REINVENTING HARBOUR CITIES II

Elinor Coombs from Guerilla Lighting in an interview with Christian Schoen:

Light Matters

Elinor Coombs was trained in Museum and Exhibition Design before her education as a Lighting Designer. She works for the British company BDP which offers specialized counselling in lighting design as well as architecture. She has worked on several projects for BDP, and project managed and collaborated under the flags of Guerrilla Lighting – a platform created by BDP for raising the awareness of good lighting and the importance of professional design to create sustainable lighting solutions. The Guerrilla Lighting team have been active with workshops in different cities of Europe where various local people have participated in lighting urban spaces and buildings, often in connection with design or architecture festivals such as Helsinki Design Days last October. They have been in Birmingham, Glasgow and Dublin, cities known for other than traditional beautiful urban settings and recreated old industry and harbour areas – all fresh projects which Coombs will present at the conference.

Christian Schoen: Can you describe briefly the democratic concept of Guerrilla Lighting?

Elinor Coombs: Guerrilla Lighting sets out to provide a platform for discussion and debate about urban lighting design and sustainability. I think every city it is done in takes a slightly different form and it becomes something that is specific to the issues and debates in each of the cities.

CS: Your projects are rather interventions than permanent, aren’t they?

EC: Yes, each site is lit for just a couple of minutes. The experiences and memories of the people taking part, the photographs and the media coverage create a permanent record of what we have done, but the installations themselves are literally there only for a matter of minutes.

CS: The involvement of the residents is a very democratic approach.

EC: That is key to it. Sometimes it is inhabitants, sometimes students and sometimes it is people from other professions which are linked to our work, like design or art or it is people from the planning offices, cost consultants and so on. It really is all about the people taking part, raising awareness, creating new channels of communication and generating discussion and ideas.

CS: What is the vision or the mission of Guerrilla Lighting regarding the development of the night cityscapes?

EC: Just, that lighting should be considered; That the lighting that is there is serving a purpose and it should actually improve the environment. The lighting that doesn’t do that should not be there. And that we should not be wasteful with the resources we do have, so the sustainability element always comes into it. But in terms of specifics it depends on each instance, on each city, each site.

CS: You have been here in Reykjavík only for two nights. For Guerrilla action here … attracting

EC: Well, there is one thing I noticed about Reykjavík already when I came in by bus from the airport was that almost every building, residential or other wise, has wall-mounted lighting outside which just throws light out everywhere. I am sure that has to do with hours of daylight you get here during certain times of the year. If we were to come here to Reykjavík with Guerrilla Lighting the local input would be key to understanding the importance of light in winter months when there is very little of it around. It must have great impact on people, physically and psychologically. I guess we would be looking to maybe balance that in some way.