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Which is the right light to illuminate a space?

Light can be used in different ways depending on where you are and the space it needs to illuminate. But is there a specific light for each environment? If we only had to follow the rules – the values, the required lighting levels, the ratios – the answer could be affirmative; but will it be the right one too? To better understand how light can be used, just think of a painting in a museum. 

It is taken for granted that the correct lighting of the painting is the one used to light it, but what would happen if the way of illuminating it was changed? If we would use for example different sources – with warm colour temperatures, with cold colour temperatures, LEDs, halogens – the colours would change, the contrasts would change, the brightness would change, and finally the perception we have of it would change.. 

Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Chromatic variations of the painting: The painting was lit under different types of lights.

Each observer would probably choose a different image based on their own taste, their own experience and perhaps this is precisely the answer to the initial question. 

Maybe there is not a correct lighting.

Art works are mainly illuminated by artificial lights with different characteristics, it could therefore be said that the correct light to illuminate a painting or a space is the one that comes closest to natural light. But even in this case there is no right answer since natural light is constantly changing.

The physical properties, the technical properties of light must be chosen depending on the emotions we want to communicate.

Just as light changes the perception of a painting, so light can change the perception of architecture and therefore the correct light to illuminate an architecture is that which is not used just for seeing but that which involves all the senses, which arouses emotions, which tells a story.

Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral. Four variations of the cathedral painted at different stages of the day.

It is clear that it is man who acts within the space and creates a lighting project. However, a space has got its needs, its physicality, its relationships, which must be mediated by technique through the scientific notions of light. To illuminate, it is not enough just knowing technical properties of the lighting fixtures but it is necessary to create harmony in the light they release.

Light itself becomes architecture, part of architecture.

A non-static light that shapes architecture therefore establishes a relationship between man and the environment through the definition of scenes made of light and shadow. To make all this possible, the lighting designer must shape a physical agent using a language that can be traced back to his thoughts and culture.

Only in this way architecture comes alive.

To make the figure of the lighting designer clear, a comparison can be made with music.

To play, it is not enough just to know the notes, but there must also be an orchestra conductor who interprets the music and creates harmony between the different instruments.. Similarly, lights are like musical notes on the score. To illuminate, it is not enough to just know the technical properties of lighting fixtures but it is necessary to create harmony in the light that they release.

Illuminating therefore means creating harmonies and evaluating the environment around us.

The use of light as a dramaturgical tool can be applied to any built space. The conference, from which this abstract was taken, examined various projects and architectures, such as the Cathedral of Milan or the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, to name just a few, in which the different types of light, expertly juxtaposed, enhance, modify and describe the architecture.

In all the presented cases, light is treated as if it were a plastic and solid material to change the architecture over time. Light and time are indeed two inseparable actors in a lighting project.

There is no just a way to illuminate architecture but there is a way of interpreting it. 

Lighting, like art, is a form of suggestion: it suggests emotions and, as Borges said, “Things suggested are much more incisive than those explained”.