Explore the "five" factors that affect urban lighting design

Today, rapid urbanization is driving the rapid development of urban lighting infrastructure. A city's lighting has evolved from simply meeting citizens' travel and transportation needs to reflecting the city's cultural identity, evolving from functional lighting to green lighting. Whether designing an overall urban lighting plan, a regional lighting area, or even a street or lane, urban lighting designers must prioritize the city's overall plan, its natural environment, its cultural characteristics, its economic development, and other factors. Only in this way can the city's functional lighting be met while fully reflecting its unique characteristics, avoiding the phenomenon of uniformity across many cities and achieving the desired lighting effect. Therefore, the factors influencing urban lighting design are unavoidable and must be addressed in urban lighting construction. This article explores several factors influencing urban lighting design.

　　1. Natural environmental factors

　 　The natural environment is an extremely complex and rich natural complex. Many areas are still unknown or not fully understood, and are waiting to be discovered and explored. 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. Based on the nature of the environmental components and how they adapt to humans, the natural environment can be divided into physical environment, chemical environment, biological environment, and social environment.

　　1. Physical environment

　　The physical environment is composed of factors such as temperature, airflow, air pressure, sound, light, and radiation. When these factors are in their natural state, they directly stimulate people, generating corresponding sensations and behavioral responses. Of these factors, light is the most directly relevant to landscape lighting design. Light is a language that expresses the lighting designer's design concepts and artistic aspirations; it is an implicit software that controls the functioning of cities and buildings, as well as the interpretation of image and color. It is also the "fourth dimension of architecture." Therefore, when designing, landscape lighting designers should proactively understand, observe, and utilize light, actively participating in the design of the light environment and integrating it into their planning and creations, adding light and color to cities and buildings.

　　2. Chemical environment

     The chemical environment is composed of factors such as air and various gases, water, dust, and chemicals. Air oxidation of lamps, water corrosion, and dust obstruction of light can all affect the final result of landscape design. Therefore, when selecting lamps, landscape lighting designers require that their water-resistance and dust-resistance levels meet certain standards, commonly referred to as IP ratings.

　　3. Biological environment

     The biological environment is composed of animals, plants, and microorganisms, including humans as living organisms. When designing landscape lighting for a building, it's crucial to consider the species, growth conditions, and distribution of local flora and fauna, as well as their current and future development patterns. While designing the lighting for the building itself, it's also crucial to consider the surrounding flowers, trees, and recreational facilities to create a complete lighting landscape.

　　4. Social environment

     The social environment refers to the humanistic environment with interpersonal relationships as its core. It covers a wide range of content and also has a certain impact on landscape lighting design.

　　2. Human Environment Factors

　 　The humanistic environment is a comprehensive and integrated ecological environment unique to human society, encompassing politics, culture, art, science, religion, aesthetics, and more. A truly humanistic environment must be in harmony with nature, protecting and enhancing the natural environment. The environment reflects cultural heritage, while culture also gradually influences the environment. For a city, the fixed environment includes roads, buildings, parks, lighting, lawns, and so on. However, when people integrate into this environment, both people and scenery flourish, creating a sense of fluidity. The interaction between people and the environment can absorb the culture of the environment, while the environment also influences people's perspectives. This is the relationship we often describe: movement within stillness, stillness within movement, and the interplay of movement and stillness.

　 　The cultural environment is one of the most important factors influencing lighting design. The design of a lighting designer essentially creates an atmosphere, a culture that is ready to emerge. This culture is an objective existence, perhaps invisible or intangible, but it can be felt, reflecting your feelings and influencing your state of mind. Modern cities often feature too much road, building, and landscape lighting, which, as a whole, often feels somewhat rigid. This is because the lighting overemphasizes technicality and ignores cultural aspects, leaving people feeling like they are passively accepting things. Lighting should focus on nature and harmony. Therefore, when designing, designers should comprehensively consider the layout, lines, colors, proportions, scale, textures, light, rhythm, and rhythm of roads, buildings, and landscapes, encouraging viewers to actively discover, explore, appreciate, and contemplate the essence of these elements. A designer's responsibility is to create a comfortable lighting environment and atmosphere, guiding people towards beauty, encouraging them to actively pursue beauty, and creating a comfortable and relaxing mood.

