Up Close With Andre Tammes

I think the genesis of my interest in lighting was from my childhood in a house with no electricity. I grew up in Newton House, outside Edinburgh, Scotland, which was built in 1580. The light was generated by a mysterious machine in the shed. Every night my father and the gardener had to each turn a side of this handle and it would go click click click. Meanwhile, outside on the gable end of the house, this great weight would go up on a pulley, bit by bit, to the top.

In the ensuing 24 hours it would drop and operate a compressor which sucked in, believe it or not, high octane aircraft fuel. It mixed air with the fuel and pumped the vapour to various burners around the house. So we basically had kerosene-based gas lighting.

One day, the airport authorities arrived and were aghast at our fuel storage facilities, so they halted our supply and we went back to candles, Tilley lamps and Aladdin lamps. My whole fascination with light grew from that early childhood experience.

Later I got into the theatrical world. My first role was at the Palace Theatre in Watford as an unpaid assistant stage manager. I had a walk-on part which I hated and it convinced me that I wanted to be the bloke who sat in the shade, in the stalls, in the dark, throwing light at the stage.

The first lights I worked with were Strand Pattern 49s, a massive box and you just screwed a whacking great 1kW incandescent lamp into it.

Another job I had to do was to top up the water dimmers. When a heavy load warmed them up, the water evaporated and to prevent them drying out, my task was to literally pee into them!

In the 1980s, the establishment of the National Lottery led to a boom in the building of theatres, and I went freelance as an independent theatrical lighting consultant. And then one day I got a phone call from a Scottish architect who was designing the new Cameron Toll shopping centre in Edinburgh. And he said: ‘Well, I believe that with your background, you might add a wee bit of a certain touch to the job.’ And that was how I moved into architectural lighting.

I created the distinctive red lines around the building, which turned into a landmark.

The next significant phone call I got was from a young man who was doing his architectural thesis on the relationship between stage lighting and architectural lighting, and he wanted to interview me for it. His name was Jonathan Speirs.

Jonathan turned up, interviewed me, and then said ‘in the summer holidays, can I come and work for you?’ He could draw, and I couldn’t, so I said ‘absolutely!’. And that, in 1983, was the start of the Lighting Design Partnership.

It was a glorious time. I looked around the UK market in lighting design and there was nobody else, apart from Derek Phillips who was doing lighting design and architecture. I called up Derek and told him that we had started a fee-based lighting design service, he said: ‘well, Andre, if you want to do it, that’s great, but don't expect to ever make any money at it. And by God, he was right.

My advice to young lighting designers today would be: You have to burn brightly. You have to burn with enthusiasm about the subject.

Lighting is vital because what you see – your perception of your surroundings – is entirely conditioned by the way it’s lit.