58
JUNE 2021
LIGHTING JOURNAL
IRON AND STEEL Liz Peck, past president of the Society of Light and Lighting, sadly passed away earlier this year at the too-young age of just 46. Here, two close colleagues reflect on her contribution to lighting design and her passion for the industry
‘LIZ WAS PASSIONATE ABOUT BOTH ARCHITECTURAL LIGHTING DESIGN AND PROTECTING BATS FROM THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF LIGHT’
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iz Peck was my dear friend and valued colleague, writes Bob Bohannon. Her ability to get people to volunteer was simply amazing. It was Liz who got me to join the SLL, Liz who suggested I volunteer for treasurer and again Liz who rang me to ask whether I’d consider being a future president. About three years ago Liz rang me again: ‘How would like to light a bridge with me?’. It was the Iron Bridge at Telford and, naturally, I jumped at the chance. Much since has been written about the bridge and its award-winning scheme, but it was challenging. Its filigree of iron allows light from most angles to pass straight through; the gorge sides are unstable and the River Severn flood level can be 7m above normal. Our strict brief was that we couldn’t mount luminaires on the bridge, under the bridge or cable over it or through it and any equipment had to be inconspicuous by day. We wrote the feasibility report that determined projector sizes, lumen outputs, column sizes and costs. Then the heritage team discovered evidence that the www.theilp.org.uk
bridge was originally painted a mahogany red-brown shade, far less reflective than the grey we had been working with. The new colour meant we needed more lumens, all equipment would be both larger and more expensive – so started some careful negotiations. The final scheme, resilient to the floods of storms Dennis and Ciara and despite Covid-19, was switched on in September 2020. In the last months of 2020, Liz was writing the excellent SLL Guide to Protecting the Night-time Environment, bringing it very near to completion. Liz was passionate both about architectural lighting design and protecting bats from the negative effects of light. Looking back at our work on the Iron Bridge, the new guide could almost have formed a checklist for the project: skyglow, obtrusive light, bat flyways, fish, visitor views, extending the economic day of Ironbridge, curfews, luminance-based design, spectral reflectance and light source spectral radiation, daytime appearance, glare mitigation through positioning, aiming and louvres and finally an overall lighting impact assessment – all were included.
Bob Bohannon MSc FSLL MIET was president of the Society of Light and Lighting from 2020-21
‘LIZ WAS ONE OF THOSE CHARACTERS THAT YOU MEET IN LIFE WHO LEAVE A MARK’
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iz was working on the technical support desk at Concord Lighting and, following its merger with Marlin, applied for a position in the design office, writes Mike Simpson. Neither the commute nor her lack of design experience put Liz off starting this new chapter in her career. She had a good product knowledge and a drive not to let things stand in her way. Liz was never backward in coming forward if there was something she needed to know and quickly grasped the aspects of lighting design that would take her forward. Gaining in confidence, she began to connect with the wider world of the lighting profession. For 10 years she helped to organise ‘Ready Steady Light’ for the SLL and it was clear she was developing a wide network of contacts in the industry as the loan ‘kit’ rolled in. Following her move to Philips, where we worked together, her design experience widened and it was while there she undertook the UCL MSc in light and lighting to establish her credentials as an independent lighting designer. She was soon working on many and varied projects, but the one we talked about most was the Iron Bridge. I remember one day we
