February 12, 2025 • 24 mins
Founder & Design Director at In'Sight Lighting Design, Philip Rafael explores a critical element often overlooked in workplace design: lighting. With over 18 years of global experience, Philip sheds light on how traditional lighting has prioritised productivity over well-being, sometimes to the detriment of employee health and job satisfaction. He explains how a shift in focus can lead to healthier, happier work environments by minimising negative lighting effects like glare and flicker. Lighting can be reimagined to support not just physical health but also mental, emotional, and social well-being, especially as hybrid offices become the norm.
"Lighting for health and wellbeing needs to be an experience, providing a variety of environments that nurture our professional, personal, and physical needs." — Philip Rafael
In this episode we go back a couple of years when Philip presented this topic at the Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition 2023. It was certainly a memorable event and the topic is still very relevant and pertinent today.
The presentation dived into the transformative power of lighting as a "supercharger" for diverse workplace needs. Philip discussed the importance of flexible and inclusive lighting environments that cater to both extroverts and introverts, advocating for the adoption of biophilic and multi-sensory designs, to name some of the highlights.
The take home message included how these strategies can thrive even within conservative company cultures, ultimately creating dynamic spaces that encourage self-regulation and community connection. By integrating scientific criteria with innovative design, he aims to craft workspaces that genuinely nurture the health and well-being of today’s workforce.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's my pleasure now to introduce you to the next
speaker, Philip Raphael.
He's going to share with youhis experience of lighting for
health and well-being in theworkplace.
Philip is a highly experiencedlighting designer with a passion
for creating captivatinglighting experiences.
With more than 18 years ofexpertise in hospitality,
(00:24):
workplace, facade and landscapelighting, Philips has
successfully executed projectsacross Europe, North Africa and
Asia.
He is the founder of hispractice, Inside Lighting Design
, an international lightingdesign studio based in Berlin,
Germany.
In addition to his hands-ondesign work, Philip is also a
(00:45):
passionate advocate for thelighting design profession and
he actively contributes to thelighting community through
articles, publications, lectures, teaching engagements and
international seminars.
Please join your hands togetherfor Philip Raphael.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Ni hao.
Thank you everyone for beinghere today.
To not repeat the introduction,I would still like to discuss
on creating lightingenvironments that can nurture or
foster positive and memorableexperiences, and this will come
(01:32):
through in the presentationtoday.
So we'll be discussing healthand well-being in the workplace,
and we need to start in thebeginning.
We need to understand whathealth and well-being truly
means, and it is not just aquestion of our sort of medical,
(01:54):
physical health, but it alsolooks into an individual's
physical, mental and socialwell-being.
So it really is a broaderdefinition that considers
physical health but alsoconsiders aspects such as mental
and emotional state.
It looks at our socialrelationships.
It tries to understand ouroverall satisfaction with life,
(02:18):
and that truly is a broaddefinition.
And once you understand that,you then understand that you're
not in a position to discusshealth and well-being unless
you're Pardon that, unlessyou're looking at the, also
looking at the workplace.
Now, work, we all do it, andit's fairly common knowledge
(02:40):
that for the average Workforceor a person that is, they spend
around a third of their wakingtime in the workplace, so that
really is a substantial amountof time.
So it becomes critical that welook at how we spend this time
Now.
(03:02):
Health in the workplace has beenstudied for a very long time.
Originally and that is reallymany decades ago we started
looking at health and well-beingfrom the perspective of
productivity and, frankly, itwas more about health rather
than well-being.
It was understood as how healthaffected our performance.
How much light did we need toperform a certain task?
(03:23):
Could we stay healthy whiledoing that task so that we can
continue that task withoutgetting tired?
And even once we madeadvancements in science, such as
the discovery of the thirdreceptor, even then, despite
understanding that this thirdreceptor measured blue light, it
helped moderate our circadianrhythm.
(03:44):
Even with this perspective, wewere still looking at it from a
perspective of how could weincrease alertness in order to
improve our productivity?
