Pics: Twelve Photographic Servies, courtesy of PLDC and VIA-Verlag
Rotterdam, Or Anywhere Held in Rotterdamn’s Ahoy, PLDC 2019 brought together the international lighting design community for a three-day discussion on all things lighting.
F
ollowing its successful expansion into the Far East in
become a more accepted part of the lighting design community.
This time hosted in the beautiful city of Rotterdam,
Tomkins, Valeria Bencardino, Katia Kolovea, Jessica Collier and
Singapore last year, PLDC returned to Europe for 2019. Netherlands, the conference once again welcomed
representatives from the global lighting design community to
network, share ideas, and speculate on the future of the industry. With a motto of Merging Masterminds, chosen to encourage
discussion on, and the implementation of, new ways of cooperating
on architectural projects, the conference hoped to inspire reflection and discussion among its 1,500 delegates.
Over the course of a week, the event offered a diverse array of
interesting and educational talks across four conference areas. These were broken down into presentations on Lighting Application Case Studies, Professional Practice Issues, Philosophy & Debate, and Office & Retail.
Further to this, the final day of the show featured a series of
presentations that formed the conclusion of The Challenge, a talent
promotion project in the form of a young designers speaker
competition, divided into four rounds. The goal for the project was to encourage more students and recent graduates to interact with each other and with experienced professionals - their coaches - and
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Participants of this year’s Challenge included: Ece Ozerdem, Jennifer Svetlana Degtiareva.
Elsewhere, highlights from a packed schedule of presentations
included keynote speaker Janet Echelman, an American sculptor and ‘fibre artist’, who creates vast, otherworldly sculptures from
materials such as atomised water particles, fishnets, and engineered fibre that is fifteen times stronger than steel. During a fascinating keynote presentation, Echelman walked attendees through her
nonlinear educational path - after graduating from Harvard College,
she lived in a Balinese village for five years, then completed separate graduate programmes in Painting and Psychology - and highlighted some key examples from across her impressive portfolio.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Rush of Hoare Lea led an interesting discussion on the ever-expanding role of lighting designers, examining how,
with the growing knowledge of how light impacts wellbeing and the environment, lighting designers are now also “custodians of the
planet”, “psychologists of light”, experience designers, researchers and innovators.
One of the most well-attended talks of the first day came from
