- Ninoslav Kušter - Lighting designer
ORTOFORMA, a company established in Zagreb in 1995, defined its core business at the very beginning in two essential segments: lighting design and distribution of luminaires/lighting systems by some of the world’s leading manufacturers.
The company’s business philosophy consists in individual approach to every client and examining a project proposal in the given context, which we advocate by always putting light before a luminaire.
We believe that an intelligently designed interaction between light and matter can spin a tale and intrigue the senses and thus, together with all the stakeholders in a design process, create a high quality lighting solution.
More information about the lighting design profession is available on the website of IALD, the official association of lighting designers, https://www.iald.org.
References
We have built our rich, long-standing experience through a successful collaboration with domestic architects and designers as well as some of the renowned cultural institutions in the country. With them we have realized a number of projects: lighting design of exhibition halls, sacral buildings, hotel-catering and sales facilities as well as several private houses and flats. Equally remarkable results were achieved by illuminating public city areas such as squares, parks and facades of buildings, archeological sites and monuments, and artistic installations.
Veleposlanstvo Kraljevine Nizozemske
Arheološki park "Principij"
Turistički informativni centar grada Zagreba
Who?
A lighting designer should be an expert who understands the physics of light, its production and distribution, as well as psychology of man’s perception of light and how it can make an impact on people’s mood, health and environment. Besides, a lighting designer is expected to have well-developed mechanisms of light observation, i.e. to be capable of visualising the desired lighting effect and convey it to the client and a broader team of experts through a set of communication and presentation skills that clearly illustrate their expertise and contribution to an architectural project.
What?
A lighting design project is most often closely connected to the architectural project and should, as such, follow all its development stages, from a concept to a realisation. In a lighting design project, lighting should be examined in its entirety, in the given spatial context, and a lighting designer should in their consideration take into account the influence of daylight and upgrade it with suitable electric lighting, aiming to meet aesthetical, functional and operational criteria of a given architectural space, as well as define its long-term cost-efficiency in the sense of energy efficiency and sustainability, as well as human wellbeing.
How?
Before starting to work on a project, a lighting designer defines with a client (investor) and an architect a working schedule, financial arrangements and deadlines for the delivery of their services. A working schedule serves to define the main guidelines and objectives of the project, as well as all the project stages involving the lighting designer, all the required documentation and materials needed for work.
Lighting design concept
When a lighting designer is involved in an architectural project already from the concept stage, the very first step of their engagement consists of listening to the client’s demands and needs and understanding the architect’s vision. After gathering the basic, source information, the lighting designer conducts a detailed analysis, consisting of touring the location and examining the current conditions from the point of view of daylight and existing electric lighting. Such analysis is the basis on which the lighting designer builds a lighting design concept, a synthesis of gathered source information transposed into a vision of the architectural space in light.
Schematic Analysis
The approved lighting design concept is schematically analysed in the ANALYSIS STAGE which consists of completing the architectural drawings with a schematic diagram of lighting equipment, as well as its control, and a rough estimate is made, by agreement, of the current load, as well as a draft specification of lighting equipment.
If necessary, the documentation is completed with preliminary lighting calculations for the spaces that require them, thus verifying if the standards were met for the illumination level which serve as guidelines to the lighting designer, based on which they avoid bad solutions in their work.
At this stage, the client’s or architect’s comments are still taken into account and potential corrections of the architectural proposal accepted, as well as any revisions of the set budget.
Detailed Lighting Design
A detailed technical lighting design consists of a precise draft of lighting equipment into the standard views of architectural drawings, detailed sketches of the instalment of certain elements of lighting equipment, marking the control system’s location, proposals of control programmes, and – if necessary – lighting calculations for certain spaces.
Lighting equipment is defined by marks and described in detail in the digital architectural drawings, as well as in the specification based on the drawings.
At this stage it is still recommendable to conduct lighting tests with concrete, proposed lighting equipment in so-called mock-up rooms or directly on location. Furthermore, it is recommendable to define a plan and timeline of a long-term maintenance of the lighting equipment, as well as a rough estimate of energy consumption.
Construction Works - Monitoring
If an agreement was made that the lighting designer monitors the construction stage, the lighting designer is then required to monitor regularly and in detail all the actions pertaining to the correct instalment of lighting equipment, and to answer all the potential questions of the workers in charge of the instalment regarding possible uncertainties.
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