And, if we're truly honest, itwasn't really a concern of
health and well-being to thepoint where, once we applied
these technologies and methods,we started to discover yes, we
(04:06):
are super alert, but we alsostarted to become super
aggressive, which ultimately ledto toxic workplaces.
Now, I'd say more recently,that is, a decade or two ago, we
started to get a pretty goodunderstanding of what we is, to
(04:27):
what we can demand from lightingdesigners who are designing for
the workplace and this page.
Although it's a single slide, Iwould say there's a lot of
information here and it is indoing justice, and this list is
all very good.
We have maximizing daylight.
This list is all very good.
We have maximizing daylight,providing adequate lighting
(04:49):
levels, flicker-free lighting.
But rather than looking at thisas an expression of what is
potentially best practice, Ikind of see this as these are
the requirements for a lightingdesigner to implement in their
projects in order for theirlighting design to not be too
detrimental to our health.
So, rather than, rather than adriver of well-being improvement
(05:11):
and health, it is really justsaying if you get this wrong,
you will not be healthy.
And I don't want to underminethis list.
This list is good.
This is all very important andwe should not forget it.
We do need to consider it, butwe also need to recognize it for
what it is very important andwe should not forget it.
We do need to consider it, butwe also need to recognize it for
what it is.
Glare and flicker-free lightingisn't necessarily best practice
.
It's sort of a minimum standardand that should not be the
(05:35):
objective of the designer.
So I would say that this listis really a starting point and
designers need to look at it andconsider how we can do better.
So what happens when you don'tconsider this, when we don't
meet those targets showed in thepage before?
(05:56):
Well, it can be quitedisastrous.
We have eye strain, we havetiredness, we sort of adopt bad
postures to compensate for badlighting, we get stress build-up
which ultimately results inimpaired mental health, and that
all leads to reducedproductivity and, and with that
reduced productivity, we're nothappy and we ultimately just
(06:18):
stop going to work.
We we we find increasedabsenteeism at work and the
reason people stop going to workis because they don't feel well
.
They're essentially concludingthat their health and well-being
is being undermined by theworkplace, and the consequences
(06:42):
of poor lighting at theworkplace or poor health and
well-being at the workplace iswell understood.
We find these conclusions overand over again.
This last study by McKinsey,made just last year, concluded
that poor health and well-beingresulted in it being four times
more likely for people to wantto leave their jobs, three times
(07:02):
more likely to report low jobsatisfaction, three times more
likely to report low jobsatisfaction, three times more
likely to experience toxicworkplace behavior, and so on,
and these are substantialconclusions that we just can't
ignore.
So what we need to do, then, ifwe are to improve our lighting
(07:24):
designs for health andwell-being in the workplaces, we
need to understand where theworkplace is at and where it's
heading to, and the workplace isdefinitely changing.
A hybrid office now isdefinitely a thing.
It was already a thing a whileback.
We all heard of stories ofpeople sort of working on
(07:44):
holidays, work holidays, butthen we had COVID, and COVID
really was a slap in the faceboth for the staff and for the
employers.
Employers were literally forcedto find a way to allow their
staff to work from home, andonce staff, once the workforce,
got a taste of working from home, they did not want to let it go
.
They wanted to continue workingat home, and that wasn't for
(08:07):
mundane reasons.
It wasn't because anybodywanted to work in their pajamas
that they preferred to stay athome.
It was for real, moredown-to-earth reasons.
We found that we wanted to savetime on travel.
We wanted to spend more timewith our children, with our
family, we wanted to self-manageour time.
We wanted to create a betterbalance between personal life
(08:30):
and our work.
So I would say that COVIDeffectively supercharged the
hybrid office, and now weunderstand that we can actually
work from anywhere.
So this sort of created an ideaof a metaphysical workplace
where, effectively, we're notstuck to our desks anymore.
(08:50):
Anyone can literally work fromanywhere, as long as they have a
laptop and an internetconnection.
