A Culture of Debate

We are not a society with a culture of debate. It's not that we don't like to argue. But saving the country at the rakı table or in the coffeehouses every day, or always having some opinion on any subject, sadly isn't enough… At the most basic level, we debate the way fans back a football team. Worse, our debates don't rest on research or knowledge. They rest on things we've heard, even second-hand, and on scraps of information we understood from one point of view but never questioned. So our debates don't reach a conclusion either. What is going on today around the Bosphorus Bridge lighting project is an example of this. You can debate whether the money spent will give value in return, or the tender process. But comments that the colours used will cause accidents or encourage suicide are laughable. With a little research, you could learn that the “default” colour and look that will stay on all the time has not been decided yet. You could also learn that the municipality has set up a commission on this, made up of the highways authority, universities, architects and colour scientists. It also matters to know that, thanks to the LED technology used in the project, every existing colour can be produced and many different scenarios can be run.

Setting all that aside, whatever its quality, it's good that this subject is being debated in various media. Because people don't know what can be done with light. We need to talk about light and what it can do. The more we talk and debate about light and lighting, and the more events we hold, the wider the audience we can make aware. Raising our public's interest in lighting and showing them what's right is the duty of all of us in the lighting industry. An aware public will make demands. It will want its neighbourhood, its streets and its squares, in short the city it lives in, to be lit correctly. That's why it made me very happy that Beyazıt Öztürk criticised the project on his own show (which reaches a large audience), and that the Referans newspaper gave a full page to these debates. What needs to happen now is for the people who worked on the project, Karayolları (the Turkish highways authority), the Aydınlık company and Philips, to repeat the facts of the project together in every channel they can, and to try to reach more people. We at PLD are proud to be the first place where you could find the project's technical details.

You've met the LUCI (Lighting Urban Communities International) association in many issues of our magazine. It grew from the idea of sharing experience for better lighting, so its mission is clearly right. İstanbul too has applied to join this network, which 60 municipalities around the world take part in. While the process goes on, I was invited to Paris for the “City under microscope” event that LUCI holds twice a year, together with İstanbul Municipality's Director of City Lighting and Energy, Muhammet Garip Bey. The event took place in April, and its content and participants made it very interesting. You'll find my impressions in the pages ahead.

In his piece, PLD's editor-in-chief Joachim shares his views on the education of lighting designers. Right now there's a growing demand for lighting designers around the world (Türkiye included). It's hard not to agree, but we need to look at the situation in Türkiye specifically. For that, we'll have to wait for the next issue…