Going Green on the Web

The web-based Greenpages is an open-access sustainability forum, blog and general source of information for lighting designers and affiliated stakeholders hosted by the PLDA (Professional Lighting Designers Association).

The Greenpages was set up by Kevan Shaw, Director of Sustainability for the PLDA in the Summer of 2009. The aim of the Greenpages was and is to provide a method of keeping PLDA members and other interested parties informed about rapidly changing issues and technologies relating to sustainable lighting design.

When Kevan accepted the role of Director of Sustainability for the PLDA, he and the organisation realised that there was a great need to help members develop ‘good practice’ methods for sustainability in their designs and in the day to day running of their offices and businesses.
The decision was made to launch the Greenpages as a web-based tool to allow information to be disseminated in an environmentally friendly manner avoiding the distribution of unnecessary mail and leaflets etc. It was also felt that a web tool would allow for a great degree of flexibility and interaction as well as for the incorporation of change and comment and the greatest possible access to members and other interested parties around the world. The Greenpages site was finally realised by Emre Gunes one of the PLDA members from Turkey.

The launch of the Greenpages reflects industry-wide needs and concerns to embrace sustainability and environmental issues in lighting design together with a realisation that in this field as with in others, knowledge is power. Such developments also reflect moves by the lighting design industry towards a greater level of professionalism and integration with other consultants and professions in terms of design delivery.

So far, apart from the discussion hosted on this website, the vast majority of the content has been compiled and edited by Kevan Shaw himself, which he has been doing alongside his day to day job of running a busy lighting design practice. However Kevan says of the site himself: “The future is open to whatever needs saying by whoever wants to contribute. I will keep working on it as things develop and hopefully whoever takes over from me as Director of Sustainability will do the same. Really the more people who contribute either by sending me stuff or just commenting on what is there the better the resource will be.”

Fellow UK based lighting designers who have commented on the Greenpages include Martin Lupton and Mark Ridler, Directors at BDP Lighting. Both commended the development of the Greenpages and urged others to participate and interact with the website to help enhance this potentially valuable resource.

Currently the majority of content on the site relates specifically to artificial lighting design and technologies. One criticism levelled of the site as it currently stands is that it does not include enough information about natural lighting design. It has been suggested that the contents should be extended to include far more information relating to this, since this would be of vital importance for designers striving to produce future-proof, low energy sustainable schemes.

Natural lighting design is unfortunately an area that is frequently not understood by designers or about which there is a dearth of useful, easily accessible knowledge. In the context of discussion, Martin Lupton revealed that PLDA is developing a two day daylight summit aimed at a wide cross-section of industry professionals such as lighting designers, architects and other engineers, since such skills require a great degree of cross-disciplinary co-ordination and co-operation. This summit forms part of an initiative to provide lighting designers with some of the tools that they need to respond to this challenge and will also be part of a wider campaign to gain global political, professional and public awareness of the benefits of daylight. This event is due to be held in London next year.

Arfon Davies, Associate Director of Arup Lighting agreed with concerns about lack of coverage of daylight design on the Greenpages and continued to comment that throughout the industry press: “There just isn’t enough published about daylight design.”

Those questioned about the Greenpages also felt that the lighting industry as a whole, together with other professional organisations and lighting education and training could do far more to promote the importance of natural lighting design. Arfon suggested the idea of developing a specific stand alone natural lighting design module at a design institution such as UCL’s Bartlett in London or similar. This type of module could be made relevant to those currently working as designers in the industry but who have missed out on natural lighting as part of their education.

“Daylight has big potential to assist the sustainability agenda both in terms of energy and the social and wellbeing aspects. Our view (at Arup) is that all projects should be designed for daylight first, and electric lighting added later to supplement daylight. Until we do this it will be impossible for us to make significant reductions in energy consumption. One thing I think that could push the daylighting agenda forward is for somebody to setup a ‘Daylight Wiki’ and operate it as an open wiki (like Wikipedia), and invite a load of experts to contribute and let it go.”

Overall the Greenpages have been well received and are a bold and significant start, mostly produced by just one person. Let this article be a call for comment on and contribution to them and any of the above. We need to develop more such initiatives for designers and all stakeholders to learn about sustainable lighting design.

www.greenpages.pld-a.org