“Totally honoured to be among the industry professionals involved in the online MA Interior Design for the Health and Wellbeing course at New Bucks University – have already had some great interaction with students and I am looking forward to more”
Mary Rushton-Beales
Lighting Design House
Industry Professionals | Buckinghamshire New University (bucks.ac.uk
“So excited to be a judge on the Build Back Better Awards. This last year has given all of us time to focus on being better in all kinds of ways – and I’m so looking forward to seeing what our industry has to offer.
“Build Back Better, is a new initiative to champion innovation in buildings. During 2020 we learned how important the built environment is to our physical and mental health and wellbeing.mAnd, post-pandemic, we realise that we’ll need spaces that better reflect our changed priorities.
We’ll need workplaces with collaboration and wellness at their heart, homes that are designed for remote working, well considered local community and leisure facilities and retail outlets that support online shopping.
What thinking, technologies and innovations will help us shape this new age?
That’s the question that Build Back Better will answer.”
Mary Rushton-Beales
JUDGES (buildbackbetterawards.com)
Article in The Light Review
6 January 2020
In my time on this planet as a lighting designer it has come to my attention that for some reason everything that has significance comes in threes. We had a project a year or so ago where the client, electrician and project manager were all called Jerry – so we had Jerry the vicar, Jerry the sparks and then the PM got to be called just plain Jerry. At the moment I have 3 projects with Architects called Alex; and on one day last year we had 3 unexpected projects materialise.
So THREE seems important and in the last couple of weeks I have had occasion to look at 3 individuals’ home-working environments, who all suffer from S.A.D. This led me to reprise a vein of enquiry via NHS Health A-Z which really annoyed me a few years ago when I found this statement “Light therapy is also a popular treatment for SAD, although NICE says it’s not clear whether it’s effective.” In fact, hardly any light therapy is recommended by NHS. This could be due to the over-zealous denials on almost all light-related headlines issued via NHS (though that’s just my opinion), though ‘Behind the headlines’ is curated by Bazian, owned by the Economist,(and self-proclaimed champions of evidence-based healthcare), or it could be that all apparent SAD sufferers who have seen relief of their symptoms from light therapy are experiencing a placebo response.
This confusing situation means that there are no “official” guidelines in the UK for the use of Light Boxes or Light Alarms but a myriad of choices out there. I tried to find out which light therapy products have been approved by the MHRA (Medicines and healthcare products Regulatory Agency) but I didn’t get very far. Why did I do this? Well to return to my 3 different people who want tons more light in their home in the winter.
Well-lighting design (and common sense) would dictate that being illuminated by 10000 lux whilst looking at a computer screen is obviously bad for the eye; that a sky-printed panel might look pretty but will be terribly inefficient; that a blue-painted incandescent lamp is just plain wrong – but that didn’t stop a lot of argument and references to smart devices. Hence my own trawling of official advice to get a definitive answer.
As you might expect, clients 2 and 3 were easy to pacify with a proper lighting design solution and references to old favourite lighting buzzwords such as lumen output and lux. Not so client 1. We ended by recommending that the light box be used on the kitchen table at an oblique angle and we simply improved the background lighting around the work station. And of course exposure to daylight whenever the weather permits.
I never thought I would say this – as I love to break a rule – but it’s the lack of rules that have allowed poor quality equipment and just plain bad advice to take such a hold on affairs.
I’ve been designing the lit environment for more than 30 years and I suppose it’s quite appropriate that my most difficult lighting challenge ever – in the entire 30 years – that was recently assigned to me by Artist Dawn Bendick – should have awareness of time at the heart of the artistic inspiration. Rather than paraphrase Dawn’s work you can read about how important time is for her and her work on this link:
http://www.theobservatory.co/index.php/projects/time-rocks/
The cast glass rocks – created by Dawn in collaboration with Acne Studios for their catwalk show – are sentinels of the past and the future – being moulds of ancient rocks that have been created with contemporary Alexandrite glass. This glass contained small amounts of rare earth minerals such as neodymium that reveal completely different colours according to the electrical characteristics of different white light sources. Dawn explained that it was this repeated variation in the colour of the glass that was essential to the success of the lighting for the catwalk show. Acne Studios had decided to bring the amazing glass rock stacks to London and display them in the window of their Flagship store at Dover Street for Fashion Week “and a few weeks more”.
A lighting design was needed that would replicate the catwalk lighting effects and vary continuously over the day and night. Cue many many lighting tests and experiments – bright sunlight, overcast skies, 2700k, 4000k, 6500k – high CRI light sources such as LED, Fluorescent and Metal Halide. And in the background HOW were we going to get these diverse light sources to dim or switch as we wanted – continuously over about 10 – 15 minutes?! So back to my time theme it seems entirely appropriate that to achieve what we wanted we used light sources and lighting techniques from the Nineties, Noughties and Twenty First decades.
So our intrepid band of lights included: From the Nineties high output compact fluorescent lamps 6500k, 95 CRI. From the Noughties point source metal halides 4000k, 85 CRI. From the 21st full spectrum colour LEDs, 90 plus CRI. To bring it all together we needed a bespoke control unit that could send dimming and switching signals at preset times, continuously throughout the weeks of display. Oh yes and we had to get all this installed into the window safely and neatly over a single night “get-in”. Time again.
The testing/planning and results are shown on the two gifs above. We’ve speeded them up to make the effects consistent. If you would like stills or further information please contact me or Dawn on
mailto:15observatory@gmail.com.
It took a lot of human beings too: massive thanks to: Acne Studios, Dawn Bendick, Phil, Howard & team at Commercial Lighting Systems, Roger & team at Light Projects, Brian & team at Multiload controls, Greg & team at Tomkins Electrical, Aaron & team at Checklist Property Maintenance and Andrew Tynan for the results photography..
Tech website Pocket Lint recently featured advice by Mary Rushton-Beales of Lighting Design House headlined ‘Eight lighting tips for your home: an expert shares her design secrets’. The article by Stuart Miles carries this advice from Mary:
Mary’s technical advice ties in with the ‘Light Diet’ she has devised based on extensive research into the light and well-being.
Other practical tips include making sure you have extra light to do specific tasks and the lights you are buying are up to the job. ‘50 to 100 lux is good for general living, but for working, the recommended levels are around 300-500 lux,’ she counsels.
See the full article at: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/137672-eight-lighting-tips-for-your-home-an-expert-shares-her-design-secrets