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I want to be a lighting designer. What should I do?

· PLD Türkiye

Automatically translated from Turkish. Read the original

I don't think anyone will be surprised when I say: “I've heard this question so many times that I can't possibly remember how many.” By email, by phone or face to face, I've tried my best to point a great many people, from very different backgrounds, in the right direction. I've helped people find a master's programme, a job or an internship. One person even dreamed one night that they were a lighting designer and knocked on the office door the next morning. I'm glad I've made contributions, big and small, to the careers of many professionals who now work in the industry.

Most recently, when I got the same question again this week, I decided to write a post and share it (maybe what I should have done in the first place). I thought I'd draw the general picture with this post and still help with specific questions.

First, here is what I mean by “architectural lighting designer” in this post: the person who shapes the relationship between a space and its user with light. I never simplify it to the person who does the lighting calculations or decides which luminaires to use. That would be an insult to the profession. Whatever the scale (a villa, a 30,000 m2 mixed-use building or a development at city scale), I assume you want to become the expert people consult on anything to do with “light” in the building process.

With this definition, I want to leave out lighting design for the stage. Even though many of the architectural lighting designers I know today come from a stage background… You could also put “independent” or “brand-independent” in front of the definition as the ultimate goal. But it isn't a must. I don't want to go deeper into that debate here. You can see my take on the idea in this post I wrote a while ago. http://pldturkiye.com/bagimsiz-aydinlatma-tasarimi/

I can't give the same answers to someone who is a student right now and to a professional early in their career or well into it. But the things to research, read, attend or experience are more or less the same. After that, it all depends on your own situation, that is, on what you can afford in time and money.

Within this frame, let's go question by question:

1- Is there one thing I can't do without?

Being in love with light. I don't know what picture of lighting design you have in your head. But the first thing I'll say is meant to kill the romantic side of it: however glamorous it may look, lighting design is a very hard field, and it takes a real fight to earn respect in it. If you aren't in love with light, or don't fall in love with it along the way, I don't think it's easy to do this job for long.

2- Is there a professional prerequisite?

The architectural lighting designers I know usually come from architecture (including disciplines close to it, such as landscape architecture, interior architecture and urban planning) or from electrical engineering. But I also know many designers who come from stage design or who are industrial product designers. So, more than any professional prerequisite, what counts is being able to read architectural plans and having a good grasp of electrical concepts. Whatever you study or whatever job you do today, there's no reason you can't become a lighting designer.

3- Is there a degree for the profession? What are the options for education?

Not yet. As far as I know, there's no 4-year, bachelor's-level programme, either abroad or in Türkiye. But there are 2-year master's programmes dedicated to “architectural lighting design”. For the programmes and their details, look at this micro site: https://pldaeducation.wikispaces.com/05.+LD+Programs PLDA (Professional Lighting Designers' Association), which built the site, closed in April 2014, but I'd say the site is still up to date. If new programmes have been added in the last 3 years, it's up to you to find them.

Personally, I know the teachers who run the programmes and many of their graduates, so I can recommend Parsons in New York, KTH in Sweden and Wismar in Germany. Let me add that Wismar is the most affordable (both for school fees and for living costs). In fact, if you're saying you can't go abroad for 2 years, Wismar now also runs a distance programme. It can be an option if you're a professional who wants to train in this field. Of course, the cost goes up accordingly.

4- Is there no education in Türkiye?

In Türkiye, lighting has so far mostly been seen as a course under building physics and a field to specialise in. So there's no master's programme in architectural lighting design in Türkiye. Various institutions run courses, some of which also give a certificate.

Note 1: I think that, apart from ATMK, none of these courses is running at the moment.
Note 2: The information at the links may be out of date. Please check the institutions' own websites.

5- What should I read?

Magazines (Türkiye):
Every issue of PLD Türkiye magazine published so far is free to read online. https://issuu.com/pldturkiye You can read Light World magazine here: https://www.joomag.com/en/newsstand/lightworld-sayi-44-m%C3%9Cze-aydinlatmalari/0904802001490695930

Portals (Türkiye):
PLD Türkiye: http://pldturkiye.com/
Lightworld: https://www.lightworld.com.tr/ (no longer published)
Lighting portal: http://www.aydinlatma.gen.tr/
LED portal: http://www.ledportali.com/ (inactive since 2019)

Magazines (international):
PLD Magazine: https://pld-m.com/en/about-pld/ (stopped publishing in 2018)
Arc Magazine: https://issuu.com/mondiale
Lighting Magazine: http://www.lighting-magazine.com/ (stopped publishing in 2019)

Portals (international):
PLD: https://pld-m.com/en/ (stopped publishing in 2018)
Mondo Arc: http://www.arc-magazine.com/
Lux Review: http://luxreview.com/ (stopped publishing in 2021)
Arch Lighting: http://www.archlighting.com/ (stopped publishing in 2019)

6- Aren't there any workshops?

This is actually the first thing I recommend to everyone who contacts me. You should attend the Lights in Alingsas Workshop. Full stop. It was a turning point for me. I'm sure it was for everyone who took part, too. If you don't like it, at worst you'll find out by the shortest route that this job isn't for you. I could talk for hours about the workshop, held since 2000 in a small Swedish town of 30,000 people. But I already wrote about it at length. You can read it here: http://pldturkiye.com/plda-atolye-calismasi-workshop-nedir/ I took part in 2007, but I don't think it has lost any of its quality. I strongly recommend it.

7- You've gone through it point by point, but where do we start?

That depends on where you are and what you can afford.
I can describe what I see as the ideal case, or what I'd wish for you.

For the ideal case, I assume you're a student right now.

  • Attend the Alingsas Workshop.
  • Finish your degree and enrol in a master's programme that fits your budget.
  • Until you graduate, an internship at an architectural lighting design office in Türkiye would also be very good. For architectural lighting design firms: http://pldturkiye.com/firmalar/aydinlatma-tasarimi-danismanligi/
  • When you finish your master's, try to find a job abroad first.
  • Come back with the discipline, knowledge and experience of a lighting design office abroad, and open your own office in Türkiye 5 to 10 years later (again, the timing is up to you). That completes the ideal cycle.

Every other case needs to be looked at on its own.

But let's say (another case I see often) you're working as a professional in another field right now, and your heart is set on becoming a “lighting designer”. Or you think it is. First of all, whoever you are, I'll say it again: attend the Alingsas Workshop.

After that, to build your skills, you can get a first grounding through programmes such as the ATMK course. To do lighting calculations, you can learn Dialux on your own and also attend training programmes. (Search Google for: Dialux training) With this knowledge, your chances are clearly much better when you apply for a job at an architectural lighting design office. Or you can apply to the project departments of companies that manufacture in Türkiye or distribute various brands. In this period, the step before you go independent, you get to know many types of technical product up close and to experience the project phases of architectural lighting design. Again, with the timing up to you, 5 to 10 years later you can open your own office or work at another architectural lighting design office.

To say it again: in this post I set becoming an “independent” architectural lighting designer as the ultimate goal. That in no way makes a designer who falls outside it (one who works for a manufacturer or a distributor) any less of a designer. Being independent only means being free of all the other concerns (sales, profit, stock, product range, and so on and so on). Let me link the old post again: http://pldturkiye.com/bagimsiz-aydinlatma-tasarimi/

I hope this is enough for the general picture.
If anything is missing or wrong, I apologise in advance.
I look forward to your comments and questions.

Emre Güneş