Abstract: This article briefly discusses the responsibilities of lighting designers, combining some of the author's experiences in lighting design work.
Keywords: lighting designer; lighting design process; night lighting.
1 Introduction
Recently, the lighting designer profession has been approved by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and has become an "emerging" occupation recognized by the state. Its occupational definition is: the person who comprehensively designs the indoor and outdoor light environment according to the functional nature of the space.
The main work of lighting designers is:
(1) Collect relevant materials and conduct research and analysis on site;
(2) Establish a computer model of the design environment and draw a sketch of the design;
(3) Carry out creative design, draw renderings and analysis of lighting design;
(4) Perform technical design of lighting engineering;
(5) Selection of lighting electrical products;
(6) Formulate design schemes for installation, power supply and lighting control systems for lighting installations;
(7) Provide technical guidance on construction, installation, commissioning and acceptance of the project;
(8) Make recommendations for routine maintenance of lighting projects.
With the rapid development of the economy, China has become a major producer of lighting electrical products, creating an unprecedented development space for lighting applications. At present, the development of urban construction and the improvement of the living environment require designers to meet the specific requirements of various lighting environments through scientific lighting design. Lighting designers appear under such historical conditions.
According to statistics, there are more than 1,000 lighting engineering companies in China. According to the data provided by the recent national industrial census, the number of lighting electrical industry enterprises in China is 8,792, and the number of employees exceeds 1 million. In professional lighting engineering companies and enterprises, there are tens of thousands of lighting designers, mainly in large and medium cities.
The lighting designers in Europe, America, Japan and other developed countries have established this profession earlier. The lighting design industry has a history of 40 or 50 years, which is relatively standardized. Its professional value has been widely recognized and its level of employees is very high. However, China's lighting design industry has only a decade of history, and there is no lighting design profession in colleges and universities, which has led to a shortage of relevant talents. At present, the lighting design practitioners basically turn from professional, electrical, light source and other professional, or part-time. In recent years, some institutions of higher learning, architecture, environmental art and other majors have successively opened courses in lighting design, and trained some professional lighting designers for the society.
Excellent lighting design is the key to creating a harmonious light environment. However, the number of excellent lighting designers in China is very small, which is far from meeting the needs of the development of China's lighting technology industry. The establishment of the lighting designer profession in the country will help to standardize the lighting design market, and help to establish a high-quality lighting design team. It is a concrete embodiment of implementing the central energy conservation and environmental protection spirit. The conservation-oriented society is of great significance.
Lighting designers are the explorers and practitioners of night lighting, and are the decisive factor in producing excellent night lighting works, with major social responsibilities.
2 Lighting design process <br> Lighting design is a combination of science and technology and art, and applied to the real life environment. It integrates knowledge of architecture, optics, electrical engineering, aesthetics and other disciplines, and also includes factors such as artistic accomplishment and psychology. The view of the International Association of Lighting Designers is that good lighting is not designed from the sky but is designed. (Of course, it needs to be implemented perfectly in the project) fully demonstrates the importance of lighting design and lighting designers.
What kind of lighting design should I pursue? First of all, the design plan should of course be aesthetically pleasing, giving people artistic enjoyment, emotional infection, and having a healthy and positive theme. Secondly, it must be achievable in engineering, and it should be beautiful. There is no solution that can be realized by any lighting technology; once again, it should be economically reasonable, energy-saving and environmentally friendly, safe and reliable, and easy to maintain.
The final result of a lighting project under the guidance of excellent lighting design should be an appropriate light distribution. Produce a pleasant light environment that reflects the light culture.
After years of exploration and continuous summarization in practice, we have refined the process of lighting design into thirty steps as shown in Figure 1 (without the post-construction guidance phase) and are still being further refined. Of course, not every project needs to do so much work. For example, some projects do not require multimedia or animation demonstrations of the solution.
Figure 1 Flow of lighting design
Mastering the process of lighting design, knowing the specific work that needs to be done at each step is the basic skill of lighting designers.
The first thing to do is data collection. Including the project's design description, general plan, necessary elevation and section drawings, landscape greening map, day view renderings, model and material files, night landscape planning, etc.
Secondly, on-site survey, human analysis, environmental analysis, light environment measurement, and light environment analysis are also essential. Doing these basic tasks is a prerequisite for a scientific and complete lighting design.
On the basis of a thorough analysis of all aspects of the project, it is necessary to enter a most critical step - the theme design. A project must have a unified, clear theme. All subsequent design work should be closely organized around this topic. The theme of lighting design is like the main melody of music.
Why do you have to do a point of view analysis? People-oriented is one of the important principles to be adhered to in lighting design. Some designs contain only a few bird's eye view renderings, and the reason they do this is that leaders like to see the global effect. But, is the night scene that is finally made to be appreciated or given to birds or hawks? Of course, it is not excluded that there are local high-profile attractions like high-rises or mountaintops. In most cases, people are standing on the ground. Another purpose of doing a point of view analysis is to find out where the best view of the project is and what visual perspectives to ensure.
Design creativity is an equally important step in the design of the theme. Lighting is the art of light. This is our consensus, and ensuring the unique artistic effects of each project is our pursuit. The pursuit of innovative, comfortable light environment solutions for specific environments, specific human history, and specific objects is the essence of lighting design.
In fact, the work of communicating with customers is throughout the entire lighting design process. Creating the value of night lighting with our customers is our goal. Of course, the customer has the right to say, "I want this, don't want that." This usually puts the designers in a contradiction between compromise and self-conformation, and each person's aesthetic taste is so different, the lighting design is exactly Sensual ingredients are mostly. However, a truly excellent design should be appreciated by customers.
The next layout design is how to realize the idea of ​​art through technical means. Or, it is a bridge between art and technology, from the distribution of light to the refinement of lighting fixture layout.
After that, the work enters the stage of specific design and produces specific design results. The night scene renderings are the most intuitive expression of design ideas and are necessary for lighting design. Doing a night scene rendering requires both high artistic quality and professional knowledge of optics and electricals.
The work of brightness grading, illuminance setting, light color design, project copywriting, and lighting melody design is to describe the design as a whole. The location map of the luminaire and the list of luminaires are the basis for the work of project budget, control system diagram and electrical schematic diagram. The schematic diagram of the illumination mode of each type of lamp and the installation diagram can more clearly explain to the customer the direction of the light projection, the distribution of the light, and the concealability of the lamp.
Each project has a part of the luminaires that can be selected from the standard products of the luminaire manufacturers. These luminaires also need to be verified by light effects, and provide customers with specific light source parameters and luminaire parameters, as well as the results of the light effect experiments. In order to ensure satisfactory lighting, some luminaires must be specially designed.
There are many excellent lighting calculation software (such as DIALux4.2) that can make our design results scientific and numerical, and show them to customers more conveniently and intuitively.
For some particularly important lighting solutions that have not been implemented before, the method of model verification is effective.
It is the user's pleasure and easy to accept the use of multimedia, animation and other means to display the design results. Of course, you must plan a multimedia or animation script before.
The final design results should be consolidated into text and, of course, all design drawings. The purpose of the presentation is to explain and report the design to the client.