Category Archives: Configuring Light/Staging the Social

LSE Cities Mona Sloane presented at New London Architecture event

23 February 2015

Mona Sloane presented at an event on Public Interest Design, which took place on Tuesday 24 February from 6.30-8pm and was organised by New London Architecture.

This NLA event powered by pechakucha sought to highlight key projects and it’s London based practitioners to illustrate the impact of these interventions – what are the successes of this movement as a new approach to poverty alleviation and sustainable development?

For more information about the event click here.

Urban Lightscapes / Social Nightscapes film and exhibition

19 November 2014

Following the success of the recent workshop on the Whitecross Estate in Islington, Configuring Light’s Urban Lightscapes / Social Nightscapes project is to be documented in a short film and an exhibition taking place at the LSE in February 2015.

Don Slater, co-founder of the Configuring Light programme said:

“Our Urban Lightscapes workshop on the Whitecross estate in Islington was exciting, exhausting and a great success for everyone involved. It showed that design based on social research and user interaction is the way forward in public lighting design – thanks to all our 25 participants, collaborators and the Whitecross residents who got behind the project and are now excited about light. A great result!”

Workshop participant Satu Streatfield, Design Associate at Speirs and Major said:

“It was an intensive, but very enjoyable workshop. You can carry out thorough historical and physical analysis of a site’s context, but until you’ve spoken to the people that live, work, pass through, or care for a place you’ll only paint half a picture. From school children walking home with their parents, city workers spilling over from Whitecross Street market, to families of three generations living on the estate – everybody had an interesting story to tell and something to contribute to our thinking.”

Whitecross resident Marianne Connolly said:

“The whole experience was brought to us by enthusiastic, energetic people with a passion for good lighting.  They took us from the reasonable, normal, standard lighting to something altogether more beautiful.  Throwing colour into the blank canvas of buildings and painting them as warm and inviting.  It was an experience I was thrilled to be able to share with my daughter, friends and community”.

LSE Cities’ Configuring Light launches new project website for ‘Urban Lightscapes/Social Nightscapes‘

30 September 2014

Urban Lightscapes/Social Nightscapes is a LSE HEIF5-funded project which encompasses a five-day workshop and symposium around social research in lighting design for lighting designers, architects and planners. It will take place on Peabody’s Whitecross estate on 13-17 October 2014 culminating in a symposium at the London School of Economics and Political Science. It is organised by the LSE Cities‘ Configuring Light research programme in collaboration with the Social Light Movement and with technical sponsorship from iGuzzini. Visit the website here: http://socialnightscapes.org/