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Humanizing Light
Cultural Anthropology via Light and Color
Speaker
Lighting possesses the ability to create environments that respond to the emotional and psychological needs of individuals, thereby profoundly impacting their overall experience. Creating empathetic, culturally rooted spaces fosters engagement, belonging, and civic pride. In an evolving world that is constantly getting flatter, preserving historical contexts and unique cultural significance is essential. From lighting villages in India to designing environments in New York City or navigating the complexities of the Middle East, balancing regional differences and globalisation is a persistent challenge.
While certain elements, like the human physiological response to light, remain consistent cross-culturally, others, such as climate or religious traditions, vary immensely. Cultural attitudes towards light affects our preferences towards the density or intensity of light as well as our attitudes towards color. This can be seen through our perceptions of black, white, and gray, darkness and light, and the symbolic dualities they represent across different cultures. For instance, while light symbolizes wisdom in many cultures, nothingness or darkness is essential for attaining enlightenment in Zen and Buddhist meditation. By weaving narratives into the lighting of public spaces, shared experiences that strengthen the civic fabric and cultural identity can be created.
Abhay Wadhwa will make a presentation which will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.
Speaker
Abhay Wadhwa
Abhay Wadhwa, founder and design principal of AWA Lighting Designers, sees lighting beyond its conventional purpose. Here, he crafts a story using lighting design and technology to create moments of experience, which factor into the psyche and emotions of those who work, live, or visit the spaces designed by AWA. While doing so, he is seeking innovative solutions that challenge convention while augmenting the integrity of the architects’ vision. In doing so, pragmatic lighting design nestles comfortably with artistry.
He has served as an adjunct professor for the Graduate Lighting Design Program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s (RPI), a highly respected Lighting Research Center, from 2003 to date. He is also the author of Contextualizing Light. Abhay founded AWA Lighting Designers in 2002 and has been quietly focused on questioning the lighting zeitgeist ever since. Based in New York City, he works extensively with the world’s leading architecture and design firms in the fields of commercial and mixed-use developments, urban planning, transportation, infrastructure, hospitality and healthcare globally.
He is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, educator, and author of numerous advanced light engineering and cultural lighting articles. He has worked with the United Nations Foundation on projects that address issues that marginalize many of the world’s population. He was invited to work with the Rural Haiti Project and Ethiopia’s Mary Joy Aid Through Development to improve the infrastructure, and in turn, the lives of its residents.
