1. INTRODUCTION

01

INTRODUCTION

During the past months, outdoor public spaces have become fundamental for society. The current COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the normal functioning of communities, forcing people to isolate themselves at their homes, and the lockdowns imposed across the globe meant a shortage of gathering places. “We have seen several studies that confirm that citizens have moved during the pandemic to parks, gardens and natural areas. They have also become accustomed to walking more, cycling and getting away from crowded streets. Cities have always been the scene of disasters, be they earthquakes, fires, wars or epidemics, but after a few years everything returns to normal because homo sapiens, who has a long history, wants to live in the city because it is a social animal". With these words, Jan Gehl described the ongoing situation during a conference given on May 13, 2021, in Valencia, Spain, in the context of the Urbanism Festival La Valentina (Gehl, 2021).

As described by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" (Maslow, 1943), we human beings need social interaction to fulfil our basic needs, “If both the physiological and the safety needs are fairly well gratified, then there will emerge the love and affection and belongingness needs”. Communication is the main aspect applied to accomplish the love needs, and public spaces are the context where this social interaction is carried out. However, not any public space reunites the requirements to enable people to achieve person-to-person communication. One essential factor to enable social activities is the presence of other human beings to create communication. For this reason, the vital importance of creating lively places, places that are perceived as welcoming and promise social life. This project addresses the question of the role of lighting in creating such spaces. More specifically the report will try to answer the following question:

“How can an interactive lighting design in a public square support functional needs, visual identity and coherence, and sustainability?”

In order to answer this question, the procedural model, introduced by E.K. Hansen and M. Mullins (Hansen & Mullins, 2014), has been applied. This method merges research traditions in a trans-disciplinary practice to integrate the knowledge of different disciplines to create innovative solutions, generating new knowledge at the same time. This model consists of five steps that were used in this project to arrive to an answer to our research question. During the first section, the process carried out to choose the space used for this project, Langeliniekajen, will be introduced. Following, the relevant literature and background research will be presented. In the second section, the Langeliniekaj will be analysed thoroughly. To analyse this space, quantitative and qualitative methods were applied, using the structure proposed by Mette Hvaas and Ellen Kathrine Hansen in their conference “Using scenography as a framework to design lighting scenarios in the urban nightscape” (Hansen & Hvaas, 2020). As a result, a list of problems referring to the site, the activities there performed, and the lighting situation was obtained. After that, the three criteria that generated the research question will be presented. In the third chapter of this report, the research linked to the design proposal will be introduced, continued by the design proposal itself. The design will be explained following the method that Ulrike Brandi used in his book Light for Cities, where the reader follows a fictional lighting designer who goes through different urban spaces. (Brandi & Geissmar-Brandi, 2006). After this description, the hypothesis about how the design can fulfil the criteria will be formulated. Over the fourth chapter, tests performed to prove those hypotheses will be explained, the method, procedure and results will be presented. In the last chapters, the conclusion and the discussion of our results will be exposed, alongside a list of future work that holds potential for further development of the research.