Exploring the "Five" Factors Influencing Urban Lighting Design

Today, the rapid development of urbanization is driving the ever-changing construction of urban lighting facilities. As a city, lighting has gradually evolved from meeting the general travel and transportation needs of citizens to reflecting the cultural characteristics of the city, and from meeting functional lighting to green lighting. As an urban lighting designer, whether designing the overall planning of urban lighting, lighting area planning, or the design of streets and alleys, one must first consider the overall planning of the city, as well as various factors such as natural environment, cultural characteristics, and economic development level. Only in this way can we not only meet the functional lighting needs of the city, but also fully reflect the personality of urban lighting, avoid the phenomenon of urban lighting being one-sided, and achieve the ideal effect of urban lighting. So, the factors that affect urban lighting design are unavoidable and must be faced in urban lighting construction. This article explores several factors that affect urban lighting design.

1、 Natural environmental factors

The natural environment is an extremely complex and rich natural complex, with many fields that have not yet been recognized or not yet deeply understood, waiting for people to discover and explore. The natural environment discussed here focuses on the natural environment directly related to the biosphere, that is, the natural environment directly related to landscape lighting. According to the properties of environmental constituent factors and their adaptation to humans, the natural environment can be divided into physical, chemical, biological, and social environments.

1. Physical environment

The constituent factors of the physical environment include temperature, airflow, air pressure, sound, light, radiation, etc. When these factors are in a natural state, they provide direct stimulation to people, and they will correspondingly obtain feelings and make behavioral responses. Among these factors, the direct contact with landscape lighting design is "light". Light is a language that can express the design philosophy and artistic pursuit of lighting designers; Light is an implicit software that controls the functional operation of cities and buildings, as well as the interpretation of images and colors; Light is the fourth dimensional space of architecture. Therefore, landscape lighting designers should take the initiative to understand light, perceive light, use light, actively participate in the design of the lighting environment, integrate light into their own planning and creation, and add color to the city and buildings.

2. Chemical environment

The constituent factors of a chemical environment include air and various gases, water, dust, chemical substances, etc. The oxidation of lighting fixtures by air, corrosion of lighting fixtures by water, and obstruction of light by dust can all have an impact on the final outcome of landscape design. So when landscape lighting designers choose lighting fixtures, they require that their waterproof and dust levels meet certain standards, which are commonly referred to as IP protection levels.

3. Biological environment

The biological environment is composed of animals, plants, and microorganisms, including humans as living beings. When designing landscape lighting for a building, consideration should be given to the types, growth conditions, distribution, and current and future development patterns of local flora and fauna. While designing the lighting of the building itself, it is also necessary to assist in the design of surrounding flowers, trees, rest facilities, etc., in order to form a complete lighting landscape.

4. Social environment

Social environment refers to the humanistic environment centered on interpersonal relationships, which covers a wide range of content and has a certain impact on landscape lighting design.

2、 Human environmental factors

The humanistic environment is a comprehensive ecological environment unique to human society, including politics, culture, art, science, religion, aesthetics, and so on. A perfect humanistic environment is always in line with nature, and it is the protection and improvement of the natural environment. The environment is a reflection of cultural accumulation, and at the same time, culture is slowly influencing the environment. For a city, a fixed environment should include roads, buildings, parks, lighting, lawns, etc. But when people immerse themselves in it, there is a flourishing landscape and fluidity. The communication between people and the environment can take away the culture of the environment, and at the same time, the environment can also have an impact on people's ideas. This is the relationship we often mention between motion and stillness, motion and stillness, and the interplay of motion and stillness.

The humanistic environment is one of the main factors affecting lighting design. The design done by lighting designers is actually creating an atmosphere, a culture that is about to emerge. This culture is an objective existence that you may not see or touch, but you can feel it from it and interpret your feelings and influence your mood at the same time. There are too many roads, buildings, and landscape lighting in modern cities, and as a whole, they always feel a bit stiff. In fact, it is because lighting emphasizes too much on technology and ignores cultural status, making people feel like they are passively accepting things. The focus of lighting should be on nature and harmony, so designers should comprehensively consider the layout, lines, colors, proportions, scales, textures, lighting, rhythm, and rhythm of roads, buildings, and landscapes when designing, allowing viewers to actively seek, explore, experience, and ponder the taste within. The responsibility of a designer is to create a comfortable environment with lighting and atmosphere, guide people towards beauty, encourage them to actively pursue beauty, and give people a comfortable and relaxed mood.

