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An early, temporal, community-engaged project In 1999 Leni was offered an opportunity to blend environmental artwork and social engagement. Site specificity is an approach that landscape architects and public artists use to make a space into a place. Design factors include the site's histories, the culture, geography, and other threads. Leni's background as a community organizer and lighting designer merged for Water Above Water. "A sea of luminous blue, green and aquamarine floodlighting dissolved and animated the stern, hand-hewn stone of the aqueduct's buttresses and arches." — Architectural Review (UK)

The 8th International Light Symposium: Re-thinking Lighting Design in a Sustainable Future in Copenhagen, Denmark, met in September 2022. The conference proceedings have been published and are open source: IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. I was honored to co-write with Philip Ross. We presented in the Urban Lighting and Sustainability track. Read the full text article below or online: Envisioning Community Engagement in Smart Lighting Design. Key words, community and smart lighting may seem like an oxymoron. However we prove not. Urban lighting is a relatively new discipline for study and practice. Here are a few highlighted articles for my urban lighting and nighttime design followers: Lighting inequality in an urban context: design approach and case studies, the authors are excellent community-based lighting practitioners. This presentation The effect of non-uniform urban illumination upon pedestrians' alertness and sense of safety studies an exciting topic that, in my mind, calls for further study. Fortunately, here is a new study for companion and comparison reading, Planning Artificial Light at Night for Pedestrian Visual Diversity in Public Spaces, published January 12, 2023. There are many other articles that address outdoor, public lighting - theory and practice - that you should take the time to read. For readers who are contemplating a masters in lighting design, take a look at this year’s conference organizer, the Lighting Design Lab at Aalborg University Copenhagen

The solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 brought the sun and moon’s powerful relationship to the fore. That day their universal relationship dramatically changed. The moon’s opaque form blocked the Sun’s fiery gases casting a sweeping shadow, not by night, the moon’s perceived temporal home, but by day. During a solar eclipse, the Earth’s water bodies create spring tides. Watch the video to learn about tidal phenomena caused by the dance of these heavenly bodies. Sun...and Moon, a Public Art Proposal Conceptual Design for a Bascule Bridge E. Clay Shaw Jr. Bridge, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida To recap the dynamic lighting described in the video... Envision the glow of sunset and sunrise colors suffusing the bridge surfaces. Imagine shades of blue ebbing and rising on the unique piers synchronized with the moment's tidal states. There are two high and low tides per day: spring and neap. They vary in intensity based on the relative position of the moon & sun. King tides are amplified spring tides. Learn more in the video. Under the crossing, on land, immersive, illuminated environments would attract visitors, residents and local workers to play in massive color swathes or simply to rest on benches. THREE MAIN POINTS Connection: For residents of South Florida, the connection to nature, water, wildlife, plants, and sun is ever-present. The proposed Everyone Under the Sun... and Moon installation seeks to amplify this relationship through large-scale visual representation. Site-Specifc: Luminous color displays will be triggered by tidal states and relevant calendars - real-time and site-specific. People: Light Projects’ standard methodology includes not only award-winning, aesthetic, bridge lighting design but also community and stakeholder engagement.

NightSeeing™ aims to transform cities into welcoming, inspiring, inclusive places...at night Are your planning efforts day-focused? What about the night? Read on for the Myrtle Beach case study. Scroll down to download the report with photos to learn more. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is planning and designing an Arts and Innovation District. Nighttime designer and urban lighting consultant, Leni Schwendinger was commissioned by the Myrtle Beach Downtown Alliance (MBDA) to conduct her NightSeeing™️ methodology to address nighttime and lighting issues and to set objectives for the future. Through close collaboration with MBDA, a customized program was delivered. This included a LightWalk, an invited workshop, a stakeholder Q&A, and an open public presentation. Stakeholders attended Leni’s talk and LightWalk tour where they experienced a fresh perspective on positive and negatively perceived night spaces, their social and physical conditions, and lighting atmospheres. The purpose was to provide a qualitative experience with a vision of the future in mind. Attendees included the Myrtle Beach Mayor, City Council, and City Operations staff. Small business owners and managers participated. Also in attendance were arts and culture representatives such as Coastal Carolina University. Vocabulary and the language of light were expanded to describe how the after-dusk vitalized district would look and feel. As a baseline, during the Envisioning Workshop, attendees identified three objectives for the District’s nighttime design. Identifiable pathways for walking and bikeways that emphasize connection A canvas of light with focal points designed with historic characteristics and innovative features Transformable fun spaces that welcome An enthusiastic community cohort was created through active learning, collective walking, and workshopping. A launch point has been established for a nighttime masterplan to improve the future Arts & Innovation District in Myrtle Beach.