And there's another change thathas sort of appeared in the last
few years I'd say five, six, atleast to my awareness and it's
a pretty important culturalshift.
(09:12):
I'm not sure in the East, butthis is a big thing in the West,
where perhaps it's been pushedby Gen Z, I'm not sure, but
whatever caused it, I think it'sa good thing.
We're now discovering that wewant to live lives with greater
meaning.
We want to work at jobs thatrepresent us, that represent our
culture, that align with ourcore values.
(09:33):
We ultimately want our jobs,our work, to be a part of our
identity.
So why should we return to theoffice?
Again, a study made last year inthe US asking staff why they
(09:55):
wanted to, why would they returnto the office?
And I guess you could summarizethis list.
And we want to work with ourcolleagues.
We want to get to know ourcolleagues better, we want to
learn from our peers, from moreexperienced colleagues, we want
to have space to focus on workwithout noise, with the sounds
(10:15):
of our children learning amusical instrument, etc.
So if I were to sort of try andsummarize this list of 14
topics, I would summarize it aswe want social interaction, we
want mentorship, we want spacesfor deep concentration and we
want spaces that allow forcollaboration and teamwork.
And once we understand this,then we're at a place where we
(10:38):
can start designing for healthand well-being in the workplace.
So I believe ultimately thatlighting for health and
well-being needs to be a sort ofexperienced supercharger.
We need to provide lightingdesigns for the workplace that
(10:59):
sort of offer a variety oflighting environments that can
sort of nurture also a varietyof experiences and fulfill our
professional needs, our personalneeds and our physical needs.
And biophilic design wasalready presented here before.
(11:20):
I won't go too much into it,but it is a sort of movement
that runs in parallel to healthand well-being and that is
because there's a lot ofalignment and it's effectively a
movement that looks to bring inelements of nature into the
workplace, because we recognizethat we have a deep connection
(11:42):
to the natural world and mebiophilic design is important
also because it created thissense of experiences in the
workplace and in spaces ingeneral.
Around 2012, I started workingwith Ming-Ju Narval, who are a
(12:02):
green wall supplier and alsoplant supplier for companies,
and they effectively they can dothe lighting themselves.
They know how to design andsupply their lighting systems,
but every so often they wouldhave a sort of more complex
project and bring me on board tohelp them with the design.
And once I had a handful ofprojects with them completed and
(12:23):
then sort of visited the spaces, I started to notice that the
lighting was genuinely veryrefreshing.
And you could argue that it isrefreshing because plants are
involved and this uplifts ourspirits.
But when I look at a lightingdesign, a lighting environment,
I try to dissect it and sort ofseparate lighting from all other
(12:44):
aspects and I also think thatit was refreshing because of the
lighting environment, that itwas refreshing because of the
lighting environment that it wascreating.
To not go into too much detailon photosynthetic active
radiation, on the lightingrequired for plant growth,
typically you could sort ofbreak it down in a nutshell by
saying that you need a thousandlux average on the vertical
(13:05):
surface.
You might get a thousand, two,1,300 peak and that is very
bright for these workspaces.
Many of the green walls are inbreakout rooms with 200 lux
average, and you're findingyourself then encountering this
wall with 1,200 peak, and whathappens is I found that it was
refreshing because of thevariety of lighting scenes that
(13:26):
it created in a space, travelingthe movement between a 200 lux
space to a 1,000 lux space to a300 lux space of the open office
was very refreshing and sort ofallowed the users to breathe.
So this was really aneye-opener for the experience of
lighting environments,experience of lighting
(13:52):
environments.
And ultimately then I decide oh, I understand that what we're
trying to provide in theworkplace, for a healthy
workplace, is effectivelyproviding flexible experiences
and freedom of movement.
Now, what is healthy isproviding a variety of
experience opportunities.
(14:13):
Allow the workforce theflexibility to move freely from
experience to experience, fromspace to space and from lighting
environment to lightingenvironment.
