology. We have moved from an
approach based on highly approximate manual mathematical calculations to
automatic calculation with a higher level of precision and detail. However,
there 1s one fundamental point on which there should be no confusion:
software enables verification of the design requirements, but it does not
create the design and will never be able to replace the designer's creativity.

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Chapter 4 Lighting design constraints and methods

In addition to calculations for the quantitative and functional evaluation of

lighting, the most mnovative software tools also make it possible to obtain
rendering images with a fair degree of photorealism and thus act as virtual
perceptual prototypes to evaluate the qualitative and aesthetic aspects of
lighting. By assessing the lighting design requirements, IT tools enable the
analysis, verification, and comparison of the design solutions against the set
objectives. In addition, the potential of IT tools to support the harvesting
aspects of the lighting project should not be underestimated, as they provide
extensive technical catalogs in electronic format for the retrieval of
information on lamps, luminaires, and devices that can be used in the project.

External constraints Internal constraints

i Customer Z "Aesthetics aw a,
ss soit ao of lighting i ~” pesthetics of
Survey “preecneaannarennett luminaires

: Laws, standards : Design .

se Definition of 4
ai — objectives ne
Functional “Qualifying y
objectives a, objectives

Design solution

Functional default Qualitative default

Final
detailed project

Figure 4.8 — Phases and constraints of the lighting design process.

Also, during the presentation of the project, the images, possibly

supplemented by interactive multimedia animations, combined with the
technical photometric representations, provide an essential communication
tool that completes the technical elements for a comprehensive illustration of
all aspects of the lighting design. However, attention must be paid to a critical
part because presenting a rendering of a lighting project and confusing it with
the project itself can be a severe mistake. The rendering must always be

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

presented as information accompanying the project, making it clear to the

client that it has a general representative value of the finished project, but with
limits in its ability to faithfully represent the complexity of the real world in
terms of colors and luminosity that can actually be perceived.

4.6 Conclusions
Until a few years ago, there was no uniform way of drawing up lighting
plans, and it was common to see projects presented in very different ways.
Fundamental help for the designer came from the standard “Light and
lighting - Criteria for the preparation of the lighting design” (UNI, 2016).
Without going into all the details of this standard, it is interesting to note
that it opens with a statement on the importance of design: Lighting
design is a compendium of art and science capable of illuminating the
human environment. The standard lays down requirements for drawing up
lighting plans in the following contexts:

— Indoor environments such as hospitals, hotels, offices, commercial,

industrial and residential interiors, etc.
— Sports installations, indoors and outdoors.
— Road facilities (road, cycle or pedestrian), outdoor areas, such as
parks, gardens, parking areas, etc.
— Architectural and monumental installations, indoors and outdoors.
— Tunnels and subways.

While lighting design is, in general, already regulated by existing Italian

legislation (Decree 50 of 18/4/2016 Code of public contracts and the DPR
207 of 05/10/2010 on Decree 163 of 12/04/2006 and 270 of 10/12/2010
regarding public works), numbers are not the focus of the (UNI, 2016)
standard and calculations are considered to be just one of many aspects
that the lighting designer has to take into account. The standard
emphasizes these aspects:

— Knowledge: on light, lighting, its instruments, its control, and

management, which are today extremely complex.
— Light's impact on humans beyond vision is finally given new
importance: circadian rhythms, mood, and attention span.
— The significance of the appearance that the lighting produced, and
that the luminaires have in terms of aesthetics concerning the
environment in which they are placed;

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The lighting of a place is a crucial element in ensuring safety and

visual comfort.

There are four stages in the design process, as defined by this standard:

1. Feasibility Study. The feasibility study provides all the necessary and
sufficient information for project decisions relating to technical and
organizational feasibility through the analysis of the current state
(survey), the evaluation of the customer's requirements and other
specific needs, the identification of design alternatives, possible
system geometries, optical and technical technologies, energy
analysis, with an estimate of the costs of intervention, and economical
estimate of savings and an estimate of the intervention times
Concept Design. The lighting concept defines the qualitative and
functional characteristics of the work, the requirements to be met, and
the services to be provided. This phase includes a multidisciplinary
creative work for the search of original ideas, a report illustrating the
preliminary project with the summary description of the current state
and the identification of the main critical points; but also the analysis
of the functional, aesthetic, formal, and economic objectives and the
definition of the intervention perimeter. Sketches and mood boards
are used for this purpose. In the technical report, an analysis of the
functional and performance requirements of the project is made with
lighting evaluations using preliminary calculations. An estimate of
the costs of luminaires as well as control, management, and
installation systems 1s also proposed.
Preliminary Design. The Preliminary Design is drawn up based on the
indications of the approved Concept. It contains all the elements
necessary to obtain the authorizations, such as the declaration of
urban conformity or other equivalent acts mandatory for works in the
public domain. It also develops the graphic and descriptive drawings
and calculations to a level of definition such that there are no
significant technical and cost differences in the subsequent detailed
design.
Detailed Design. The Detailed Design ultimately defines every
architectural, structural, and system-related engineering detail of the
work to be carried out. This consists of a general report of the
preliminary design: analysis of the current state; a detailed description
of the project, analysis, and list of interventions; description of
technical solutions and technological characteristics of the luminaires;

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 Culture and Methods of Lighting Design

technical data sheets and photometric data of the products; energy

analysis. This general report is also supported by specialist reports
with lighting calculations of visual tasks, room surfaces, glare, and a
maintenance plan. From a graphical standpoint, there is a
representation of the current state and the planned intervention, with
all the graphic drawings, blueprints, sections, and detailed diagrams
necessary for the installation. Finally, there must also be a timetable
for the works and the economic framework.

All these steps in the design process establish since inception that a
lighting project is an essential factor that is still not adequately understood
and applied today in many countries. Moreover, this process places the
individual at the center of the design process. It makes the evaluation or
comparison of several design hypotheses less complex, thus providing
parameters for comparison both regarding the completeness of the
documentation and compliance with the minimum levels of detail required
by current legislation and regulations.

4.7 Conflict of interest declaration

The author declares that nothing has affected his objectivity or
independence in the production of this chapter. Neither the author nor his
immediate family member has any financial interest in the people,
manufacturer or topics involved in this article. The author also declares that
no conflict of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationship
with other people and organizations, could inappropriately influence, or be
perceived to influence, this work.

4.8 Funding source declaration

This study did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the
public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. No form of third party
financing has affected the contents of this chapter

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Andrea Siniscalco, Fulvio Musante, and Daria Casciani at
the Lab. Luce - Politecnico di Milano. I also wish to thank the many
lighting designers that had lectures in the Master in Lighting Design &
Technology at Politecnico di Milano.
A last big thank you goes to my wife, Clelia, who patiently helped me to re-
read the drafts of this book.

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