SOCIAL LIGHTSCAPES

During the summer holiday in 2016, I participated in the Social Lightscapes workshop organised by the Configuring Light research group and hosted by Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Using the inner-city suburb of West End, Brisbane, as a case study, the workshop aimed to demonstrate how subtle lighting technologies and techniques can be used to create safe and sociable urban nightscapes, and how integral social research is in informing design decisions.

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It was an intensive four-day workshop that ran from 9:30am to 9pm everyday, starting with lectures in the morning, and field work from afternoon until night. Under the hot summer sun, we walked all around West End, conducting informal interviews with a wide range of residents and visitors, and identifying potential sites to test lighting mockups on later in the night.

We categorised the residents of West End into four demographic groups: 1. Early Residents; 2. Early Gentrifiers; 3. Late and Future Gentrifiers; and 4. Retailers. The ten workshop participants were then split into four teams to study one demographic group each, and use the findings of their social research to inform the design decisions of their respective lighting mockups. My team was tasked with studying the third group, Late and Future Gentrifiers.

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We used various light fixtures to illuminate street art on the facade of a boutique bar one night, and then the iconic lizard sculpture and fig tree on the corner of Boundary Road and Russell Street the next. On the final day of the workshop, we delivered our findings in a public presentation at QUT Kelvin Grove.