2023 update from Leni Schwendinger: I just returned from the Barcelona Smart City World Expo Congress. The premier Smart City conference established in 2011. The principles shared in this article, first published by Urban Design Forum March 27, 2019, remains relevant. And now, more than ever, the proposed 'Responsively Lit Outdoor Patch', a pilot that combines connected lighting, community co-design and capacity building is critically needed to test community-based smart lighting outcomes. It is time cities consider a range of criteria – user equity, economic viability, and health – and light for nighttime design and planning initiatives. By Leni Schwendinger, with Daleana Vega Martinez and Fatima Terin As the sun sets, 9-to-5’rs leave their place of work. By 11:00pm clubbers are prowling the city and third shift workers are just starting their “day.” With night activities and flexible working hours increasingly redefining urban experience, greater emphasis should be focused on the after-dark environment. Which transformational public palettes – design, policy, zoning – can successfully enlarge New York City public space inhabitation and work opportunities? Building upon the recently formed NYC Mayor’s Office of Nightlife with its appointed Night Mayor, let’s shine a laser on our “city that never sleeps” to improve the nighttime experience. Methodologies should include: the creation of integrated guidelines for strategic and operational nighttime design, and identification of resources required for this game-altering endeavor. In sum, empower the private and public sectors to consider placemaking methods for vibrant nighttimes. Enhancements to nighttime in cities flow from three main objectives: enhancing economic vitality, improving public health, and increasing safety and welcome. With these pillars in mind, nighttime design must be rooted in community-engagement methodologies while collaborating with municipal agencies and influencing policy. • Economy: Night industries such as dining and entertainment, as well as transportation/transit, medical and sanitation, employ thousands of people and draw tourists and residents to enrich commercial enterprise. Lighting best-practice techniques, such as connective, “smart”, technologies, save city funds. • Public Health: Walkability is a new standard for city streetscape design. Wayfinding increases intuitive navigation. Inspiring pocket parks, plazas and seating optimized for after-dark usage encourage a mix of exercise and social interaction. • Welcome and safety: City-wide strategies such as Vision Zero and increased mobility options establish safer streets. Incorporating social research and enabling tactical approaches such as responsive lighting pilots develop a sense of “ownership” and pride. Temporally-based policy to grapple with alcohol and drug-related violence is another tool for safer nights New York City has joined other global cities such as London, Sydney and Amsterdam with its recently passed Local Law 2017-178, amending the City Charter to establish an office of nightlife and advisory board. Internationally, such programs initially focus on quality of life issues arising from liquor consumption and “noise” and, on the positive side, the value of live music and performance. If the NYC program follows the best practice trajectory in other cities, the next step will be a focus on culture, expanding scope to overall night planning and design opportunities that affect everyday life in our city after-dark. It is time to re-draw city design visions to include the hours of darkness. This is an invitation to urbanists who believe in places that are welcoming, heterogeneous and inclusive from dusk to dawn. Let’s add “nighttime overlay” to the language of city planning. Leni Schwendinger is a published, award-winning authority on issues of city lighting. With over 20 years of worldwide experience, she has created illuminated environments at major infrastructure sites such as subways and bridges. Currently, she is directing a startup, the International Nighttime Design Initiative. This proposal was written in collaboration with Daleana Vega Martinez and Fatima Terin of the International Nighttime Design Initiative.

