How does light affect the urban environment?

“How does facade lighting affect the development of the urban environment?” - Svet Expert, as the author of lighting master plans for the largest cities in our country, will tell about the importance of outdoor lighting and how light affects the improvement of infrastructure and increasing the level of comfort in the city.

The tasks of outdoor lighting in the development of the urban environment have two main directions: functional, aimed at comfort and, above all, safety, and decorative, responsible for the emotional perception of the surrounding space by a person in the dark. Imagine the house territory of a residential complex in the evening. Illuminated pedestrian paths and car parking areas. Signs, advertising and bright façades of the first floors, where your favorite cafe and grocery store are located. But the complete absence of landscape lighting on the children’s playground, the dark courtyard and non-illuminated areas of the house complex territory. Would you allow your child to walk there in the evening? Would such an environment seem safe and comfortable to you. Of course not. Or an example of the psychoemotional influence of lighting: You are walking around the Red Square. The illuminated path of Alexander Garden leads you to the building of the Historical Museum, whose arches and vaults are accentuated by narrowly directed light. You bypass it on the left, passing through Voskresensky Gate and ending up right on Red Square. Turning around, passing by the busy Nikolskaya Street, and you see a dark spot formed by the facades of GUM at night. A dark gloomy spot, instead of a bright facade illumination created by a thousand lit lamps, the golden garland circling around the contour of each element of the usual GUM. Strange and illogical. And all because the illuminated night appearance of GUM is the hallmark of the city, the associative dominant of the evening Red Square. Highlighting the main store of our country forms a familiar and recognizable emotional image for us, unconsciously relating us to a certain location and absolutely accurately participating in the formation of the surrounding urban environment.

“Improving the territory of urban spaces and developing the urban environment as a whole today is impossible to imagine without modernizing and organizing modern outdoor lighting,” says the general director of Svet Expert. “The main trend in the development of cities is based on the formation of a new layout in favor of pedestrians. Comfortable movement of pedestrians in the night - an important task to be solved, to a greater extent, with the help of light. Last year, our company became the author of the Murmansk city’s lighting master plan. The city authorities paid special attention to creating state programs for the development of the urban environment. One of these programs included a complete study and modernization of Murmansk’s existing outdoor lighting, as well as highlighting and drawing attention to historical sites and monuments using architectural and artistic illumination. Our architectural specialists highlighted the city’s cultural heritage objects, dominant buildings, and high-traffic zones, creating a guest route for the capital of the Arctic. The implementation of the Murmansk lighting project has been highly effective and received positive feedback from local residents and visitors. Through the use of light, we were able to create a unique artistic image of the urban environment in the evening, emphasize the features of the area, increase the level of illumination of the streets, and even boost the tourist flow.”

When talking about a modern city, it is impossible not to mention parks and public gardens, recreation areas, and public spaces that play an important role as the main places of leisure time. “Rest, safe environment, greenery, nature, silence away from the bustle of the city - these concepts evoke pleasant emotions in each of us and create positive associative images. Of course, in the evening we must maintain the stay in city parks as comfortable and safe. An example of designing outdoor lighting for a park is the Krasnodar Krai family park ‘Rodnye Prostory’ - says the head of the commercial department of the company Svet Expert. - We have developed a concept for lighting the entire park, including small architectural forms, the central entrance, pedestrian traffic zones, green plantings, and construction objects. Now we can already observe a high pedestrian traffic that does not decrease with the onset of evening. On the contrary, visitors to the park positively respond to the comfortable lighting of the territory, and decorative illuminations arouse interest and recognition of the park in social networks.”

The development of the urban environment is a whole complex of different directions and programs. Today, it is impossible to imagine improving the city’s infrastructure without the competent organization of garden and park lighting and architectural and artistic lighting. Developing and implementing the proper, sufficient, and uniform lighting of territories, zoned and comfortable, and at the same time, complemented by the artistic concept of surrounding facades and architectural elements is a complex task that we love to cope with, making our country’s cities more beautiful, brighter, and safer.