All dressed up with nowhere to go?

Are image projections on building facades an appropriate way to illuminate architecture at night? Maybe not. Lighting should serve architecture as architecture has always served it. Recently, I have observed an increasing use of image projections on building facades at night. This lighting applique, while festive and fun and I must admit tempting to use, is a bit superficial. Image projections not only silence architecture, sealing the buildings' lips, but they serve only themselves. When we shroud our building facades in a veil of images, we are missing our greatest opportunity to hear their secrets and tell us their stories.

From a birds eye view, a sharp diagonal line slices the grid of the Philadelphia cityscape in an effort to relieve pressure, opening up a flow of civic activity from the rigid core of the city's business and administrative district along the unfolding boulevard of its cultural, educational and artistic soul. The Parkway as it is called, is alive with vehicles whirling around Logan Circle as pedestrians carefully choose the right time to cross the street. At one end, City Hall, at the other The Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art, the king and queen of the city sit at the table of this celebrated boulevard. At night, gazing down from the window of an arriving plane the street lights of the boulevard appear to twinkle. The Benjamin Franklin Parkway is Philadelphia's cultural identity. At the facades of the city's Library, Art Museums and other civic destinations a story of our collective histories is already beginning to be told. Scattered along the boulevard sculptures are markers on a timeline etched on obelisks that peer back into the past connecting us to great civilisations, a place where we all come from. These works of art and architecture along the Parkway stand in attention on any given night. Precisely illuminated, architectural nuances that aren't as clear under the broad stroke of daylight, pop at night, revealing the intimate relationship the lighting designer developed with the building, the architect's intention and the place. These facades could have been veiled in images but the lighting designer chose to tell the story.

The example of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway is an appropriate one for this argument because the buildings and sculptures along the Parkway have a story to tell, as do all works of architecture throughout all time. The plot is usually complex, starting at the surface it initially may just be about material or colour, but as the eye travels along the facade and eventually into the building much more is discovered. At night a city, a street or just a building can come alive in a way that is not seen during the day. And in this way we learn something new about it. Our relationship to our built environment starts to move from the unfamiliar to the familiar. Details, articulation in material and colour and even volume can be expressed in an entirely new language. Giving our chosen work more depth we discover a new layer. We see it under a different light. The load-bearing prowess of a column can be exaggerated with the proper gesture of a beam of light. A porous limestone facade if illuminated properly can almost appear to breathe. The white steeple never appeared as sharp and clean and white until it was illuminated by the keen eye of a lighting designer in front of the backdrop of a night sky. When we as lighting designers employ image projectors as our 'method' of lighting and splatter symbols or words or pictures across the faces of a building and call it 'a lighting concept' we not only deface what should be celebrated but we cowl at the great opportunity given to us. The opportunity to reveal what can only be revealed by us. It is our craft and our responsibility to such.

The truth is projected images on building facades are light and fun and festive and temporary. Projections have their time and place. After all if a facade were meant to be an image shouldn't the entire facade be a plasma screen? At least there would be truth to what it is. Maybe at the city's masquerade ball we will all wear our masks. And the Library will dress itself in its favourite scene from Alice and Wonderland. A projector from a precisely located pole across the street will project Alice being chased by the Queen of Hearts. With a mask that covers up who this building really is, maybe it will tell me something about itself that under normal circumstances it would never divulge. But maybe it won't. Can I chance it? What if this building wore a mask every night, a different projection or maybe the same one? Would I ever really know who this building is? During the day nature's lights would reveal it to me, but at night our relationship would always be superficial.

read a response to this article from Udit Chaudhurim here

information : www.iald.org