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

　　(1) The color and surface illuminance of the light used in the illuminated area and objects are inconsistent with the function, nature and environment of the illuminated area and objects, making people feel uncomfortable;

　　(2) Using large-area lighting to set up lighting fixtures regardless of the occasion, resulting in the lack of layering and three-dimensionality of the illuminated objects, while causing light pollution and seriously interfering with people's normal lives;

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

　　(4) Certain lamps installed around gardens, green spaces, roads, sculptures and landscapes produce glare that interferes with the vision of pedestrians, vehicles and tourists who are resting and entertaining in the area, which not only destroys the rest environment but also endangers driving safety.

　　With the progress of society and the standardization of management, I believe they will be eradicated. At the same time, we have the responsibility to promote them to the society, influence the environmental status, 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 face numerous clients. The market economy dictates that clients must prioritize their own economic interests, leading to varying approaches to lighting design projects. Commercial lighting clients, driven by the potential for business opportunities and increased profitability, are highly motivated, but they also compete with one another for brightness and quality, leading to a reckless increase in lighting installations. This increases investment while undermining the overall aesthetic quality of the area. Non-commercial lighting clients, facing only financial investment but no returns, are less motivated or seek to minimize investment, similarly impacting the overall aesthetic quality of the area. Furthermore, the varying understandings of lighting, as well as individual perspectives, preferences, and aesthetics, result in a variety of lighting effects. For example, a government office building uses green light, creating a sense of eerieness rather than solemnity. In reality, different lighting colors should be chosen for different lighting targets. Colors are closely related to people's emotions. For example, blue makes people feel peaceful and satisfied, yellow gives people a sense of brilliance and excitement, red makes people eager to win and rejuvenate, the interweaving of red and green makes people feel strong, reliable, and resolute, light blue can make people feel safe and self-esteem, warm colors such as red, orange, and yellow can make people excited and the atmosphere warm, etc.; under normal circumstances, cold colors such as green, blue, and purple should be used with caution in lighting sources. Improper use can easily make people feel gloomy and cold.

　　4. Technical level factors of lighting equipment

　　Since the reform and opening up, my country's lighting technology has undergone significant changes, from light sources and lighting fixtures to lighting engineering design. From the relatively simple incandescent lamp and straight fluorescent lamp, it has developed into tungsten halogen lamps, fluorescent high-pressure mercury lamps, high-pressure sodium lamps, metal halide lamps, compact fluorescent lamps, induction lamps, and LED lamps.

　　Among lighting equipment, the development of lamps is relatively slow. For a long time, the important role of lamps has been often overlooked. In the past 20 years, with the rapid development of new light sources, new lamps have also emerged. These new lamps have the following common characteristics:

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

　　(2) The materials and processing technology used in manufacturing lamps have made a qualitative leap. For example, the reflective surface uses high-quality, high-purity aluminum plates as the surface coating lamp, which uses advanced processing technology. The surface reflectivity can reach as high as 88% to 92%. The diffuser of the lamp uses prism-shaped plastic plates, milky white anti-static acrylic resin plates and other materials, which have high transmittance, good dustproof and anti-aging properties.

　　(3) Reasonable lamp design and advanced design methods determine the light distribution type of the lamp according to the spatial status, environmental conditions and requirements of the place of use, and use computer-aided design to determine the shape of the reflective surface, achieving high lamp efficiency.

　　(4) After authoritative lighting quality supervision and inspection* testing, the performance of the lighting fixtures is verified to meet the standards, and a set of practical lighting calculation parameters are obtained, including light distribution curves, utilization coefficient tables, etc., for use in lighting engineering design.

