Title of intervention: “Temporary lighting for permanent effects”
Abstract
With many new technologies and aesthetic possibilities available, why do we still create nocturnal cityscapes that ‘mark’ the inequality of different social spaces? How can social researchers bring new techniques to the table that allow city-makers to come to more sensible and site-specific design solutions? In other words: how can social science and (lighting) design collaborate to create nightscapes that work for everybody?
Social Light Movement, a philanthropic movement and has been founded in order to create a network for lighting designers and other interested parties to collaborate on the issue of improving lighting for people, and Configuring Light/Staging the Social, a is a research programme of social science interventions into the configuration of light at London School of Economics found the way to collaborate and to start a dialogue between lighting designer and social research.
Two different experiences of temporary projects leading to real changes will be presented: Southlight in Providence, USA and Whitecross in London, UK
The entire process of the experience of SouthLight, held in Providence, in collaboration with Rhode Island School of Design and the Urban Lightscapes/Social Nightscapes workshop, an LSE-funded project, with the technical sponsorship of iGuzzini.
http://socialnightscapes.org/about/
http://www.configuringlight.org/
SHORT BIO
ELETTRA BORDONARO
CO-FOUNDER, SOCIAL LIGHT MOVEMENT
Elettra has co-founded the Social Light Movement and is a trained architect holding a PhD in architecture from the University of Architecture in Turin (Italy). Throughout her career, she has focussed on lighting, working as a lighting designer on lighting master plans and public realm lighting for major lighting design studios such as Light Cibles (Paris), Speirs+Major (Edinburgh), Metis Lighting (Milan) and Light Bureau (London). She taught at the Universities of Rome, Milan and Turin and was a visiting professor at Rhode Island School of Art and Design (USA) in 2014. She runs her own London-based lighting design studio called Light Follows Behaviour. www.lightfollowsbehaviour.com
OANNE ENTWISTLE
SENIOR LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY, KING’S COLLEGE LONDON
Joanne Entwistle is a co-founder of Configuring Light/Staging the Social and runs the research project ‘Staging the Home’, focussing on domestic lighting and how materials and tastes shape domestic spaces and how homes are imagined and configured as space for everyday life. She has published extensively on the sociology of fashion, dress and the body and aesthetic markets and economies. Major publications include: Fashioning Models: Image, Text, Industry, co-edited with Elizabeth Wissinger (Berg, forthcoming); The Aesthetic Economy: markets and value in clothing and modelling (Berg, 2009); Body Dressing, co-edited with Elizabeth Wilson (Berg, 2001); The Fashioned Body: fashion, dress and modern social theory (Polity, 2000).
DON SLATER
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN SOCIOLOGY, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
Don Slater is based at LSE Sociology and has co-founded Configuring Light/Staging the Social. His current research focusses on lighting design but he also researches and writes extensively on the sociology of material culture and economic life (consumption, consumer culture and marketing); new media and digital culture (ethnographies of media and development); and visual and material culture (photography, visual methods, fashion, community media). Major publications include: New Media, Development and Globalization: Making Connections in the Global South (Polity 2013); The Technological Economy (2005, with Andrew Barry); The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (2000, with Daniel Miller); Consumer Culture and Modernity (1997).
MONA SLOANE
PROJECT MANAGER CONFIGURING LIGHT, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
Together with Don Slater and Joanne Entwistle, Mona is co-founder of Configuring Light/Staging the Social and works on the programme as programme manager and researcher. Based at LSE Cities, she develops new projects for Configuring Light and runs the programme’s wide range of activities. She is also a PhD candidate in LSE Sociology where she holds an LSE scholarship and works and publishes on the sociology of design and urban planning, material culture and aesthetics and economic sociology. Mona holds an MSc in Sociology from the LSE and has a background in communication and cultural management.