The negative aspects of human environment include light pollution, visual pollution, color pollution, psychological pollution, etc. From the existing lighting settings, there are mainly four aspects:

(1) The color and surface illuminance of the lighting used in the illuminated area and objects are not coordinated with the function, properties, and environment of the illuminated area and objects, making people feel uncomfortable;

(2) The installation of lighting fixtures using large-area projection without distinguishing between fields results in a lack of hierarchy and three-dimensional sense of the illuminated object, and also causes light pollution, seriously interfering with people's normal life;

(3) Tall buildings use a large number of high-power floodlights. Due to factors such as projection direction and angle, about one-third to half of the light is directed towards the sky, forming a beam of light, causing light pollution over the city and seriously affecting astronomical observations and aircraft landings;

(4) Certain lighting fixtures installed in gardens, green spaces, roads, sculptures, and surrounding landscapes can cause glare that disrupts the vision of pedestrians, vehicles, and visitors resting and entertaining in the area. This not only damages the resting environment but also endangers driving safety.

With the progress of society and the standardization of management, we believe that they will definitely be eradicated. At the same time, we have a responsibility to promote to society, influence environmental conditions, protect the environment, and protect ourselves.

3、 Construction or investor factors

In the field of urban lighting, the diversification of investment entities means that lighting designers will face a large number of owners. The market economy determines that owner units must take different attitudes towards the implemented lighting design projects from their own economic interests. For commercial lighting owners, their enthusiasm is high because the implementation of lighting can bring business opportunities and improve economic benefits. However, there is a phenomenon of competing brightness and height, blindly increasing lighting facilities. This not only increases investment but also undermines the overall artistic effect of the region. Non business lighting owners, due to the fact that the implementation of lighting only involves economic investment without any return on benefits, have low enthusiasm or try to reduce investment as much as possible, which also affects the overall effectiveness of the area. At the same time, due to the depth of understanding of lighting and the differences in personal thinking, consciousness, hobbies, and aesthetic views among different owners, a colorful lighting effect has been formed. For example, the government office building surprisingly uses green lighting, which makes people feel eerie and terrifying, rather than the seriousness and solemnity of the government building. In fact, different lighting objects should choose different light colors. Color is closely related to people's emotions, such as blue making people feel peaceful and satisfied, yellow giving people a feeling of glory and excitement, red making people eager to win and rejuvenate, red and green interweaving making people feel strong, reliable, and resolute, light blue can make people feel secure and proud, warm colors such as red, orange, and yellow can make people excited, the atmosphere warm, and so on; In general, cold colors such as green, blue, and purple should be used with caution when lighting. Improper use can easily make people feel gloomy and cold.

4、 Technical level factors of lighting equipment

Since the reform and opening up, China's lighting technology has undergone significant changes from light sources, lighting fixtures to lighting engineering design. From incandescent lamps and straight tube fluorescent lamps with relatively single light sources, to halogen lamps, fluorescent high-pressure mercury lamps, high-pressure sodium lamps, metal halide lamps, compact fluorescent lamps, infinite pole lamps, LED lamps, etc.

In lighting equipment, the development of lamps is relatively slow, and the important role of lamps is often overlooked by people for a long time. In the past 20 years, with the rapid development of new light sources, new lamps have also emerged continuously, and these new lamps have the following common characteristics:

(1) With the need for new light sources, supporting lighting fixtures have been developed, such as high-pressure sodium lamps and metal halide lamps.

(2) The materials and processing technology for manufacturing lighting fixtures have made a qualitative leap. If high-quality high-purity aluminum plate is used as the surface coating lamp for the reflective surface, the advanced processing technology can achieve a surface reflectivity of up to 88% to 92%; The diffuser of the lamp is made of prismatic mirror shaped plastic plate, milky white anti-static acrylic resin plate and other materials, with high transmittance, good dust-proof and anti-aging performance.

(3) Reasonable lighting design and advanced design methods are used to determine the light distribution type of the lighting fixtures based on the spatial status, environmental conditions, and requirements of the usage site. Computer aided design is used to determine the shape of the reflection surface, achieving high lighting efficiency.

(4) After being tested by the authoritative lighting quality supervision and testing center, the performance of the lighting fixtures meets the standards, and a set of lighting calculation parameters that are in line with the actual situation, including the light distribution curve, utilization coefficient table, etc., are obtained for use in lighting engineering design.