We're then allowing theworkforce to self-regulate their
personal lighting requirementsand, for the most part, we tend
to know what is healthy for usand what we need in that moment.
Deep down, we know what ourbody needs and lighting
(14:37):
designers, rather than beinglighting dictators, we should be
providing to our design a widerange of lighting environments
that can fulfill all those needs, and by doing that and by doing
that, we're really consideringthe user.
(14:58):
Now, if we sort of look at theprevious three scenes, that are
just examples.
There are much more.
We could say that each of thosedifferent needs require three
different lighting environments.
They all require differentbrightness composition, they all
require different illumincomposition, they all require
different illuminance levels.
They all define the spacearound us differently.
(15:20):
And what we need to do is weneed the lighting to respect and
align with our personal andgroup well-being.
We effectively need to allowthe user to encounter all of
these different lightingenvironments, spaces that are
different.
The freedom of movement is alsoallowing the workforce to have
(15:48):
a sense of ownership, and asense of ownership is important
from the well-being perspective.
And you can then take it a stepfurther.
You can look at it from theperspective of giving back to
the user some returning manualcontrols to the user, some
ownership of how the lightingscenes are controlled.
(16:09):
And what I tend to do is,rather than prescribe what a
scene is intended for, I simplydesign them to cater for
different scenes, differentfunctions, different lighting
needs, and sort of put them in ahierarchy from brightest to
dimmest, and then I allow theuser to dim up and dim down and
(16:31):
let them decide how the lightingscene is best used.
And as these scenes shift,brightness also shifts, and
we're effectively providing themdifferent lighting experiences
as they dim up and down.
Inclusivity is, I think, atricky one because of how
difficult it is to define it.
(16:52):
It was mentioned before byKevin that we all have different
lighting needs.
Some of us are more sensitiveto light, others have impaired
vision and perhaps need higherlighting levels, and we also
typically design workplaces forextroverts that do well in
larger groups.
But we also need to be able todesign for the introvert.
(17:15):
If you recall, this safe andcreative space that I showed in
the previous slide is oneexample where, rather than
having direct light, soft lightis sort of more receptive or is
received better by the introvert.
And the point is, the workforceexists on a much wider spectrum
(17:36):
of personalities and we need tosomehow cater for that.
And I believe the best way tobe inclusive is to also provide
a fairly wide range of lightingenvironments in our projects and
allow for freedom of movementbetween them.
(17:56):
Now, multi-sensory ispotentially complicated.
I've presented it a few timesand I sort of come to learn that
perhaps such a radical colorscheme is not suitable for all
company cultures.
But even when the culture is,say, more conservative, I still
believe there's space formulti-sensory design.
(18:17):
To give a simple example, if wewere to say, provide an accent
on a texture wall or simplyfocus our lighting on the
architectural form and space,we're effectively providing a
lighting design that is, say,more tactile and more enriching,
(18:39):
and that experience is initself very positive for our
well-being.
Cultural community is also veryimportant and I think the thing
to consider here is healthycommunities don't tend to emerge
in high-octane environments.
(19:00):
Now, for a while we'veunderstood that the breakout
space is important and sort ofI'm promoting that even further
here.
But what I'm actually alsopromoting or trying to emphasize
is, I think the divisionbetween breakout space and work
is starting to blur, and it isgood that it blurs further and
(19:22):
effectively we need to allowcommunities to emerge on the
spectrum between breakout andwork, rather than have these
sort of very rigid divisionswith different groups.
So to conclude and a lot of whatwas presented was sort of on
(19:46):
the run to stay with time buteffectively we somehow need to
be self-critical to understandthat when we're designing
lighting for interior spaces.
Designing for health andwell-being is, to an extent,
also an attempt to reduce thedisruptive effects that
artificial light has on ourbody's natural rhythms, and I
(20:09):
believe that in order to do that, what we need to provide is
flexible lighting environments,more variation in lighting
levels, more variation inbrightness composition, more
variation in sort of luminancelevels, and then allow the
(20:31):
person to move freely withinthose spaces.