　　Most new light sources that have appeared since the 1950s use inductive ballasts. Inductive ballasts are stable, high-quality, and inexpensive, making them popular. However, they also have many disadvantages:

　　(1) Large power loss;

　　(2) Prone to noise;

　　(3) Severe stroboscopic effects can damage vision;

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

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

　　Driven by high-frequency electronic ballasts developed in advanced countries, my country's electronic ballasts have reached internationally advanced levels after more than 10 years of hard work. They have many advantages over inductive ballasts:

　　(1) Good energy-saving effect. Under the condition of the same luminous flux output, it can save 20% to 25% of electricity;

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

　　(3) Noise is eliminated;

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

　　(5) Fluorescent lamp dimming can be achieved.

　 　With the development of urban lighting, high-tech and high-tech lighting equipment have begun to be promoted and applied in urban lighting projects, such as laser lighting, computer searchlights, high-altitude light balls, fiber optic lighting systems, light-emitting diode light strips, electrodeless fluorescent lamps, etc., which have been applied in the field of urban lighting projects. Not only have they achieved lighting effects that are difficult to achieve with general lighting methods, but they have also significantly improved the technological level of urban lighting.

　　In summary, with the continuous improvement of the technical level of urban lighting equipment, the room for choice of lighting designers in lighting design has been greatly increased. Coupled with the continuous emergence of high-tech, it will play a finishing touch to urban lighting design.

　　V. Feasibility Factors of the Plan

　 　Every project design follows certain rules. Violating these rules can lead to detours or even unsatisfactory results. The same is true for lighting design. It's an organic union of light and art, a clever arrangement of light with existing landscape elements, encompassing both rational and emotional perspectives. The feasibility of a project primarily depends on the investor, the lighting designer's conception and intent, and the site environment.

　　Lighting design differs from other designs in that it is significantly influenced by investment, with meeting functional requirements being paramount. The scale of investment is crucial in achieving a more beautiful nightscape while still meeting these requirements. Furthermore, with the continuous development of high-tech in recent years, investment has become even more crucial in the practical application of lighting.

　 　Lighting designers should fully understand the properties, functions, environment, viewpoint, appearance, and style of the lighting object. In particular, they should understand the designer's creativity, design intent, intended content, and relevant lighting design drawings. The use of light, lamps, and colors, as well as the goals and effects, can vary greatly for objects with different properties. The positioning of the lighting environment, specifically the spatial relationship, must be coordinated with the surrounding environment when determining brightness standards. The goal is to achieve just the right brightness, not the brighter the better. Avoid the temptation to compare yourself with others and avoid emphasizing the lighting object without considering the surrounding light environment.

　　Viewpoint positioning is based on analyzing several possible viewpoints from which lighting can be viewed (far, near, high, low, and peripheral), setting the main and ultimate viewpoints. From these, the overall lighting effect and specific plan are conceived. Many cities' lighting has its own unique form, becoming the city's landmark architecture, and its strong recognition is deeply engraved in people's memory. As a lighting designer, when shaping the lighting, no matter what lighting method is adopted, it is necessary to respect and base it on its unique form. Not only must its existence be expressed in the language of light, but its iconic status in people's minds during the day must also be established under the cover of night. If the lighting method is inappropriate and distorts the inherent form of the illuminated object, it will be regarded as a "failure."

　　At the same time, lighting should reflect the style of the landscape. Without style, there is no personality, let alone taste. Some lighting has a strong national style, some is full of modern flavor, some is modern style, and some is full of local characteristics. These styles are often fully expressed in the form and appearance of lighting through a variety of design techniques. Different lighting methods and techniques are adopted according to the different styles of the lighting objects.

　　The on-site environment includes the brightness of the background of the lighting object, the local night lighting conditions, the local people's preferences or preferences for colors, customs and habits, and power 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 considered as comprehensively as possible before urban lighting design, it will provide a real and reliable basis for the formulation of urban lighting design plans, and ultimately achieve the ideal effect of urban lighting.