The architecture of light: architectural lighting design concepts and techniques. A textbook of procedures and practices for the architect, interior designer and lighting designer pdfdrive com

LAYER 1: LIGHTING TO CHOREOGRAPH AN EXPERIENCE
To choreograph is to direct movement. In architecture, we find ourselves responsible for encouraging people to flow through space and interact in a specific order. Thus, the application of choreography is simply determining how we want a viewer to move through and interact with our design. Humans are phototropic. We are instinctively drawn to bright surfaces and objects. With this knowledge, we use the power of light to subconsciously convince a person to move toward a specific area just by placing light in that area. When we want to encourage movement or flow, we can resort to blunt methods like signage and directional cues, or we can rely on the subtle, but powerful, human attraction to light.
The practice is as simple as lighting what we want people to move
towards and leaving dark what we want them to move away from. In this manner, we use lighted end-points or goals to move people through a space. We place light at the ends of halls or onto the entrance of a building. We light the far end of a room and we light the coffee table in a gathering area. We find ways to use a single, lighted surface to attract attention where we might previously have illuminated an entire path. In this manner, choreographing attention and flow is
one of the ways we reduce how much light we introduce into a space. For every directed movement that we want, we identify the one surface that when lighted, will encourage that movement. When we want to draw attention and create visual hierarchy, we identify the specific objects that we can light to accomplish this goal. When we combine this specific light placement strategy with our knowledge of the upright nature of human vision, we find that vertical surfaces - walls, partitions, furniture, and art features - are the most effective surfaces for our choreography purposes. Suddenly, we find our space already taking form with visual interest created through identifying which specific vertical surfaces and central elements serve our choreography goals. Although choreography planning is but one layer of five, once applied, we already have a space that is intuitively self-guiding and has a logical flow.
Figure 4.1 Lightin vertical surfaces and objects is an effective means of encouraging people to move towards a specific goal.