Allow the person to move freelywithin those spaces and although
it's you know sort of if werecall this very summarized list
I presented at the beginning ofthe presentation, everything on
that list is very, veryimportant and it's based on
science and we need tounderstand the science behind
(20:52):
all of these criteria.
But we also need to understandthat the science is also very
narrow in what it is looking atand that you actually need to
come in with a designperspective to have a sort of
more holistic approach, to lookat the bigger picture and be
more understanding on thevariety of needs that a
(21:12):
workplace may have.
So, yes, the science is correct, but then a designer needs to
come in and sort of take it astep further and once we do that
, we are then truly designingfor the health and well-being of
the workforce.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, philip.
It's my pleasure now to introduce you to the next
speaker, Philip Raphael.
He's going to share with youhis experience of lighting for
health and well-being in theworkplace.
Philip is a highly experiencedlighting designer with a passion
for creating captivatinglighting experiences.
With more than 18 years ofexpertise in hospitality,
(00:24):
workplace, facade and landscapelighting, Philips has
successfully executed projectsacross Europe, North Africa and
Asia.
He is the founder of hispractice, Inside Lighting Design
, an international lightingdesign studio based in Berlin,
Germany.
In addition to his hands-ondesign work, Philip is also a
(00:45):
passionate advocate for thelighting design profession and
he actively contributes to thelighting community through
articles, publications, lectures, teaching engagements and
international seminars.
Please join your hands togetherfor Philip Raphael.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Ni hao.
Thank you everyone for beinghere today.
To not repeat the introduction,I would still like to discuss
on creating lightingenvironments that can nurture or
foster positive and memorableexperiences, and this will come
(01:32):
through in the presentationtoday.
So we'll be discussing healthand well-being in the workplace,
and we need to start in thebeginning.
We need to understand whathealth and well-being truly
means, and it is not just aquestion of our sort of medical,
(01:54):
physical health, but it alsolooks into an individual's
physical, mental and socialwell-being.
So it really is a broaderdefinition that considers
physical health but alsoconsiders aspects such as mental
and emotional state.
It looks at our socialrelationships.
It tries to understand ouroverall satisfaction with life,
(02:18):
and that truly is a broaddefinition.
And once you understand that,you then understand that you're
not in a position to discusshealth and well-being unless
you're Pardon that, unlessyou're looking at the, also
looking at the workplace.
Now, work, we all do it, andit's fairly common knowledge
(02:40):
that for the average Workforceor a person that is, they spend
around a third of their wakingtime in the workplace, so that
really is a substantial amountof time.
So it becomes critical that welook at how we spend this time
Now.
(03:02):
Health in the workplace has beenstudied for a very long time.
Originally and that is reallymany decades ago we started
looking at health and well-beingfrom the perspective of
productivity and, frankly, itwas more about health rather
than well-being.
It was understood as how healthaffected our performance.
How much light did we need toperform a certain task?
(03:23):
Could we stay healthy whiledoing that task so that we can
continue that task withoutgetting tired?
And even once we madeadvancements in science, such as
the discovery of the thirdreceptor, even then, despite
understanding that this thirdreceptor measured blue light, it
helped moderate our circadianrhythm.
(03:44):
Even with this perspective, wewere still looking at it from a
perspective of how could weincrease alertness in order to
improve our productivity?
And, if we're truly honest, itwasn't really a concern of
health and well-being to thepoint where, once we applied
these technologies and methods,we started to discover yes, we
(04:06):
are super alert, but we alsostarted to become super
aggressive, which ultimately ledto toxic workplaces.
Now, I'd say more recently,that is, a decade or two ago, we
started to get a pretty goodunderstanding of what we is, to
(04:27):
what we can demand from lightingdesigners who are designing for
the workplace and this page.
Although it's a single slide, Iwould say there's a lot of
information here and it is indoing justice, and this list is
all very good.
We have maximizing daylight.
This list is all very good.
We have maximizing daylight,providing adequate lighting
(04:49):
levels, flicker-free lighting.
