lighting design
'If there's ever been such a thing as a match made in heaven, swimming pools and landscape lighting lay a strong claim to that perfection.' That's how Mike Gambino opened his Currents column in November 2009. 'Separately, they take little-used spaces and transform them to all-day hubs of activity and sources of constant beauty. Together, however, the magic
Some of our favorite projects have gotten us involved with an unusual class of clients. These folks are affluent enough that they travel extensively and own multiple homes in spots around the world - places they'll stay for stretches ranging from a couple weeks to several months each year. When it comes to developing or remodeling new acquisitions, they'll set some basic ground rules and step back, leaving the specifics to a trusted firm or individual who assembles a hand-picked
What's involved in a good landscape-lighting project? Whole books have been written on this topic, and it's not hard to find week-long workshops devoted to showing professionals how to produce finely illuminated environments for their clients. If you're a designer or a design-oriented contractor, however, I'd suggest that you have enough of a head start that we can set you off in a good direction with this brief article and its focus on the features of a good lighting program. You already think like an artist, which is great, and know how to identify focal points and
Starting in 1661, Louis XIV of France began a building project at his country estate in Versailles that would keep him busy throughout what remained of his reign. He held on all the way through until 1715, so he had a good, long time to browbeat large numbers of architects, designers and engineers into making the chateau a statement of power, wealth and majesty befitting a man who called himself Le Roi Soleil
As I see it, successful landscape lighting is a two-part process: First, the designer applies aesthetic principles that create the art, then he or she supports that artistic vision with scientific and technological savvy. One without the other doesn’t work: You can’t effectively practice the art until
No matter the field, keeping up with the latest product developments is critical to supplying clients with state-of-the-art results. It’s also important to track current design and application trends and to distinguish innovations of true value from those that don’t add up or aren’t far enough along the developmental curve to warrant broad acceptance. Using my field of landscape lighting as an example, the past quarter century has seen a small clutch of products and technologies that have made the grade – the chief among them being