By Audrey Wachs Additional reporting by Sukjong Hong Intro by Leni Schwendinger I ❤️ the #NYC outdoor restaurants and worked on typologies with AIA New York | Center for Architecture. Before that, the early post-pandemic nights were so intriguing that Curbed and New York Magazine invited me to contribute to their March 2021 tribute to the pandemic. See my photo collage of the West Village sparkling streeteries (Graphic by #FatimaTerin) Many thanks to Sukjong Hong and Audrey Wachs Art: Photography by Leni Schwendinger/Graphic Design by Fatima Terin A year after New York City went into lockdown, COVID-19 has claimed the lives of more than 30,000 of its residents. The tragedy’s scale has made it difficult to comprehend the private griefs so many of us have experienced: the million heartbreaks of lost friends, lost livelihoods, lost neighborhood fixtures, lost senses of belonging. Instead of proposing a grand permanent memorial, we asked a wide range of New Yorkers about the moments from the pandemic that stood out to them and how they would want those experiences to be commemorated. In response, a selection of architects and artists translated those memories into proposals for temporary installations. We imposed no budget limit and no restrictions: The result could be a sculpture, a mural, a pavilion, a song — anything that could become part of the streetscape for a while. Presented here is one of 15 concepts submitted by architects, designers, artists, and composers; the rest will appear over the course of this week. Client: Kalkin Narvilas Restaurateur, Saggio and Uptown Garrison in Washington Heights, Cent’Anni in Crown Heights, and Midwood Flats in Flatbush. Kalkin Narvilas: I have restaurants I like to think that have soul. I’m not shooting for a Michelin star. I’m not a chef. It’s just the overall kind of community and clubhouse and neighborhood place where people come to celebrate and to meet and to be social, which is why I was very scared when it hit the fan. And I was in disbelief in the beginning. I literally was like, ‘Ha! Come and close me. I’d like to see that.’ And then, before you know it, we were delivery-only starting March 16th. I was facing the loss of my entire life’s work, and I don’t have a degree or something that I can go look for a job. I would have to start from scratch again. We closed March 28th and I reopened the Uptown Garrison for coffee the very end of April. And then, by the first week in May, I had all four places open. So the first round of pivots were at the end of June. They let us have that outdoor seating. So now we’re like a brick and mortar food truck. We’re selling branded Dram cans, canning our own cocktails, we have pomme frites in the wax cone things with dipping sauces, we have little sliders. We started doing a CSA box with one of our farms that we used to work with that we put out in the window… Then winter came and we had to pivot again. And I was always afraid of it. But my wait staff, my bartenders, my baristas, everybody was a unicorn. People that were waiters now became baristas, and learned how to be bartenders. It was really incredible. I started looking into these igloos that I saw on the Upper West Side before it was even that cold. And we made them as nice as we could. And I was like, all right, let’s give people an experience. I came up with the idea of doing s’mores. I have a pastry chef on my team that was like, ‘Hey, I can make the marshmallows.’ So we had the s’mores with a raspberry and a vanilla and a maple tahini marshmallow. It’s like the cream has risen to the top for me; the people that have been with me fighting this fight and adjusting with me and and trusting me and moving forward… All my places are like my children. I’ll be laughing when this pandemic’s over and I have my life, that’s my victory. And I have people now that I could focus on and I could give my love to; I’m not distracted anymore. Lighting Designer: Leni Schwendinger As an urban lighting and nighttime designer, Leni Schwendinger has a sharp eye for atmosphere. She came away from Kalkin Narvilas’s story with a sense of the difficulty he had adapting his business to fluctuating COVID positivity rates as well as the city’s game of red light, green light with outdoor dining. It made her think, she said, of her own relationship to streeteries, the provisional and often stylish partitioned patios that restaurateurs like Narvilas have built on sidewalks and reclaimed parking spaces. She started photographing the streeteries in October. “I was fascinated by the workmen in the street pounding two-by-fours together with openings and doors, building right in the street,” Schwendinger said. “And then the lights appeared. I was tickled by what I saw.” Schwendinger said she walked the blocks near her home in the West Village many nights just to see the outdoor setups, which ranged from ad hoc to sophisticated. “I was interested in how restaurant owners were draping the lights, and how they were using things like ambient heaters for light. I was observing what colors people were using or not using. The variety of applications, the inventiveness: Are we stretching the string [lights]? Are we draping it? Was it overhead? Is it on the window?” She brought these questions to bear on the lighting schemes she captured for Narvilas’s memorial, which features an illustrated cityscape overlaid onto a collage of photographs from her walks. In the graphic, Schwendinger and her collaborator, urban designer Fatima Terin, drew parallels between Narvilas’s pivots to keep his restaurants viable and the role of improvised lighting schemes in defining the mood of DIY outdoor dining rooms. The graphic moves from darkness at the bottom to lightness at the top, a reflection of Narvalis’s move from doubt and financial uncertainty to solutions like his daring menu experiments that have kept his businesses afloat. If Narvilas is on board, she imagines linking the collage to a QR code on the menu. “Diners would get the image as a hors d’oeuvre,” Schwendinger said. “We felt passionate about creating an image that both mirrors the experience of this year and is a representation of his ingenuity.” Read more about Neighborhood Commons....