But rather than looking at thisas an expression of what is
potentially best practice, Ikind of see this as these are
the requirements for a lightingdesigner to implement in their
projects in order for theirlighting design to not be too
detrimental to our health.
So, rather than, rather than adriver of well-being improvement
(05:11):
and health, it is really justsaying if you get this wrong,
you will not be healthy.
And I don't want to underminethis list.
This list is good.
This is all very important andwe should not forget it.
We do need to consider it, butwe also need to recognize it for
what it is very important andwe should not forget it.
We do need to consider it, butwe also need to recognize it for
what it is.
Glare and flicker-free lightingisn't necessarily best practice
.
It's sort of a minimum standardand that should not be the
(05:35):
objective of the designer.
So I would say that this listis really a starting point and
designers need to look at it andconsider how we can do better.
So what happens when you don'tconsider this, when we don't
meet those targets showed in thepage before?
(05:56):
Well, it can be quitedisastrous.
We have eye strain, we havetiredness, we sort of adopt bad
postures to compensate for badlighting, we get stress build-up
which ultimately results inimpaired mental health, and that
all leads to reducedproductivity and, and with that
reduced productivity, we're nothappy and we ultimately just
(06:18):
stop going to work.
We we we find increasedabsenteeism at work and the
reason people stop going to workis because they don't feel well
.
They're essentially concludingthat their health and well-being
is being undermined by theworkplace, and the consequences
(06:42):
of poor lighting at theworkplace or poor health and
well-being at the workplace iswell understood.
We find these conclusions overand over again.
This last study by McKinsey,made just last year, concluded
that poor health and well-beingresulted in it being four times
more likely for people to wantto leave their jobs, three times
(07:02):
more likely to report low jobsatisfaction, three times more
likely to report low jobsatisfaction, three times more
likely to experience toxicworkplace behavior, and so on,
and these are substantialconclusions that we just can't
ignore.
So what we need to do, then, ifwe are to improve our lighting
(07:24):
designs for health andwell-being in the workplaces, we
need to understand where theworkplace is at and where it's
heading to, and the workplace isdefinitely changing.
A hybrid office now isdefinitely a thing.
It was already a thing a whileback.
We all heard of stories ofpeople sort of working on
(07:44):
holidays, work holidays, butthen we had COVID, and COVID
really was a slap in the faceboth for the staff and for the
employers.
Employers were literally forcedto find a way to allow their
staff to work from home, andonce staff, once the workforce,
got a taste of working from home, they did not want to let it go
.
They wanted to continue workingat home, and that wasn't for
(08:07):
mundane reasons.
It wasn't because anybodywanted to work in their pajamas
that they preferred to stay athome.
It was for real, moredown-to-earth reasons.
We found that we wanted to savetime on travel.
We wanted to spend more timewith our children, with our
family, we wanted to self-manageour time.
We wanted to create a betterbalance between personal life
(08:30):
and our work.
So I would say that COVIDeffectively supercharged the
hybrid office, and now weunderstand that we can actually
work from anywhere.
So this sort of created an ideaof a metaphysical workplace
where, effectively, we're notstuck to our desks anymore.
(08:50):
Anyone can literally work fromanywhere, as long as they have a
laptop and an internetconnection.
And there's another change thathas sort of appeared in the last
few years I'd say five, six, atleast to my awareness and it's
a pretty important culturalshift.
(09:12):
I'm not sure in the East, butthis is a big thing in the West,
where perhaps it's been pushedby Gen Z, I'm not sure, but
whatever caused it, I think it'sa good thing.
We're now discovering that wewant to live lives with greater
meaning.
We want to work at jobs thatrepresent us, that represent our
culture, that align with ourcore values.
(09:33):
We ultimately want our jobs,our work, to be a part of our
identity.
So why should we return to theoffice?
Again, a study made last year inthe US asking staff why they
(09:55):
wanted to, why would they returnto the office?
And I guess you could summarizethis list.
