Light talk: Night walk

Light is the stuff of everyday life. Everything we do either happens in light or in darkness.

Light is crucial as both enabler and infrastructure and has a growing profile in a range of discussions, from aesthetics and city branding to wellbeing, energy efficiency and health and safety. Despite this centrality for social life, there has been little research into the role light plays in how we interact after dusk. We also lack a language of light, there is no easy way of talking about how particular lighting arrangement affect how we feel in certain environments.

This event comprises two elements – a talk on light as material and how it is embedded into our social life and the cityscapes that surround us (with Configuring Light team), and a group walk around nocturnal Pimlico, where there are still working gas lights, which will examine various layers of light that make up the cityscape and discuss light’s historical and contemporary roles in social/political/cultural/commercial contexts (with Speirs+Major).

The walk will end at St. John’s Smith Square/Lord North Street
(5 min. away from Westminster tube station)

SPEAKERS

‘Configuring Light’ talk -

Dr Joanne Entwistle
Dr Don Slater
Mona Sloane

‘Speirs+Major’ Night walk -

Satu Streatfield
Benz Roos

Image credit: Catarina Heeckt