Most of the new light sources that have emerged since the 1950s use inductive ballasts. Inductive ballasts have stable operation, good quality, low price, and are popular. But it also has many drawbacks:

(1) High self power loss;

(2) Easy to generate noise;

(3) Severe flicker effects can damage vision;

(4) Copper and silicon steel sheets have high material loss and weight;

(5) Long term use may lead to fire due to excessive temperature rise;

Driven by the development of high-frequency electronic ballasts in advanced countries, after more than 10 years of efforts, China's electronic ballasts have reached the international advanced level. It has many advantages over inductive ballasts:

(1) Good energy-saving effect, can save electricity by 20% to 25% under the same luminous flux output;

(2) The lamp operates at a frequency of 20 to 50kHz, eliminating the flicker effect and ensuring stable light emission, which is beneficial for protecting vision and reducing visual fatigue;

(3) Eliminated noise;

(4) Reduced the impact of power supply voltage offset and fluctuation on luminous flux;

(5) Can achieve dimming of fluorescent lamps.

With the development of urban lighting, high-tech and high-tech lighting equipment have begun to be promoted and applied in urban lighting engineering, such as laser lighting, computer searchlights, high-altitude light bulbs, fiber optic lighting systems, light-emitting diode light strips, and electrodeless fluorescent lamps. They have been applied in the field of urban lighting engineering, not only achieving lighting effects that are difficult to achieve by general lighting methods, but also significantly improving the technological level of urban lighting.

In summary, with the continuous improvement of urban lighting equipment technology, lighting designers have greatly increased their choices in lighting design. In addition, the continuous emergence of high-tech will play a finishing touch role in urban lighting design.

5、 Feasibility factors of the plan

The design of every project has its own certain regularity, and if it goes against the development law of this thing, it will take many detours or fail to achieve ideal results. The same applies to the design of lighting, which is an organic combination of lighting and art, a clever arrangement of lighting with original landscape elements, including rational and emotional perspectives. The feasibility factors of the plan mainly include three aspects: the investor, the lighting designer's conception and intention, and the on-site environment.

Lighting design is different from other designs to some extent, and is greatly influenced by investment. Meeting functional requirements is the most basic. How to make the night landscape lighting more beautiful while meeting functional requirements is influenced by the investment scale, and with the continuous development of high-tech in recent years, investment in the practical application of lighting has become more important.

Lighting designers should have a comprehensive understanding of the attributes, functions, environment, viewpoint, external features, style, etc. of the lighting object, especially the creativity, design intention, content to be expressed, and relevant drawings of the lighting design. There are significant differences in how lighting designers use light, lighting, and color to achieve different goals and effects for objects with different attributes. The positioning of lighting environment, that is, spatial relationships, must be coordinated with the environment when determining brightness standards. It is necessary to be just right and bright, not the brighter the better. It is necessary to overcome the mentality of mutual comparison and avoid emphasizing only the lighting object without considering the surrounding lighting environment.

The positioning of viewpoints is based on analyzing several possible viewpoints (far, near, high, low, and peripheral) that may be used to view lighting, setting the main viewpoint and optimal viewpoint, and starting from this, conceptualizing the overall effect and specific plan of lighting. Many cities have their own unique forms of lighting that have become iconic buildings of this city, and they remain deeply ingrained in people's memories with their strong recognizability. As a lighting designer, no matter what lighting method is used to shape its lighting, it is necessary to respect and rely on its unique form. Not only does it express its existence through lighting language, but it also establishes its iconic position in people's minds during the day under the night. If the lighting method is improper and distorts the inherent form of the lighting object, it will be evaluated as a "failure".

At the same time, lighting should reflect the style of the landscape. Without style, there can be no personality, let alone taste. Some lighting has a strong ethnic style, some are full of modern atmosphere, some show a modern style, and some have local characteristics. These styles are often fully expressed in the form and appearance of lighting through various design techniques; The lighting methods and techniques used vary depending on the style of the lighting object.

The on-site environment includes the brightness of the lighting object background, the local night scene lighting situation, the local people's love or preference for colors, as well as customs and electricity supply conditions.

Of course, there are many factors that affect urban lighting design, such as economic development level, cultural concepts, etc. As long as various factors are comprehensively considered before urban lighting design, it will provide a real and reliable basis for the formulation of urban lighting design schemes, and ultimately achieve the ideal effect of urban lighting.