Page 150 - Lighting Magazine January 2019

coMMercIal projEct
success of this park not only by people using it, but by its ability to sustain and increase birdlife?” We thought, “Whoa, that’s a whole new way to think!”
It just changes your head and you start going into every project asking those questions. Sometimes we’re asking clients questions for two weeks in a row. “Is there any bat life? Is there any bird life?” Then suddenly they’ll call you up and say, “Oh, do you mean starlings?” And we say, “Yes!” It isn’t even a question people ask at landscape architecture or architecture meetings, but now we put it on the table.
We had this incredible experience in Austin at Waller Creek. We were under one of the un- derpasses on the near side of the bridge that goes over the creek and were doing some tests around 5:30p.m., shining lights up, and suddenly the whole ceiling starts to pulsate. We thought, “What’s that?!” We realized that it’s the sound of bats rustling, and the person from the local team said, “Wait a few minutes. They’re all going to come
“I think that’s why lighting is so interesting; it’s not lighting per se, but it embeds you in these fascinating, complex issues of ecology, human use, and homelessness.”
out.” And they did! It was a bat habitat, and it is incredible — but nobody told us beforehand. [Be- cause of the bat habitat] we decided not to light the ceiling, even though it was crazy beautiful. You don’t want to disturb the bats because they eat mosquitoes.
I think that’s why lighting is so interesting; it’s not lighting per se, but it embeds you in these fascinating, complex issues of ecology, human use, and homelessness. Lighting is a way to be there and ask the interesting questions. As opposed to, “Here I am with my magic wand!” which is not that interesting.
MB: It’s thought-provoking when people invert their thinking and put nature rst, and then go about their discipline and look at it from another lens.
LT: Yes, exactly. It inverts it, and then you nd that that lens is always there. It’s always one of the lenses that you go for.
MB: It’s amazing we don’t do more bio-mimicry. It seems time and again the best answers come from nature.
LT: I agree. If you think of all the historic human dis- coveries; they all happened without electric light. They were making maps and statues and parthe- nons — all of it without electric light. There are all these solutions out there, historically, about how to do things with less. There are so many ways people created luminous surfaces and portable lighting.
MB: It goes back to thinking organically. What is your overarching message with your lighting?
LT: There’s a distinction in psychology between hard and so fascination. We’re interested in being so ly fascinating, where people are going about their everyday business and then they no- tice something that they might not have noticed before. We’re interested in le ing the walk home be pleasant and quiet and allowing your thoughts to range, set in a building that is inviting but not announcing itself and its personality.
People should be allowed to have very complex feelings in their lives, and we’re part of that. As a rm, we’re asking to exist at that level of awareness. When you’re working in parks and landscapes, you’re making the pathway and beckoning people towards something. We’re facilitating those experi- ences. 
148 enLIGHTenment MagazIne | January 2019
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The Strand theater