LIGHTING DESIGNER - A NEW PROFESSION
Résumé
During the last two decades, the new professional position of “lighting designer” was recognised as a real and effective one, even if the process of “enlightening” the urban architecture started at the beginning of the 20th century.
The pioneer countries were the USA, where towers and skyscrapers were objects of special use of light since the thirties. In Europe, France that started with high symbolic elements like the Eiffel tower was the forerunner country. With the development of technologies and the growing supply of electricity, it was possible to enlarge the light mark on towns and urban areas; generally speaking, the use of light was planned to allow the use of public spaces even during the night; an effective milestone was the integration of the concept of using light into the landscape vision: the artificial light became one of the “material” component of buildings and open spaces. Lighting is nowadays a way to create night time sensations, something like an augmented reality able to take advantage of the dark pathos in order to improve the quality of the built environment.