2013 Asian Lighting Designers Salon---Zhaoqing Station

The gathering of 3 experts in Zhaoqing to make a more beautiful night scene of Xinghu Lake

Asian Lighting Designers Salon（Zhaoqing Station）, hosted by Zhaoqing Agent Construction Project Administration and AALD (Asian Association of Lighting Designers) and organized by YGLS (Guangzhou Yang Guang Lighting Service Co.,Ldt), GCEL (Guangdong CIES Energy and Lighting Service Center), and supported by Asian Lighting Magazine and AALD Wechat platform, was held during December 12 to December 14, 2013 in Zhaoqing.

Site Inspection
This activity was aimed to make a new and ideal lighting design for the second phrase of Lighting Project round the Xinghu Lake in Zhaoqing. After two-days site inspection, combined with the introduction of designerer Liu Kai, from Shenzhen Dart Company, Mr.Shen Wei，vice-president of Zhejiang Urban Construction Garden Designing Institute and Fellow Member of AALD; Mr.Li Guang, associate professor of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and Fellow member of AALD and Mr.Rong Haolei, Dept. Director of lighting planning and design of Tsinghua Tongheng Planning Design Institute and expert member of AALD (according to order of presentation), analyzed the project deeply and proposed valuable suggestions and advices respectively with a combination of several successful domestic and overseas cases.

Mr.Shen Wei’s Part

Waterline is the emphasis of the treatment scheme
If a city which is famous for mountains and water, has a distinct waterline and outline of sceneries, its image of night scene will be clear. During the daytime, the Xinghu Lake has a beautiful and pleasant landscape. At night, however, the square of scenic spot only has functional lighting and blurred waterline which is almost drowned in the darkness.
Therefore, the clear waterline and ridge line of Xinghu Scenic spot at night, including its composition, the objects to serve specifically and the expected effects would be considered in this lighting project.
The Objects the Project Serves to
The lighting serves 3 types of objects: the project managers, local citizens and outside tourists.
For the managers, this project can build a platform for publicity and resource attraction; for local citizen, the project can glorify their life and attract more people to stay; for the tourists, the project helps the outsiders have a direct impression about the unique regional landscape.
According to the investigation of current population, Paifang Square and Dongmen Square should be the highlight of night scene design for its crowded population. Qidian Square, Bohai Park and greenway have small amount of people at night, which basically meet the need of functional lighting. The night effects of waterline and ridge line should be applied to the Xinghu Green Island, Seven Star Crags, Four-Season Island and Sun Island, in order to provide views for people.
Looking for the Light Veins of the Scenic Spot
The light veins of the scenic spot are very important, and the design will be a mass without analyzing it. The goal of our lighting is to find out the light veins, including natural vein, gathering vein and link vein, in the scenic spot. Throughout organizing the light veins, the night scene is shown with a coherent light strip, an association of movement and tranquility, as well as a sequence of light and shade.
The natural vein, including Seven Star Crags, Four Seasons Island and Sun Island, can be started with their name to present the lighting vein at night; the gathering vein includes several large nodes, like Paifang Square and Dongmen Square; the link vein is Xinghu Greenway generally, which is used to create a distinct waterline.
The Ways to Find the Light Veins
We adopted the pulse approached of Traditional Chinese Medicine: observation, listening, interrogation and palpation to find the light veins.
Observation---- Regional Overview
Seven Star Crags is named for 7 tall and splendid limestone mountains arranging in seven stars, including Langfeng Cave, Yuping Cave, Shishi Cave, Tianzhu Cave, Chanchu Cave, Xianzhang Cave and Apo Cave.
Listening---- Analysis of Sight
Analysis of sight is consist of fixed point sights, like square, park); dynamic sights, like greenway and flowing sight from far to near, like sightseeing boats.
Interrogation---- of Current Situation
1000W and 2000W high power green projection lights are installed on the pole. The distance lights are less effective with the way of long shoot.
Palpation---- Control the Whole Situation
Taking the gathering vein--- Dongmen Square as an example, locating to the east of Seven-Star Spot, it is a window to present charm and wit of Zhaoqing’s citizen.
The lighting of bridges and mountains is too bright-colored. The Seven Star Crags Bridge should reduce the use of crispening lights and replace the color of lights with pure color. Also, the design of light poles is unscientific.
Suggestions are given to change the colorful lights in the tree into blue and green in spring and summer and yellow and red in autumn and winter. What’s more, pole lamps should be substituted as blinding projection lamps.

