Considering Public Health and the Human Impact of the Built Environment

July 31, 2008

The editors of this blog believe the public needs balanced voices in the discussion regarding local and national code development. Officials considering putting their weight behind legislation that restricts lighting should be sure to take a circumspect review and consider the total picture. Energy saving initiatives and dark sky photometry, in this blog’s opinion, don’t combine for a well rounded greater whole. Many appropriate considerations may not be met when the discussion is focused on these two directions.

The truly appropriate lighting solutions are not conveniently tracking energy trends or the political statements associated with them. For example, designing a project in Japan, I was told bright lighting meant wealth because it could be afforded. It represented abundance. So our client was not happy with a lighting scheme that did not produce and exceptionally high level of footcandles (relative to our U.S. projects) at each desk. 100FC at the desk was the target illuminance level.

Now, in the United States, the direction for office lighting is low ambient combined with task lighting. Conveniently it consumes less power. Hmm. Is this really the better lighting solution, or, are we convincing ourselves?

I was just a kid when high pressure sodium lighting was introduced as the street lighting source in New York City. Nobody liked it. We felt we couldn’t see well. We were told by the City of New York that there were more lumens per watt with this light so of course we could see better.

Years later in the early 90′s studies by Sam Berman at Lawrence Berkely Laboratories revealed, infact, that this was not true. Due to the physics of sight at night, an effect named the Purkinje Shift, we could actually see less with more lumens because they weren’t producing enough light in the blue portion of the lighting spectrum. Guess they should have just listened to my mom. She didn’t like it at all. Current research on this topic can be found on the Lighting Research Center’s website.

The public shouldn’t second guess their experiences of what they feel is supportive and effective lighting. Everyone should remember it’s not just the lighting level or the efficiency of sight, it’s the total effect. Somewhere, somehow it was apparently agreed by the public officials debating power consumption; if you can’t directly translate value to a number on a spread sheet it’s not a valid point.

Lighting has had a place in public and private celebration since man’s first use of fire.   Anyone whose been at the side of a campfire can tell you there is a unique sense of place created by the quality of light as well as the heat. How many points is that worth?

At LightRightBlog we believe everyone needs to increase their awareness of lighting so they can make fully informed, responsible, effective, and hopefully personal choices about the balance between energy use and lighting use. It may be that we’d be better off giving up that wine chiller and riding our bikes to work once a week instead of trading the incandescent lamps in our living rooms for CFL’s. (Oops did we say that out loud…online!)

In this editor’s near 20 years of experience reviewing and working with energy codes across the nation I’ve seen wattage allowances extended for occupancy sensors and other such devises but never for creating a sense of well being or as a health aid.

Security, safety and effective energy use are likely key considerations in deploying any professional lighting scheme; however, the immeasurable values of public health and the impact of the built environment in their lives must also be considered in developing effective and balanced codes.

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What about the role of architect as regulator?

July 21, 2008

In an Op-Ed on AIA Archiblog Henry A. Kosarzycko, AIA writes “Architects contribution to the building process is not only appreciated but sought after.”

LightRightBlog believes the public needs the strong voices of architects now more than ever. Life safety is assumed to be the base of building code development but the public’s health and the impact of the built environment in their lives must also be weighed in developing effective and balanced codes.

“It is very important for humankind that architecture should move by it’s beauty: if there are many equally valid technical solutions to a problem, the one which offers the user a message of beauty and emotion. That one is architecture.” Luis Barragan

While energy efficient solutions are growing, we should strive to be in a position with energy codes that there is more than one technically valid solution to a problem. That choice enables the creation of architecture as art.

Architects should not assume that the lighting design community alone has the legislative clout or force of numbers to guide a balanced and circumspect approach to lighting and energy codes that is needed.
As a member and contributor to the IALD energy and sustainability committee and a member of the IES, this editor encourages architects to not only participate in code development but to also reach out individually and as a group to the lighting design community through these organizations in leading a collaborative discussion on what will be our code-allowed lighting options.

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