Lighting the fourth wall

31 August 2011

The fundamentals of architectural lighting design are played out in the theatre, says Admir Jukanovic

“Stage design is not just an inspiration for lighting design,” says Admir Jukanovic, an architectural lighting designer at London practice Mindesye. “It is the foundation of lighting design. The profession literally comes from the theatre world, as the people who used to design the sets in theatres were the first lighting designers.”

The stage has always been at the forefront of the development in lighting technology; in 1881, just two years after Edison’s patent for the incandescent lamp, the world’s first electric lighting system took pride of place in the Savoy Theatre. But what particularly interests Jukanovic is how, starting from the 1970s, stage lighting designers in America used techniques from the theatre to light other buildings, giving birth to architectural lighting design: “Ours is a young profession, and it was the theatre designers who set the standards. We inherited their education, their understanding, and also their terminology. For example, we talk about ‘a scene change’ in architectural lighting design very often - probably every day.”

“For a lighting designer, a theatre is like a playground.”

The artistic challenge of lighting a drama or dance piece is one that enthuses Jukanovic. “For a lighting designer, a theatre is like a playground. It’s absolutely fantastic. In an ideal situation for me, the set is spare and plain, so that the play of light changes the moods, the scenes and tells the story. You can have the freedom to use whatever you want in this case, which is a dream for a lighting designer.” He also highlights how some concerns of theatre design have recently filtered their way through to the architectural sector. “In theatres, designers have tried to recreate natural light on the stage for many years. A morning mood might be made with a warm light, almost orange in colour, and an evening scene will be lit from another angle with a cooler light. This happens today more and more in lighting for offices, with fluorescents used to imitate the time of day outside.

“This links to another important factor on stage - the changing of time in a scene, or from one scene to another through lighting. You have what you might call ‘time loops’ on stage, as scene follows scene. These time loops are now created in the theatre by sophisticated control systems, and control technology is used in the same way for architectural lighting design, to set different themes in a building during the day.” To help suspend the disbelief of the audience, it is an imperative in theatre lighting design that one does not notice the light sources. “The stage is like a frame that restricts you from seeing what lights might be in the wings, or coming from below or above. That’s another parallel with architectural design - you don’t see the light fittings, you just see the effect.”

In an interesting circularity, architects and architectural lighting designers are now becoming increasingly interested in stage design. The lessons learned from the stage are being filtered through architecture and taught back. Jukanovic describes how Wayne McGregor’s ballet Chroma, performed by the Royal Ballet, was designed by the architect John Pawson. “The stage was lit like a minimalist Pawson room. There was the same contrast between spotlights and indirect light from niches or light wells. He also cut out a square in the set and lit it like an artwork by James Turrell, so that the lit space of the square seemed endless to the audience.”

“The style is like a frame that restricts your view - like architectural design, you don’t see the light fittings, you just see the scane”

Stage design, however, does not just happen in theatres, but also spaces from television studios to shop windows. The latter particularly fascinates Jukanovic. “Like in theatres, you are free to use many different lights in combination in a way that you often can’t in architectural lighting design. You do everything you can to accentuate the products and catch the eyes of the passers-by.” As an example he gives the fantastical window displays of Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan, which are “outlandish and over the top… in many ways stage design reaches its perfect level in shop windows like these, as they use lights so theatrically.”

Jukanovic also respects the way that stage design necessitates “collaboration between different parties, from the production manager to the set designer to the director. The best architectural lighting also sees people from different disciplines all working together to achieve the best outcome.” And theatre lighting’s concentration on serving content - the text of the play, or choreography of the dance - is something Mindseye emulates. He explains how in 2008 as part of a project called Switched on London, the company was asked to light HMS Belfast on the river Thames in a spectacular way.

“We researched warships and then decided to project on the boat a type of ‘Razzle Dazzle’ camouflage that was used on Allied ships in World War I and II. With this zig-zag pattern painted on a ship, the German U-boat commanders couldn’t tell through their binoculars the type of ship it was, or its speed or direction.” This project echoes theatre lighting’s respect of narrative. “Stage design relies on and lives from the content of the drama. Lighting needs to reflect content and be used for a specific reason. Any lighting without this connection to content is meaningless.”