The Aesthetic of Sustainability

During London Design Festival 2022, British lighting brand Tala hosted an intimate panel discussion at its pop-up showroom on Club Row in Shoreditch. darc’s editor Sarah Cullen chaired the talk with panelists Oliver Heath biophilic design expert, Sophie O’Rourke founding member of the Green Light Alliance and Lighting Designer at Aecom, and William Symington, Tala’s co-founder. Here is an excerpt of the evening’s discussion where panelists share their expert knowledge on all things lighting and biophilic design.

During Tala’s panel discussion, the group unpicked ideas that revolved around its title ‘The Aesthetic of Sustainability’, what it means for a business to be sustainable; trends around the term ‘healthy light’ and how it can be integrated into an accessible space.

What follows is an edited excerpt of the evening’s discussion. Watch the full panel talk at www.darc-magazine.com/darctv.

Let’s discuss the trends of healthy light, what that means, and how we can incorporate it in our spaces, touching on aesthetics and the idea of doing the “right” thing.

To kick us off, Oliver, could you please provide an overview of biophilic design and what it means?

Heath: Biophilia design is one component of how we create healthy spaces in the built environment. Essentially, biophilia means a love of nature that explains humans’ innate attraction to nature and natural processes.

It’s a term that was first developed in the 1960s by Erich Fromm and then picked up by Edward O. Wilson. They realised the society’s departure away from rural dwellings and into city centres, and the many physiological and psychological problems that started to happen as a result of being surrounded by harsh urban geometric shapes and forms. One of the godfathers of biophilic design, Stephen Kellert, recognised this and said, “maybe we need a series of features or patterns that architects and designers and planners can use to subtly infuse city spaces with nature”. So, he created these different patterns, and that’s how biophilic design was born.

One of the key principles of biophilic design is what we call the direct connection to nature, the real sensory forms of nature, which are things like natural light, fresh air, water, movement of plants, trees, and all sorts of subtle changes that we see throughout the year. The second bit is the indirect connection to nature. It’s how we mimic with other feelings of nature, using natural materials, colours, textures, forms and even technologies. And the third aspect is reminding ourselves that we are also part of nature, and it’s called the human spatial response. And that’s how it - because in part biophilic design is an evolutionary design ethos - reminds us that we spend 90% of our time evolving in nature. It’s how we create spaces that are both exciting, stimulating and aspirational, but also calming, relaxing and restorative.

There are two aspects of biophilic design. One is about how nature makes us feel better individually. That’s what we call the neuro-scientific approach. And the other approach is called sociopsychological. It’s how we can use elements of nature to bring people together, much in the same way that when we sit around a campfire, we feel calm and relaxed, and it passes in a better mental and physical state to have quite different conversations with people. So that’s it in a nutshell!

Referring back to your point about a fireplace and warm colour temperatures bringing calmness, what does the term healthy light mean to each of you?

O’Rourke: Well, there’s a big movement towards human centric lighting, where you look at changing colour temperatures throughout the day, with cooler colour temperatures during the morning into the midday, and then toning down to warm colours. Then you’re meant to have half an hour minimum of really warm light before you turn your light off at night. That 30 minutes before you go to sleep is when your melatonin kicks in. But there’s also lux levels, which are very important as well, which sometimes gets missed out. You need really bright lux levels during the beginning of the day, hence why getting outside first thing for 30 minutes is actually the best thing you can do. No artificial space can really top that. Then dimming down light levels as you go into the evening.

In terms of the subtleness you were talking about with biophilic design Oliver, it’s also about different types of light sources in your space. Where you have more direct sunlight, having more directional light sources with shadows is ideal. Then if it’s an overcast day, early, or late in the day, have more diffused light sources that have a softer quality of light. There’s a few moving parts to it.

Symington: I would agree with all of that, but one additional element I was thinking of is related to flicker - non perceptual flicker. Artificial light can flicker at a rate that you don’t quite notice, but if you hold up your phone and point the camera towards poorly manufactured or poor quality LEDs with bad drivers, you’ll notice that these lines come across the screen, which shimmer and shake. That’s something your brain can actually pick up on. So, removing that element by manufacturing well and choosing good componentry, aside from just the aesthetic, and also the circadian rhythm matching tech, is really important.

O’Rourke: As designers we’re always looking for good dimming curves that are smooth. So if you’re doing dynamic lighting and you’re changing colour temperatures and light levels throughout the day, you don’t want at one point in that zone to get this flicker half away. It’s got to be smooth all the way through for it to not be noticeable.

Symington: That’s a really important part that a lot of people miss, unless you’re monitoring it specifically and looking out for it. A lot of times, especially in smaller spaces in restaurants or boutique hotels, people are not necessarily looking at that because it’s not something they would think to look at. I think larger lighting design firms and architects are really attuned to this and aware of it, but for slightly smaller interior design firms and smaller practices, perhaps it’s a little bit more difficult to judge.

Heath: I think it’s important to remember, as people live in the built environment, we spend 90% of our lives indoors. And so our light diet is dramatically different to even 200 years ago. It plays a fundamental part in how we deliver tasks in buildings that are so important to our lives.

