After finishing a building, the client is faced with an important question: How do they celebrate the new architecture? This moment offers an essential opportunity to inform the public about the existence and mission of the building. Therefore, the designs of opening ceremonies are often loaded with symbolic imagery to construct a new identity. Fireworks and light shows are an especially common part of the powerful repertoire used to magnify the aura of architecture. This luminous storytelling can underline the client’s uniqueness and superiority on both a local level and an international stage. I spoke with two leading designers to get their insights on how opening ceremonies have changed in recent years: Christophe Berthonneau, Creative Director at Groupe F, who introduced the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and Fred Thompson, Creative Director at Laservision Mega Media, who worked on the opening of the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
Lighting: The Latest Architecture and News
How to Celebrate New Architecture: Shaping Identity with Spectacular Opening Ceremonies
Instagram Is Changing How We Design Spaces (And Creating Incredibly Lucrative Businesses)
“This place is really Instagrammable, you’ll see what I mean.”
Walking into a tiled entryway and catching a glimpse of the cocoon-shaped swings, I saw fast. Planta, located on a busy street in Downtown Toronto is an Instagram magnet. And they know it. Opened last fall, Planta’s geotagged posts grow daily, with several of the restaurants’ key spaces photographed again and again. With jungle-inspired wallpaper, graphic tiling and a solid 14k following on their own account, the plant-based eatery means business.
Instagram’s parent-company Facebook announced it made $9.1 billion in earnings this quarter on advertising, retaining its longstanding rule over digital advertising alongside with Google’s Alphabet ($26 billion). With Instagram absorbing competitor Snapchat’s story features and increasing the number of sponsored posts it shows this year (yeah, we noticed), it’s not a stretch to say that the social media giant sits at the center of food and beverage trends. But what happens to interior spaces when restaurants set out to be “Instagrammable”?
How New Technologies Are Turning Awkward Elevator Rides into a Thing of the Past
Elevator rides may offer an uplifting experience in the literal sense, but while they are indispensable in modern buildings, users face extremely compact spaces which are designed to fit effectively into buildings. Awkward looks at the floor or past other people’s faces reveal our discomfort with the elevator’s crowded anonymity. Couldn’t a more spatial experience lead to a more exciting journey? Flat screens and projections are starting to be included in elevators, but these are just the beginning of a revolution in the atmospheres created during vertical transportation.
Japanese Craftsmanship Gets an Update in These OLED Patterned Tiles
Japanese designer Michiru Tanaka has released a new product partnering with lighting manufacturer Kaneka to create a stainless steel tile that doubles as both an OLED and a mirror. A graduate of Tokyo’s Musashino Art University, Tanaka pursued a career in architectural lighting and her projects range from commercial installations, lighting at museums as well as product design. Coined “Kumiko,” the tiles come from a fusion of inspirations, ranging from traditional Japanese architecture and woodworking techniques to Manhattan’s gridded cityscape.
How Zurich's Understated Night Lighting Strategy Enhances Local Identity
While many cities strive for a spectacular appearance at night, Zurich follows a modest strategy for nocturnal illumination. Numerous urban centers in the world are oversaturated in the evening, with individual buildings calling for attention through bright light, harsh contrasts, or colorful façade lighting. In contrast, the Zurich master plan for lighting has focused on an overall image of sensitive light levels with white light. But this nocturnal presence far from simple design, and is instead based on detailed urban studies and precise, customized projections, where technology is discretely hidden in favor of authentic culture.
Fluid Luminosity: The Architectural Lighting of Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid's projects are remarkable not only for her innovative way of handling tangible materials but also for her imagination regarding the medium of light. Her theories of fragmentation and fluidity are now well-known design techniques which enabled her form-finding. However, her advances in using light to render her architecture have often been neglected—even though they became an essential element in revealing and interpreting her architecture. The three-decade transition from minimal light lines at her early Vitra Fire Station to the world's tallest atrium at the Leeza SOHO skyscraper, which collects an abundance of daylight, shows the remarkable development of Zaha Hadid’s luminous legacy.
Layers and Lighting: How Top Architects Design Fashion Stores to Turn Heads by Day and Night
Flagship stores excite both fashion shoppers and designers alike due to their role as visionary laboratories for the latest trends and stimulating retail experiences. Architects have developed various ways to dress haute couture stores, from distinctive icons in the day to seductive night-time images. The images accompanying this article, created by the Portuguese architect and illustrator André Chiote, help to explore the graphic potential of famous brands like Dior, Prada and Tod's. The illustrations clearly reveal the various techniques of playing with diaphanous layers, intimate views inside or the contrast of light and shadow.
Veiled in Brilliance: How Reflective Facades Have Changed Modern Architecture
Even as modernism promoted the transparency of glass architecture, many within the movement were conscious of the monotony of large glass facades, with even Mies van der Rohe using elements such as his trademark mullions to break up his facades. But in the years since, countless uniform structural glazing skyscrapers have emerged and bored urban citizens. In response to this, unconventional reinterpretations of facades have gained interest.
Accompanied by the belief that light and brilliance could help in creating iconic architecture and a better human world, glass and metal have been innovatively transformed to create crystalline images. As a result, the locus of meaning in architecture has shifted from the internal space-form towards the external surface.
When Droplets Create Space: A Look at Liquid Architecture
Throughout the past century, architecture's relationship with water has developed along a variety of different paths. With his “Fallingwater” house, for example, the American master Frank Lloyd Wright confronted the dramatic flow of water with strong horizontal lines to heighten the experience of nature. Since then, architecture's use of water has become more varied and complex. A space made almost purely of water emerged with Isamu Noguchi's design at the Osaka World Expo: glistening water appeared to fall from nowhere and glowed in the dark. Later with digitalization and fluid forms as design parameters, the focus shifted towards liquid architecture made of water and light. The interpretations have ranged from architectural forms modeled after literal drops of water, like Bernhard Franken´s visionary “Bubble” for BMW, to spectacular walk-in installations made of lines of water, transformed into pixels by light.
From Productivism to Scenography: The Relighting of Norman Foster's Hongkong and Shanghai Bank
Three decades ago the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) Headquarters by Norman Foster emerged onto the architectural seen as an exemplary product of industrial design. The open layout with its exposed steel structure generated a powerful corporate identity for the bank. But the restrained atmosphere of white architectural lighting and the lack of distinctive façade lighting has lost its attractiveness after sunset. Now the colorful and dynamic relighting presents a remarkable example of how an architectural icon has shifted from a productivist ideology towards a scenographic image. To the western observer the multicolored light language may give off a playful impression, but to the local culture the transformation evokes grandiosity.
Toyo Ito Designs New Mayuhana Lamp for Yamagiwa
Yamagiwa has just released a new version of Toyo Ito's popular Mayuhana lamp - Mayuhana Ma Black. "Ma," meaning "true" or "genuine," represents the new lamps darker color that is, as the company describes, "more deep and profound."
"Mayuhana Ma Black is light in darkness. It is the quintessential quality of light found in Japan that reminds me of ‘In Praise of Shadows’ by Junichiro Tanizaki," says Toyo Ito.