And we want to work with ourcolleagues.
We want to get to know ourcolleagues better, we want to
learn from our peers, from moreexperienced colleagues, we want
to have space to focus on workwithout noise, with the sounds
(10:15):
of our children learning amusical instrument, etc.
So if I were to sort of try andsummarize this list of 14
topics, I would summarize it aswe want social interaction, we
want mentorship, we want spacesfor deep concentration and we
want spaces that allow forcollaboration and teamwork.
And once we understand this,then we're at a place where we
(10:38):
can start designing for healthand well-being in the workplace.
So I believe ultimately thatlighting for health and
well-being needs to be a sort ofexperienced supercharger.
We need to provide lightingdesigns for the workplace that
(10:59):
sort of offer a variety oflighting environments that can
sort of nurture also a varietyof experiences and fulfill our
professional needs, our personalneeds and our physical needs.
And biophilic design wasalready presented here before.
(11:20):
I won't go too much into it,but it is a sort of movement
that runs in parallel to healthand well-being and that is
because there's a lot ofalignment and it's effectively a
movement that looks to bring inelements of nature into the
workplace, because we recognizethat we have a deep connection
(11:42):
to the natural world and mebiophilic design is important
also because it created thissense of experiences in the
workplace and in spaces ingeneral.
Around 2012, I started workingwith Ming-Ju Narval, who are a
(12:02):
green wall supplier and alsoplant supplier for companies,
and they effectively they can dothe lighting themselves.
They know how to design andsupply their lighting systems,
but every so often they wouldhave a sort of more complex
project and bring me on board tohelp them with the design.
And once I had a handful ofprojects with them completed and
(12:23):
then sort of visited the spaces, I started to notice that the
lighting was genuinely veryrefreshing.
And you could argue that it isrefreshing because plants are
involved and this uplifts ourspirits.
But when I look at a lightingdesign, a lighting environment,
I try to dissect it and sort ofseparate lighting from all other
(12:44):
aspects and I also think thatit was refreshing because of the
lighting environment, that itwas refreshing because of the
lighting environment that it wascreating.
To not go into too much detailon photosynthetic active
radiation, on the lightingrequired for plant growth,
typically you could sort ofbreak it down in a nutshell by
saying that you need a thousandlux average on the vertical
(13:05):
surface.
You might get a thousand, two,1,300 peak and that is very
bright for these workspaces.
Many of the green walls are inbreakout rooms with 200 lux
average, and you're findingyourself then encountering this
wall with 1,200 peak, and whathappens is I found that it was
refreshing because of thevariety of lighting scenes that
(13:26):
it created in a space, travelingthe movement between a 200 lux
space to a 1,000 lux space to a300 lux space of the open office
was very refreshing and sort ofallowed the users to breathe.
So this was really aneye-opener for the experience of
lighting environments,experience of lighting
(13:52):
environments.
And ultimately then I decide oh, I understand that what we're
trying to provide in theworkplace, for a healthy
workplace, is effectivelyproviding flexible experiences
and freedom of movement.
Now, what is healthy isproviding a variety of
experience opportunities.
(14:13):
Allow the workforce theflexibility to move freely from
experience to experience, fromspace to space and from lighting
environment to lightingenvironment.
We're then allowing theworkforce to self-regulate their
personal lighting requirementsand, for the most part, we tend
to know what is healthy for usand what we need in that moment.
Deep down, we know what ourbody needs and lighting
(14:37):
designers, rather than beinglighting dictators, we should be
providing to our design a widerange of lighting environments
that can fulfill all those needs, and by doing that and by doing
that, we're really consideringthe user.
(14:58):
Now, if we sort of look at theprevious three scenes, that are
just examples.
There are much more.
We could say that each of thosedifferent needs require three
different lighting environments.
They all require differentbrightness composition, they all
require different illumincomposition, they all require
different illuminance levels.
They all define the spacearound us differently.
(15:20):
And what we need to do is weneed the lighting to respect and
align with our personal andgroup well-being.