Nightseeing™ during the Smart City Expo was hosted by CICAT, the Catalan Lighting Cluster. Andrea Padre, CICAT Manager describes the unique approach for Urban Glow: Leni led an exclusive NightSeeing™ through the heart of Barcelona, offering an unparalleled opportunity to explore the city's unique urban lighting landscape. Her profound understanding of light and darkness in urban environments was shared during the walk. This experience aimed to inspire participants to view neighborhoods after sunset as creative and dynamic spaces, with a particular focus on smart lighting through an urban design lens. We welcome you to the URBAN GLOW. Boston, Massachusetts NIGHTSEEING™ BOSTON BY NIGHT Boston Lights is a non-profit association dedicated to outdoor lighting in the Boston area. Leni Schwendinger convened an invited NightSeeing™ LightWalk and a keynote speech during the bi-annual Light Boston Expo on October 3rd and 4th. Her Light Talk focused on international illumination masterplans. Boston's current district plans neglect night and lighting. The intent was to strengthen designers' responses to the city plans. The LightWalk was high spirited. Attendees, lighting designers and city officials, debated public, private, and found light, and other urban lighting frameworks. " We were pleased to have Leni contribute to the lighting dialogue with the City of Boston. LIGHT Boston encourages the City's new mission to elevate the city's night-time economy visibility." — Keith Yancey, President of LIGHT Boston RESOURCES: Urban Nighttime Design: Bridging the Gap Between Community and Technology Envisioning Community Engagement in Smart Lighting Design

For a generation, an innovative public art piece welcomed guests to Liberty Science Center. Here we preserve the legacy of the monumental light sculpture A Spatial Portrait, by artist Leni Schwendinger. Title: A Spatial Portrait Artist: Leni Schwendinger Location: Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, NJ Dates: 2007 - 2023 Future generations can continue to experience A Spatial Portrait through this dynamic video: About the artwork: In 2006, artist Leni Schwendinger won a commission from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts to create a public sculpture for Liberty Science Center’s new wing. A Spatial Portrait debuted with the opening of LSC’s entrance hall (later renamed PSE&G Court) in 2007. Working with LSC’s curator and architect, Schwendinger sited A Spatial Portrait, a monumental, suspended, interactive sculpture eleven feet above the floor in the mid-space of the hall. This pendant of 120 strands of LEDs, each 10 feet long, created a dazzling show of light in real time. It captured the movement of visitors as they circulated below, creating an ever-changing three-dimensional “spatial portrait” of the room. From multiple positions in the hall, sensors and video cameras tracked visitors’ movements. Through digital processing and switching, this information was then translated and displayed on a rectangular spatial field. The information displayed in the LED array consisted of the following programming concepts— each offering a different interpretation of the movement in the hall: The figurative concept marked the entry of visitors. Visitors’ colors, shapes, and movements were captured by a video camera at a designated area close to the main entrance. This visual information was pixilated, reassembled, and fed into the LED array—and was viewable from multiple vantage points in the room. Like a three-dimensional mirror of light, the interacting visitors viewed a low-resolution depiction of their actions displayed in real-time. The diagrammatic concept celebrated the passing of time and movement. Cameras positioned around the LED array tracked visitors’ presence throughout the monitored area. As people moved through the space, their progress was tracked—drawn into the spatial field above and represented in two preselected colors, orange and white. Vivid bursts of color were displayed in the LED array when people crossed paths during a set period. About the artist: Leni Schwendinger Light Projects LTD has a history of developing unique methods fusing technical innovations and imaginative artistry to shape luminous environments using advanced sensing and computing technologies–translated and displayed through the medium of light.

Iridescent Waves Beautiful lighting promotes a feeling of safety, care, and identity. The Queens Parking Garage and Community Space east façade provides a large-scale canvas for illumination. In 2021, clients and designers determined that the parking garage’s massive façade would contribute a vibrant moment for vehicular viewers traversing the adjacent highway spaghetti and a point of focus for residential viewers from afar. The design team conducted a series of technical, spatial, and budgeting exercises to implement the final concept in 2023. Creating luminous color and dynamic displays in the public realm is a Leni Schwendinger Light Projects specialty. KEY DESIGN TIP Implementation for urban scale, high concept projects involves a range of creative and practical processes starting with a feasible imaginary. Fast forward to installation, which requires vigilant cross-disciplinary teams, accurate budgeting, and specification of technical (products and systems. For compelling light artforms, after installation, the project is thrust back into the realm of the imagination…artist and designers collaborating with electricians to focus luminaires, and the commissioning programmer to create a sequential composition. Finally, a public realm project may require several approvals. Good Luck! Photos: Mikaela Baird upLIGHT DESIGNED 2021 | OPENED 2023 During the evening hours, the Queens Parking Garage reflects ever-changing hues extrapolated from the scattered light effect associated with butterfly wings and bird feathers. The sequence plays in a loop from sunset until midnight. This programmed composition is bookended by static white to provide “white space on the page.” Bookending provides a beginning and end to focus the viewer’s attention on the colorful, dynamic layers of light in between. The owner requested a slow transformation of color. This video sample is accelerated for your screen viewing. Location: Parking Garage and Community Center, Queens, New York City Owner: NYC Department of Transportation Architects: Urbahn Architects, Marvel Design Lighting Design: Leni Schwendinger Light Projects

