Cities of Light Versus Dark Skies

Night sky and meteors

Light and darkness have been in an eternal battle from the beginning of humanity. As in good and evil, in enlightenment and the dark ages, all in all leaving darkness disadvantaged. Flying over the United States at night, one can get the strong impression that light wins against darkness, energy conservation and the dark skies movement notwithstanding.
In this post we will leave those philosophical, ethical and prejudicial questions aside to shed some darkness on light as a man-made product that has become a menace to the environment as easily visible by the lumens or foot candles put out by parking lots and gas stations. The spread of light is much reinforced by the rapidly spreading proliferation of LED and laser lights that allow illumination in a previously unknown breadth of applications and not only during the holiday season.

We can't avoid the allusions altogether. What with the forces of darkness who forced the Lyon festival of lights this year to be scrapped year in deference to the Paris attacks? Lyon's Fête des Lumières is by no means a new invention,  it has been celebrated every year since 1643. It is said to have started during the plague as a motivator in very dark times, one candle at a time put into the windows of the city. Today the fete des lumieres is Lyon's most well known attraction and normally spans over four days.

The programme promises four nights of enchantment, each night brings a different theme, color scheme and vibe.
Designers from all over the world partake in the wonderful event. Video, Music and Sound effects are used to accompany the vibrant images dotted around the city.
The exceptional spectacle showcases the city at its best and incorporates buildings, rivers and parks into the show. This enables tourists and locals alike to experience many different routes and areas throughout Lyon over the 4 day event. The best spectacle is located in the city centre.

It isn't easy to keep up with all the celebrations of light. Lest you are a physicist who attended a light conference on November 16 in London in the company of  high-energy, optical, quantum and solid-state colleagues who discussed recent developments enabled by Maxwell's Equations trying to predict future innovations, you wouldn't know that this year is also the International Year of Light.

 And, yes, Baltimore is now on the bandwagon as well!

Baltimore will celebrate its own very first Festival of Lights in 2016, a full eight years after Belgrade in Croatia admitted it was a late-comer to the idea with this programmatic announcement:

"BELGRADE, THE CITY OF LIGHT “ is unique cultural event, festival dedicated to light, platform for creative innovations, experiments, art and expert discussions and exchanges of ideas on a topic of illumination. This year, Belgrade proudly enters into the sparkling net of light festivals that exist over the world and cherish this tradition for a long time, such as Lyon, Tallinn, Helsinki, Lisboa, and Eindhoven. 

Fête des Lumières, Lyon, France (cancelled for 2015)

Baltimore's celebration of light has been dubbed "Light City Baltimore" and has been placed way into the lighter season of spring and will take place from March 28 to April 3. There is good reason why Baltimore picked the year 2016 to have its own festival of light: The 200 year celebration after Baltimore was reportedly the first US city to illuminate its streets with gas lights. The website describes the event this way:

Premiering in 2016, Light City Baltimore is the first large-scale, international light festival in the United States, homegrown right here in Baltimore. Light City will provide a backdrop for the celebration of ideas, ingenuity and creativity through art, music and innovation.
Light City will shine a light on Baltimore’s abundance of creative, cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary talent, and we welcome participants from across the globe to join us.
Light City’s innovation programming will generate an ecosystem of ideas and learning during the day – while lights, performances and live music reimagine the Inner Harbor at night.

Festival of Lights, Sidney, AUS

Festival of Lights, Berlin, Germany

Festival of Lights, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Of course, it is easy to see that most festivals and traditional celebrations (such as Hannukah and Christmas) fall squarely into the dark season  when it can get quite gloomy in the northern hemisphere. All were designed to fend off the darkness of the long nights of December and encourage people against demons, darkness, ghosts, depression and the fear that the sun may never come back.

Inaugural event: Light City Baltimore 2016

Light City, Baltimore

The idea of moving the concept of light expressed in a romantic festival to lighten the mood during dark times to one that celebrates innovation and shines the path to the future shows the allure that light has as a beacon of good things. Innovation, light, international, big thinkers? Who could be against that!

Well, the promoters of  Noche Zero for one who gathered some years ago in Chile with the express purpose of celebrating night and darkness.

This ‘inspirational darkness event’ aims to get the lighting and astronomical communities working together to re-establish a connection with the night sky. The idea was the brainchild of Atacama Desert native Paulina Villalobos, who runs Diav, her own lighting design practice, based in Santiago. She says: “I wanted to bring together a diverse range of speakers who work with light to discuss the future of the night sky and how design can adapt to protect it. There is a fragmentation between professions concerned with light and darkness and this event will hopefully help close that gap.”

As with so many things in life, joy comes from experiencing contrast. Light and sun contrasted with the darkness of night. Even in lighting design itself, designers know that in many instances the effects of light are enhanced when there is the contrast between bright and dim, just think of how the most up to date grovery stores have begun to display their merchandise: Not in a homogeneously bright sea of fluorescent lights but with well positioned warm accent lights that make the specialty items glow.

Unfortunately for those of us who like contrast, it is the aim of civilization to level the differences. For light this means making the night more like the day, and oddly, also making the day more like the night. (Witness the dark hotel rooms with several layers of textiles keeping light away, the shades drawn down in almost all conference rooms as if one needed to be constantly ready for the next PowerPoint,  not to mention the many awful windowless and dank work and meeting spaces).

Unfortunately, crime prevention strategists came up with the simplistic formula that more light equals less crime and since then cities, transit agencies and homeowners are amping it up even more. One can suspect that primordial fear of darkness is at work here rather than science, even though there is certainly a need for a well lit parking garage or transit station.

So, when night comes, inevitably, we will have light pollution (see fantastic satellite images of our earth here) illuminating the night sky not only in and around cities but glaring also right in our bedrooms. Flickering and blinking lights everywhere, disturbing the view of the stars and our own circadian cycle. ("Blue lights have a dark side")

Washington Monument Lighting with fireworks

In this holiday season with its very own celebrations of light, lets remember to give the night back to darkness wherever and whenever possible. Enjoy darkness, give the eyes a chance to adjust before you set your I phone to flashlight and look up to see how many stars you can see in the night sky. It will make you more relaxed and give you perspective. If you want to know why it is dark at night in the first place, watch this  Physics explanation.

Should the weather permit you can start tonight and look for some meteors. You may notice how bothersome lights can become in the endeavor of watching the stars.


Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Photo: ArchPlan Inc. (copyrighted)

This article is an update and compilation of earlier articles on my blogs which addressed light and darkness.

See also Thomas Schielke's article in ArchDaily: Europe's Leading Light Festivals