But also, remember that there is magic in light. There’s so much amazing stuff that just can’t capture the imagination. And I think as a designer, it’s important to go back to your childhood and remember some of those really powerful moments. I don’t know if you’ve ever travelled and seen fireflies, or seen dew drops on a spider’s web or even just fallen asleep to the flicker of a fire; there are so many wonderful moments that we can capture and use to create inspiring, beautiful moments in the built environment. If we think about that kind of rich light diet that we may have had years ago and think about how we can reimagine the world of technology to recreate that and put that kind of beauty back into that environment.

O’Rourke: That’s so often what we’re putting on our mood boardspictures of fireflies, and beautiful phosphorus algi.

Heath: When you see it! I’ve literally had euphoric moments skuba diving in phosphorescence trying to hold my head together thinking “this is just too fantastic for words!”. But I think for lighting designers, the challenge out there is to bring back some of that incredible magic that we shouldn’t just see as a quantifiable thing that comes down to lux and lumens and flicker rates. It’s also how we make all that seamless. We get these magical moments and mimic some of that, and having some of the ability to go from bright blue light to a warm light that mirrors daytime and dusk is really important; that we have the adaptability and versatility particularly in our technologically filled urban minds.

How do you attempt to integrate healthy light in different projects?

O’Rourke: When we have been involved in office projects say, from the beginning we have a discussion with the client to see how open they are to customisable lighting. In the sense that we take away a layer of lighting at the top and give people desk lamps that uplight and downlight, as well as dim and have a colour temperature function. At the end of the day we talk about the sort of things that work for humans, but you’ve got to take into account things like your chronotypes. Some people are late people, and some people are early morning people; some people need different wavelengths at different times of the day. So choice is a big part of that.

Heath: Yes, diversity as well. I mean, as human beings, we were starting to recognise that neurodiversity exists in our society. About 70% of the population is now recognised as having some neurodivergent condition, like autism or Asperger’s or ADHD. But beyond that, we all exist on some spectrum, be it hypersensitive for example, meaning that we’re quite sensitive to stimuli in particular visual or hypo sensitive. So we crave that. And we will all have that, we all exist in different states of that across all our seven senses. So, having that versatility and adaptability is absolutely fundamental if we’re going to create spaces that are right for a variety of functions. In our homes in particular now, we’re living and working and socialising, but also need to match these diverse sensitivity types.

So we’ve touched on circadian friendly lighting. What is the progression of circadian lighting in interior design and lighting, and how have you seen that evolution happen?

O’Rourke: There are more options now. There are more manufacturers behind it who are doing a lot of good things with technological advancements. So it’s up to you guys [referring to Tala] to integrate that.

Symington: That’s definitely the direction that we’re going in, even from the manufacturing side, its technology that takes a little bit of time to wrap up, especially in LED technology. I’m sure you’ll remember 10 years ago, the birth of a commercial LED light. You could buy in a shop that really harsh blue white light. It’s taken a lot of time for the technology to catch up. www.tala.co.uk www.oliverheath.com www.greenlight-alliance.com www.aecom.com

As a smaller brand, you’re waiting for the bigger technological mainstays to release some of this margin into the market, and from our side trying to tweak what’s there and what’s available. It takes a little bit of time for that to catch up.

A lot of where we spend our time trying to figure out what products the market needs or wants comes from talking to the designers and asking what is it that they’re looking for? What is it we need to move towards?

We had a conversation the other day about various different stamps and certifications and WELL was one that came up that more and more people are asking us about, and it forces us in a very positive way to really start thinking about it. We’re trying to take existing technology, push it as much as we can.

Heath: I think some of it comes down to how we control that technology as well. So 10 years ago there would have been a complicated wall-mounted panel, which one member of the family might have got their head around, but for a lot of other people it’s just confusing. And now, so much of the interface of how we control that technology is through an interactive item like a smartphone that we’re already familiar with. We know that we can just dial up and down through a very simple app or interface. Technology is not just in the lights or how we control it, it’s in the familiarity of it.

For Spring/Summer, I would like to see more colour coming through, in the form of pastel tones alongside dynamic pops of colour or patterns. Neutral tones that we have seen a lot of in 2022 will still form the base and create a calming balance. You can see from my colour palette, inspired by and selected from Crown paints' vast selection (1), lilac, pinks, and blues accompany the muted greens and neutrals that I don’t see going anywhere. I think we are all in need of a little joy and these calming, subtle pops of colour give us that.

Organic shapes will continue into next year as you can see in the Tun Tables (2) by naughtone. Not only can these create flexibility in their location, but the design is flexible too - fabric bases can be used for a more tactile design, which I love as I see texture as a key design feature in Spring/Summer– these tables suit all sectors and spaces. Organic shapes are more relaxing than harsh sharp lines; we all aspire for peaceful lives, which is evident in the design outcome. With texture in mind, I have chosen an array of fabrics from Inloom, Panaz, Bute fabrics and Kvadrat (3) showing depth and warmth. These samples have substance and interest and are fabrics that entice you to want to touch. The use of layering, such as rugs, contrasting textiles and prints will add an extra dynamic to any space.

Wellbeing in design and the necessity for sustainable action are still of the utmost importance and I am hoping the need to look after our planet will create incentives in design to encourage this further. I have chosen this beautiful product material from Smile plastics (4). Their