Ready Steady Light 2008

The Society of Light and Lighting’s annual Ready Steady Light competition took place at Rose Bruford College on March 19th.

A record number of entries had been received and a total of nineteen teams took part. Each team was allocated a site within the college grounds, a selection of lighting equipment and three hours to create a masterpiece.

Following on from last year’s success, the event was un-themed and the teams challenged to best interpret their site using only lighting effects.

Rose Bruford College provide the Society with tremendous support, having adopted Ready Steady Light as part of their own Lighting Design course. A team of students led by Charlotte Jobson and Chris Hirst coordinated all of the power distribution to the sites and provided key liaison with the College.

However, an event of this magnitude simply could not take place without the support of our sponsors, through both financial and logistical support by donating equipment to the event. Our heartfelt thanks go to Concord:marlin, Crescent, Holophane, iGuzzini, Lightform, Martin Architectural, Philips, Sill, Thorn, Urbis and Zumtobel.

Three hours later and the transformations were complete. There are three prizes available to the teams: Technical Merit, Artistic Impression and the Peer Prize.

The Technical Merit prize was judged by Tony Ownsworth, SLL President, Patrick Baldrey, SLL President Elect, Alan Tulla, SLL Newsletter Editor and Kevin Mansfield and Peter Raynham from the Bartlett. Judging the teams on the technical implementation of the installation, energy use and control of light pollution, they gave Highly Commended to ‘The New Courtyard’ (NDY Light), ‘Lakeside’ (Urbis) and ‘Ramps Ahead’ (Parsons Brinkerhoff). However, Tony Ownsworth explained that the unanimous winner “for its elegant nightscape, excellent control of light spillage and the great textural appearance of the subject” was ‘The Cabin’, an installation from the iGuzzini team.

The prize for Artistic Impression was sponsored by PLDA and IALD and judged by Kevin Theobald from PLDA alongside some of the great and the good from the theatre lighting world, including Paule Constable, Alex Murphy, Roger Hennigan and Tony Simpson. They gave Highly Commended to ‘Lakeside’ (Urbis) and ‘Wasteland’ (The Lighting Designers Sewing Circle). However, first prize was awarded to ‘The Old Stables’, an installation from the team from Rose Bruford College. Presenting the award, Kevin Theobald commented “Year on year the imagination of the teams and the quality of the projects continue to improve”

Finally, the Peer Prize. This prize is judged by the teams themselves and they have to judge each other’s efforts (without voting for themselves!). This prize went to the Speirs and Major team for ‘The Barn.’

Young Lighters of the Year 2008

Andrew McNeil SLL (Arup)
Vasiliki Malakasi SLL (Arup)
Sean Halpin SLL (DIT)
Matt Emery SLL (Urbis Lighting)
Daniel Lin SLL (NDY Light)
Emrah Ulas (Steenson Varming) and Martin Gratte



The ARC08 exhibition at the Business Design Centre in London played host to this year’s Society of Light & Lighting Young Lighters of the Year event.

The prestigious competition is open to anyone under the age of 30 to write and present a paper on a lighting subject of their choice. With a record number of entrants, six finalists were selected to present their papers to members of the industry together with interested guests attending the exhibition.

Arup’s Vasiliki Malakasi introduced her paper on “Urban Scene and Luminance Patterns”, exploring a method of assessing pathway lighting in an urban setting with emphasis given to the luminance patterns and the possibility of luminance becoming a vehicle for the evaluation of the lit urban environment.

This presentation was followed by Daniel Lin of NDY Light presenting his paper on “Light, Shadow and Ambiguity” comprising an intriguing mix of the use of light and shadow in architecture together with examples of the use of shadow in creating ambiguous effects and scenes.

Andrew McNeil, also from Arup, then took the stage to present his paper on “Using useful daylight illuminance to assess external louvre systems”, explaining the method of using Useful Daylight Illuminance to assess the value of external shading systems, a technique which eliminates the time during which an over abundance of daylight in a space causes additional shading such as blinds to be used by occupants, rendering the louvers irrelevant.

The fourth paper was presented by Urbis Lighting’s Matt Emery on the subject of “The effect of street lighting on bats”. Bats are a protected species in the UK and although universally recognized as nocturnal creatures, little is known of the level of sensitivity to light they possess. Whilst street lighting gives obvious benefits to humans, the very existence of bats is threatened by even a low lighting level in their habitat.

The final two papers were from international entrants, Emrah Ulas from Steenson Varming in Australia, and a little closer to home, Sean Halpin, a student at the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Emrah presented a paper on “Light and Modes of Appearance in architectural contexts”. Six visual attributes and their relationship with architectural contexts were explored with the view that lighting designers can use the parameters of the visual perception to break the constancies of the viewers and create intentionally designed illusions and experiences of the reality.

Last, but by no means least, Sean Halpin presented his paper on “Life Lighting”, an in depth analysis of the appropriate integration of natural and artificial lighting systems and the effect of daylight both on the energy performance of the building concerned, but also the well-being of the occupants of a space.

The Society of Light and Lighting’s president, Tony Ownsworth, then presented each of the finalists with their finalists’ certificates and prizes, commenting:

“This had been an exceptional year of entries and each and every one of the finalists
should be congratulated upon their achievements and I look forward to hearing more
from these fantastic young people in years to come”

Paddy Craven, President of the Institute of Lighting Engineers, presented the ILE award for the best written paper to Daniel Lin for his paper on Light, Shadow and Ambiguity.

The Worshipful Company of Lightmongers presented their prize for the best presentation on the day and this was awarded to Emrah Ulas for his presentation on “Light and Modes of Appearance in Architectural contexts” Martin Gratte, Master Lightmonger was on hand to present the prize.

Vice President of the Society, Stephen Lisk, brought the afternoon to a close by thanking the finalists and congratulating them all for the high quality of work submitted. He reflected upon the diversity of the 2008 awards, not only in terms of the papers that were presented, but also the multi-national representation of the speakers in the final.

Anyone interested in participating in the 2009 competition should contact Liz Peck on 020 8772 3622 or email her at lpeck@cibse.org for more information.