Mr.Li Guang’s Part

The Lighting Project round the Xinghu Lake in Zhaoqing takes up a large area, so people will feel tired easily after walking persistently without excitement.
We should consider installing some decorated lights effectively. Most of the node squares are large with high-pole lamps, which are rather wasted and fail to embody the proper function.
Let’s take the Festival of Lights in Lyons as an example. It is an ordinary city, but lighting contributes to attract millions of visitors annually. The lighting is updated and innovated each year to present a fresh atmosphere to everyone. The whole residents live with great happiness.
Lighting artistic stuff, on one hand, can create more artistic effects, on the other hand, is helpful to attract more people. As we can see from regular scene spots, all of the technology and equipments serve to the idea. We can conceive the scene spot as work of art, and achieve it by technological means. People take part in the urban construction indeed according to dynamic lighting and promote the flow of crowd, which will boost the development of tourism economy.

Mr.Rong Haplei’s Part

Where does the project come from? And why?
As long as people exist, light is a necessary requirement. The rapid process of urbanization is demanded to provide carrier to light up the city. Then, we need a good general plan. If the city is bustling everywhere without presenting its unique humanistic characteristic, people will not have a special intention and memory about this city. Also, we regard the unique which rely excessively on technology as dazzling bravado, and people are getting bored about this type of design.
Generally speaking, the first stage of landscape lighting construction is from dim to bright; the second stage is from external excitement to internal implication; the third stage is to build up a scientific and controllable index system.
With People’s Perception at the Core
The project of urban open space has to regard human as centre, because all of the designs are aimed to provide an image for people. However, object is an abstract existence. It exists if you can see it; it doesn’t exist if you can’t see it.
Currently, several large sceneries in the Lighting Project round the Xinghu Lake in Zhaoqing look beautiful at the first sight, but visual fatigue might occur after staying longer. There are less stuff with cultural attribution and more natural scenes. People can be adapt to specific landform in a short time.
It is inverted that night street lamps and light poles take up an overwhelming position in several large scene spots. Tourists come here for the unique sites instead of the street lamps. More consideration should be added to visualized and hierarchic analysis to form symbolic scenery.
It is the method during meeting clothing and food stage to light up the square by high-pole lamps, which just meet the need for functional lighting. Functional lighting ignores the sense of beauty and bleaches the scene under a strong light. In terms of mass square, the ground light source with low-light level is another way to provide functional lighting without using high-pole lamps. Those ground lights are paved on the ground, but they cost a lot. The ideal state is to make an alternation of high and low and a proper dimension of the square.
3 Explanations of Landscape Lighting
How to comprehend landscape lighting? Normally, there are 3 explanations: lighting for sceneries, ornamental lighting, and decorative lighting.
The lighting for landscape should light up the sceneries and presents the carrier itself. Ornamental lighting, including lighting shows and lighting devices, can create light spots. It can be used to make a more exaggerated effect with insufficient or certain carriers.
4 Main Evaluation Criteria
There are 4 main criteria to evaluate good landscape lighting: Whether people like it or not? How does the control of glare? Does it present a sense of picture? Does it have a theme?
People’s attitudes include experts and civilians. Glare should be mastered well, because people visit the scene spots at night for joy and relaxation. People will ignore the designing details and fail to feel cheerful with uncontrollable glare. Hierarchy is the key point of picturesque sense. Most of time, yellow and white lights are better than the excessive use of multi-colored lights. Theme must be clearly understood by people instead of the designers.
The theme and scene of the Lighting Project area are similar to other scene spots. According to the observation in Paifang Park, Qidian Park and landscape greenway, carrier tends to homogenize at daytime, while landscape belt is invisible at night with light and lamps. Color and form of the lights need to be united to deal with anonymous architecture. Plants can be presented hierarchically, for example, weakening the light of back plants to distinguish with bright architecture, and highlighting the front plants to shape reflection in the water.
What’s more, the control area of the project should be enlarged, since its close distance from city centre would make impact and restrict to the overall effect.