Leni Schwendinger is a bit of a night owl. But the principal for New York-based lighting design company Leni Schwendinger Light Projects LTD, has to be—it’s when she gets her best inspiration. In addition to working on such projects as the Chroma Streams, Tide and Traffic (Glasgow, Scotland), and the Coney Island Parachute Jump (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Schwendinger is a faculty member for the Architecture, Interior Design, and Lighting Department at Parsons School of Design in New York City. She also frequently hosts “Night Walks” in the city, which are free and open to the public, to explore the affect of lighting in public spaces at night.
 
Schwendinger recently spoke with Contract magazine to discuss the importance of light in design and how it can be utilized to influence and enhance any commercial project.
 
Contract: Why is light important to consider when creating designs?
Leni Schwendinger: Lighting allows people to recognize each other. It allows them to feel safe, and it allows the atmospheres of the space and the materials that make up that space to be seen. And finally, it enhances the identity and character of the space.

When I think about lighting in a public space, I am thinking about the use of the public space, as well as the more formal public design. You have people, you have materials, and you also have time of day and time of night. In my theory, or lighting philosophy, the time of night is quite important because there are what I call “shades of the night,” which are definable times throughout the night when you will have different types of activity. So if you have a public plaza of some sort where there are restaurants, the times that the restaurants open and closed will have a lot to do with the use of that space. Or if you have a movie theater, you will see how late-night traffic will ebb and flow as to the different show times. Also, when a restaurant or late-night club closes and the lights go out, a little extra lighting is removed from the public space.
 
It’s becoming more and more possible to use shades of night, due to technology to adapt the lighting to times of night. I believe that urban planners and developers, and those concerned with good public lighting, in the future will be able to increase or reduce the amount of public lighting according to foot traffic to conserve energy. This type of adaptable public lighting is becoming more and more possible, and that’s why the shades of night and different activities in public spaces at night are becoming more important to recognize.
 
Contract: Should all projects consider the affects light on their design? Or are there some types of projects where light isn’t really an important factor?
LS: Here’s the deal—if there’s no light a space cannot be seen. If you have a full moon you’ll have about one foot-candle—a foot-candle is what street lighting aims to reach in its average brightness—so really that’s not bright. And the actual full moon is only one night a month, so if you do not light the space and you’re in a rural or suburban space where you’d simply like to only use the light of the full moon, there will be days when its dimmer and brighter. But if you’re in a more urban and commercialized area, I really think that enhancing a public space of any kind—whether it’s a park, a plaza, a courtyard, or a garden—is pretty important.



Contract: Do you feel that lighting is an element in design that is typically overlooked?
LS: I actually think that it can be overlooked. There are some enlightened—pun intended—architects and planners who appreciate lighting and are very intrigued by it. One of the things I always say is: “Learn how to express lighting concepts. Learn how to speak about lighting, because it’s so hard to draw and describe.” So when designers are thinking about lighting, it’s important to be able to express what they’re hoping for.

Contract: What is the greatest challenge for a designer when incorporating light into design?
LS: There are two big challenges. One is working together with different personalities in approaching a design project. Since a lighting designer is usually a sub-consultant, it’s very important that the design team is in sync and agrees upon the end objective. We create lighting principles to make sure everyone is one the same page.

Secondly, the surfaces and forms, geometry, and colors of the space are very important, so that’s a big challenge because we want to enhance those colors and forms. Even whether we use very cool or warm lighting becomes very important to the rendition of color.
 
Contract: You talked a bit about how light and shadows cast images that change throughout the night in your nighttime walks. How can designers use this natural light as inspiration for their designs, and how can they learn to look for it?
LS: One of my concepts is a question that a designer should post when thinking about light: How can we create lighting designs at night that are as rich as sunlight. And so I always suggest that a designer should try to observe their surroundings 24 hours, at all times, and kind of think to themselves “ah, shadow,” “bright light,” “feature,” “bright colors.”

When I walk along, day or night, I am naming what I see in terms of light. When I begin to see the shadows from the daylight, I can also observe them at night; they’re already there. A streetlight cast through a tree, a little porch light cast through a fence, a bright light that adds punctuation—these things are there already. One of my outlooks is that many forms of found lighting effects that are incidental are really very useful to the texture of the nighttime environment, and these are the things that we can begin to echo, and enhance, and enrich by creating professional design and incorporating our own shadow patterns.


Up Close with Leni Schwendinger:

* How many years have you been designing?
I incorporated light projects 17 years ago, but I was designing for theatre prior to that.

* Design school attended and degree?
London Film School, Certificate

*Breakout commercial project?
My career has been a series of breakouts. First, in 1980, I had the opportunity to work at the Bayreuth Opera House, then with Laurie Anderson in 1984 on her rock and roll tour, and a monumental projection on the main post office in Manhattan in 1993 for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. My light installation for McCaw Hall (2001?) in Seattle was a fantastic opportunity to explore the properties of light and color on a grand scale and it garnered a number of awards and press.

* When did you know you wanted to be a designer?
When I realized that I would probably not be a cinematographer (age 24).

* Who has been your greatest influence?
Laszlo Maholy-Nagy, artist/designer/technologist

* Favorite designer (besides yourself)?
Not possible to answer

* Favorite commercial project you worked on to date?
Our product design of the Jewel-Light Luminaire.

* Where do you look for inspiration?
Cities, people, night, dreams

* Career goals/future plans?
I want to continue to develop lighting theory to benefit cities, light the most important landmarks in the world, and create catalysts for people to interact for better social spaces.