We effectively need to allowthe user to encounter all of
these different lightingenvironments, spaces that are
different.
The freedom of movement is alsoallowing the workforce to have
(15:48):
a sense of ownership, and asense of ownership is important
from the well-being perspective.
And you can then take it a stepfurther.
You can look at it from theperspective of giving back to
the user some returning manualcontrols to the user, some
ownership of how the lightingscenes are controlled.
(16:09):
And what I tend to do is,rather than prescribe what a
scene is intended for, I simplydesign them to cater for
different scenes, differentfunctions, different lighting
needs, and sort of put them in ahierarchy from brightest to
dimmest, and then I allow theuser to dim up and dim down and
(16:31):
let them decide how the lightingscene is best used.
And as these scenes shift,brightness also shifts, and
we're effectively providing themdifferent lighting experiences
as they dim up and down.
Inclusivity is, I think, atricky one because of how
difficult it is to define it.
(16:52):
It was mentioned before byKevin that we all have different
lighting needs.
Some of us are more sensitiveto light, others have impaired
vision and perhaps need higherlighting levels, and we also
typically design workplaces forextroverts that do well in
larger groups.
But we also need to be able todesign for the introvert.
(17:15):
If you recall, this safe andcreative space that I showed in
the previous slide is oneexample where, rather than
having direct light, soft lightis sort of more receptive or is
received better by the introvert.
And the point is, the workforceexists on a much wider spectrum
(17:36):
of personalities and we need tosomehow cater for that.
And I believe the best way tobe inclusive is to also provide
a fairly wide range of lightingenvironments in our projects and
allow for freedom of movementbetween them.
(17:56):
Now, multi-sensory ispotentially complicated.
I've presented it a few timesand I sort of come to learn that
perhaps such a radical colorscheme is not suitable for all
company cultures.
But even when the culture is,say, more conservative, I still
believe there's space formulti-sensory design.
(18:17):
To give a simple example, if wewere to say, provide an accent
on a texture wall or simplyfocus our lighting on the
architectural form and space,we're effectively providing a
lighting design that is, say,more tactile and more enriching,
(18:39):
and that experience is initself very positive for our
well-being.
Cultural community is also veryimportant and I think the thing
to consider here is healthycommunities don't tend to emerge
in high-octane environments.
(19:00):
Now, for a while we'veunderstood that the breakout
space is important and sort ofI'm promoting that even further
here.
But what I'm actually alsopromoting or trying to emphasize
is, I think the divisionbetween breakout space and work
is starting to blur, and it isgood that it blurs further and
(19:22):
effectively we need to allowcommunities to emerge on the
spectrum between breakout andwork, rather than have these
sort of very rigid divisionswith different groups.
So to conclude and a lot of whatwas presented was sort of on
(19:46):
the run to stay with time buteffectively we somehow need to
be self-critical to understandthat when we're designing
lighting for interior spaces.
Designing for health andwell-being is, to an extent,
also an attempt to reduce thedisruptive effects that
artificial light has on ourbody's natural rhythms, and I
(20:09):
believe that in order to do that, what we need to provide is
flexible lighting environments,more variation in lighting
levels, more variation inbrightness composition, more
variation in sort of luminancelevels, and then allow the
(20:31):
person to move freely withinthose spaces.
Allow the person to move freelywithin those spaces and although
it's you know sort of if werecall this very summarized list
I presented at the beginning ofthe presentation, everything on
that list is very, veryimportant and it's based on
science and we need tounderstand the science behind
(20:52):
all of these criteria.
But we also need to understandthat the science is also very
narrow in what it is looking atand that you actually need to
come in with a designperspective to have a sort of
more holistic approach, to lookat the bigger picture and be
more understanding on thevariety of needs that a
(21:12):
workplace may have.
So, yes, the science is correct, but then a designer needs to
come in and sort of take it astep further and once we do that
, we are then truly designingfor the health and well-being of
the workforce.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, philip.
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