Last Thursday my company was nice enough to organize a trip to Lightcraft for some workshop about....well.... lights. Lightcraft is an established international lighting company that offers consultations about lighting as well as offering a wide variety of high end lamps. If you haven't heard of it, you're probably not rich enough to own any of their products. You'll be lucky to find any lamps that has fewer than three digits on the price tag (not including cents of course!) and that includes those small lamps you hang on the walls or table lamps used for reading. The first hanging lamp we saw as we walked into the store had the price of a Kancil (for those living under the shell, its freaking 32k!!!!!!). It wasn't even a chandelier kinda thing, just a somewhat large modern simple roundish ceiling lamp. We were allowed to test every single lamp in the 5 storey showroom, but we were extra careful not to break anything or we'll have to spend the rest of the year just to pay back the money!
But of course, for that kind of money, you are also getting premium lamps. The lady was explaining the difference between buying an expensive lamp and a cheaper one, which is the reflectors which help distribute the light. They demonstrated many types of lights and effects they produce which really was very helpful, and it really shows how much you need to plan in advance during the design stage of architecture if you want to dynamic lighting on the interior and exterior of the building.
Some of the more impressive lamps were the designer wares that were imported from Italy. They all had a very contemporary design and were pushing the limits of light technology. There was a lamp where you could change the color temperature on the go to suit the ambience, a lamp that was like a worm and could be rolled up into a ball, a lamp with a lightbulb not connected through wires, and a table lamp that was so powerful and flexible that it could be switch between a reading light or an uplighter by twisting its head. Some of them were even design by Herzog de Meuron (to non-archi ppl, its the architect who designed some of the impressive Beijing Olympic Stadiums) but they were surprisingly the less impressive one. They should stick to buildings.
Before dinner, they did a nice short powerpoint presentation which was mostly boring stuff about different type of lamps (incandescent, fluorescent, halogen etc. ) but what was interesting was later on when he shows pictures of good and bad lightning. The good lighting that were shown were some streetlights they did which were uplighters, but somehow they were able to illuminate the streets very well. Its hard to describe with words but they created were quite impressive effects. The bad one though, was the highlight of the show. They were pictures of the new Bangkok Airport with some expensive German lamps at the top which emphasized the architecture and structure of the roof very well. Problem was, the airport was for millions of humans to use and the poor humans were trapped in darkness. None of the light fell back down onto them. The funny part was, now they actually "fixed it" by putting reflective wings at the top which helped bring the light back on the ground. So now not only is the architecture not highlighted anymore, the shadows from these lamps created batman signals all over the ceiling and it was just horrendous to look at. So, lesson learnt.
All in all, it was a worthy trip (free) and it was both knowledgeable and enjoyable at the same time. I wish i could have snapped more pictures but my phone was running out of battery so i only took some that caught my eye. Enjoy!
