The lighting design of the facades of houses, architectural ensembles and entire streets is one of the most important directions in creating urban environment. Moscow annually spends tens of billions of rubles on the festive illumination of the city, and large companies consider the architectural lighting of their headquarters as one of the ways to promote the brand.
Alexei Burykin the head of the QPRO bureau, lighting design expert tells RBC Real Estate about mistakes in the architectural lighting in Moscow and lighting design of the city, how the Russian capital differs from other megacities.

– Is lighting design of the building a continuation of the architecture or a separate, maybe even opposite to it entity?

– Rather, the first. Any project begins with an architectural concept that falls into the hands of a lighting designer. First, we get the terms of reference, then we make a sketch of the project, which should consider the architecture and functionality of the building, as well as the territory and environment. After that goes on developing of working documentation, purchasing of equipment and then project goes to the finish line.

– I formulated the question this way because I often see examples of a rather radical, even aggressive, invasion of light design into the body of a building. And this is always perceived as a battle between a designer and an architect.

– This occurs. We have all the processes going on very late: in Europe people are actively struggling with light pollution, but we are struggling to “overexpose” each other.

– How does the architecture of the building affect the work with light? It is clear, after all, that the same techniques cannot be used to illuminate the facade of Stalin’s houses and skyscrapers.

– Architecture is the starting point of any project. For example, for classic and neoclassical buildings with embroidered facades, the main task is to emphasize all the elements of the building and create its visual and aesthetic picture. At the same time, we consider not only the architecture as it is, but also as the lighting environment of the object. If we talk about a street with a large concentration of residents, tourists, pedestrians like Tverskaya street or the Garden Ring, the building cannot live on its own. We shouldn’t make it as a Christmas tree, no matter if customer wants it.
In a case of work with modern buildings, there are even fewer options. There is usually nothing to highlight there: the contour of the building and the main volumes are most often emphasized, and light geometry is created. In addition, there are purely technical difficulties. For example, in Moscow City, most skyscrapers have light-absorbing facades, and the techniques that can be used in classical buildings made of stone or concrete are simply not applicable here. In such cases, light-dynamic lighting is introduced, as in the Evolution tower: at night, the facade is decorated with a pixel grid that allows you to reproduce the “picture” according to developed scenario.

– There is another problem there: how to find a compromise between visual expressiveness and comfort of residents. For example, recently the office building of Sberbank on Kutuzovsky Prospekt was equipped with LED strips that light in the windows of neighboring houses. Local residents show their protest, send complaints to Rospotrebnadzor. It is hard to imagine that the project developers could not have foreseen such a reaction.

– This is a big problem for Moscow, but nobody understands what to do with it. The concept of “light pollution” was largely formed under Luzhkov when there was a need to rethink the practice of lighting design and architectural and artistic lighting of buildings in Moscow. In the 1990s, was created working group under the Moscow government, which was sent to Paris to learn from the city’s lighting design experience. Authorities decided to repeat this experience based on the results of the trip but adjusted for the Russian mentality. City Hall as the main customer decided to focus on active, ubiquitous, and very expressive coverage. And then designers and private customers began to compete in brightness and originality of solutions. As a result, we got light cacophony, which today is a big problem for the city.
The architectural lighting of the Sberbank building on Kutuzovsky Prospekt is one such example. On the one hand, it is located on a certain isolated territory, on the other hand on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. That is why the building does not have the right to stand out so much against the background of the historical development of the highway, especially since we are talking about the existing architectural ensemble.

– The problem is that this issue is not regulated by law in our country.

– Yes, it is. In Europe, there is the procedure, on the one hand, is a little more complicated, and on the other, simpler and more understandable. There is a light master plan in most western cities, which is a set of rules and regulations – they clearly regulate what is possible and what is not. At the same time, the master plan does not determine the aesthetic techniques that lighting designers and architects can use, but it limits them. If such a vault appeared in Moscow, we would get a more uniform light environment. Now all decisions are very subjective in nature, which hinders the development of lighting design and lighting picture of the city.

– Is Moscow a progressive city in terms of lighting design in general? I have often heard from foreign architects that in terms of working with light, Moscow allows itself much more than other capitals. It is not clear whether this is a compliment or a rebuke.

– This is a subjective indicator. There are no authoritative ratings that would rank cities by the quality of light architecture here. Moscow adopts modern trends in lighting design. But you do not need to oversaturate the city with light elements to meet a certain level. This can very negatively affect the quality of the environment.
For example, there are big problems with the light picture in Rome. Experiments with the selection of color temperature have led to the fact that most of the locals began to perceive Rome as a less comfortable city. The fact is that classical architecture is historically warmer – simply to say, yellow. Now the city authorities apply more modern methods from the point of view of the light environment, which significantly increased the level of color temperature, made white and blue colors the main ones. As a result, many streets are perceived as hospital corridors.

– Does this happen in Moscow too?

– There are more mistakes than luck. It seems to me a successful experience in highlighting Moscow stations. The project was handled by my colleague Pavel Pavlyuk from Ultimatum. Everything is correct here – balance, contrasts, highlighting the main elements. When something is broken, the eye does not receive a harmonious perception of the environment, it begins to switch from one object to another, causing a feeling of anxiety. Unsuccessful lighting solutions are often associated with the project economy: developers always seek to save, as a result we get low-budget, low-quality solutions.

– What is the average cost of a building lighting design?

– There was no payment culture in development of architectural and artistic lighting in Russia for a long time. A lighting design company is still often perceived as an equipment supplier. The customer or general contractor usually says: “Why do you want money for the design, if you already make money on equipment.” On the one hand, it is, on the other hand, design is paid for separately throughout the world, because it is an intellectual component that guarantees a high-quality result. The development of a lighting project costs an average of 1.5 million rubles, the implementation, which involves the supply of equipment and complex work with an electrician, costs € 100–120 thousand, depending on the complexity of the project.

– Is complexity measured by the number of implemented solutions or their quality? And how far has the industry stepped in an innovative sense, for example, over the past ten years?

– Ten years ago there was used a different type of light source around the world. Due to the active integration of LED light sources, the market has turned upside down. LEDs have a higher level of energy saving, higher variability in terms of changes in color temperature.
LED devices with minimal dimensions make it easier to integrate them into modern facades. For example, it used to be difficult to imagine that a metal halide lamp could be immersed in a building and placed on a building facade. Finally, lighting control systems for buildings are widely used today, which allow changing the type of lighting depending on the time of day, day of the week (weekday or weekend) and even weather. Thanks to this, we can endow buildings with certain “emotions”.

– Moscow spends billions for architectural lighting of individual buildings and entire streets. For some reason we are not accustomed to highlight monuments in our country. Can you explain this paradox?

– This is a good question that cannot be answered unequivocally. In 2014, together with architects from Buromoscow, we won a competition for the improvement of Triumph Square. The monument to Mayakovsky was highlighted before the reconstruction, albeit with obsolete instruments. We proposed to highlight the monument with the help of modern lighting equipment and thus make it the central element of the square. We went through an agreement, delivered equipment, but over the course of the year the monument remained unlit. A year later, the devices were installed, but it were not the ones we planned and they were installed in points different from project. How can this be explained?
Another example, not Moscow. Some time ago, we developed a lighting master plan for the city Cheboksary. We discussed the project for a long time, singled out ensembles, conducted a study of the main dominants and tourist routes. As a result, they decided to highlight four monuments and an inscription at the entrance to the city from the entire project. There are things for which have no logical answer there.