2.4. Project Vision

The main recommendations are to create attractive bike paths, to ensure sports facilities for children and young people and dimmed and indirect lighting for training.

One of the concepts developed in the Masterplan is Light for Movement: “Relevant, inviting, staging and possibly interactive lighting can support extended use of active zones during the dark hours. With the right lighting, you can create an attractive and eventful setting that also motivates and encourages an active lifestyle in dark hours. Attractive lighting caters for users who otherwise feel insecure by moving around in the evening.” It adds that the lighting can be based on the qualities of the site, the tools of the activity or the movement to create an aesthetic or even theatrical installation different from the surroundings. It encourages stimulating the senses to increase the user’s activity.

Living City. Closely related to Jan Gehl’s concept of lively space, this focus area shows the ambition of creating a better framework for social gatherings and community interaction. The aim is to create cosy spaces that invite to stay, bringing quality to the city life. Boyce mentions that another benefit of electrical light is “to encourage people not to be confined to their houses after dark but to engage in social activities elsewhere.” This is also connected with the idea of a 24-hours city and economy. According to Boyce, when most of the population was rural, most economically activities ceased after dark, but this changed with the migration to cities (Boyce, 2019).Nowadays, the amount of social and economic life that takes place in the hours after dark is growing and “as we start to understand the importance and distinctiveness of the different shades of night, from dusk till dawn, we shift away from seeing light as a purely functional element.” (Arup, 2015) In a Nordic city like Copenhagen, this is even more relevant due to the long winter nights and transitions hours between day and night.

Mediating City. The Masterplan suggest developing special lighting solutions for buildings and places with historical or architectural qualities but avoiding banal and excessive illumination. It is mentioned that many architectural, cultural and historical monuments stop being an attraction at night because they disappear after dark. Current lighting technologies open the opportunity of working artistically with light, supporting an inspiring experience for residents and visitors. The recommendation of the Masterplan is to promote the local identity by understanding the context. Boyce reflects on the capacity of light to create “something of beauty, something that can be seen in an entirely different way to how it appears by day.” This means considering the emotional context apart from the functional and economic (Boyce, 2019).

The combination and implementation of all these focus areas, together with guidelines about lighting levels, luminaires typologies and colour temperatures, build what it can be called the image and identity of Copenhagen. Hence, they will be considered in the formulation of the Problem Statement of this project and its design solution.

The conclusion of the research presented shows that having public spaces is not enough, but to aim for a safe, sustainable, holistic city planning and healthy city should be the main objective. Places where social activities are taking place and there is constant communication among people build a better city. By encompassing all these issues, we have as a result a “lively space”. The human scale must be present all the time so it could be a link between people, place and city.

To achieve this, there is a need to carefully review and link the space to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since these are designed to be “a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all” (UN City, 2020).

Meanwhile, when it comes to the public realm, the light plays a key role, the focus areas of the Copenhagen Lighting Masterplan must be used as the foundation for a holistic design that will create a unique image to shape an identity that goes according to the city of Copenhagen.

Taking all these considerations the following Initial Research Question was formulated:

“Imagine if interactive lighting could create a lively space developing communication among people, considering different scales and shaping an identity within the image of Copenhagen as a dark city.”

In the following step, an analysis will be conducted, in order to have a better understanding of Langeliniekajen and define the criteria and research question.