The architectural and urban design professions are day-biased, even as night is a full 50% of the world’s time. My years of work as an urban lighting designer have expanded to propose an interdisciplinary awareness of night as place. Nighttime design is a long overdue area of study and implementation. Holistically applied it could directly affect physical -and mental –health, and safety, for “essential” nightshift workers by focusing on legibility and late-night services. In this paper, the various categories of night work are used: shift-work is an overall term to differentiate from the normative day-shift. Other terms are, for example, night-shift, second-shift, third-shift and graveyard shift. Second (or evening) shift starts around 2 to 6 p.m. and ends between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. Night-shift (or third or graveyard) starts around 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and ends around 5 to 8 a.m. This think piece targets issues that have existed before and during the pandemic. However, because of the pandemic, I posit that a relevant synergy between “essential” “worker” and “night” remain cynically unaddressed. While the city and state of New York has lauded (and applauded) those of us who work tirelessly to keep the wheels of society and commerce turning. At the same time, it is disingenuous to avoid consideration of public-space working conditions that are critical to our key workers, that is, the hours between dusk and dawn. Why is this important? From the outset, night-shift workers’ conditions are inequitable. Per U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 18% of the 11-million service workers in the protective, food, and cleaning sectors work the evening and night shifts. And, significantly, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health states that “Both shift work and long work hours have been associated with health and safety risks.” Additionally, shift work is associated with diet-related chronic conditions such as obesity and cardiovascular disease, per “Influences on Dietary Choices during Day versus Night Shift in Shift Workers” (from Nutrients 2017). These are but two salient studies. Thus, re-contextualizing night-space as a workplace, urban design opportunities arise for imaginative and functional solutions in regard to transportation (transit and micro-mobility), retail open and closing hours, street design and streetscape amenities, and availability of nighttime services, to name a few. Further to understanding the plight of the graveyard shift population, the seminal 2009 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 30-page document, “Psychological and Social Support for Essential Service Workers During an Influenza Pandemic” addresses both the psychological and social needs of essential service workers during a pandemic. The authors define these workers to include “healthcare workers, public health workers, first-responder organizations, and employees of public utilities, sanitation, transportation, and food and medicine supply- chain companies.” All of these key workers are likely to be employed on second and third -shift work. Equity issues are involved, as the New York State essential-worker definition expands upon the CDC’s, and includes not only the professional classes but also those who take care of our mail and shipping, laundromats, building cleaning and maintenance, childcare services and warehouse jobs. All of these roles have nighttime shifts, and are so-called “low-skilled” or blue collar. UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute’s Dr. Carole Lieberman, indicates that “Night shift workers begin to feel like second-class citizens. They begin to feel invisible.” There is a diagnosis for those who cannot adjust to changes in the sleep/wake cycle, or circadian rhythm: Shift Work Disorder. Symptoms include sleepiness, often coupled with insomnia and depression. In addition to the individual Disorder symptoms, described above, extrinsic, gender-based, night-space brutality is a facet of daily life for women. Design, from a harm reduction point of view, can begin to address the darkened work and mobility environment, as briefly enumerated below. International Labour Organization co-authored with UN Women’s “Handbook: Addressing violence and harassment against women in the world of work”, repeatedly enumerates that traversing the city to and from home and transit, is dangerous for women, especially in regard to sexual harassment and assault, “particularly affecting women working shifts and having to travel by foot or public transport in the dark or late at night. Preventative actions by local authorities – such as improving street lighting or the positioning of bus stops – can have a beneficial impact on making women’s, as well as men’s, lives safer when they commute to work.” Design Solutions: We suggest that districts with a preponderance of shift workers and neighborhoods with night work sites, such as hospitals, transportation and transit hubs and warehouses be designated night zones in order to benefit from night-focused interdisciplinary design solutions. For example, consider the northeast section of New York City’s Bronx, a future recipient of a Metro-north transit line. This district contains a preponderance of 24-hour work sites, including more than nine hospitals, one of the largest food distribution centers in the world, and nearby, the George Washington Bridge Bus Station with connections for transit riders during the dark morning and evening hours, as well as 24-hour drivers starting and returning to the Bus Station itself. Fearful nighttime conditions can be ameliorated and turned positive with creative design collaboration inclusive of architectural disciplines, landscape, illumination, wayfinding and security. New approaches to nighttime design would focus on lighting and legibility for first and last mile transit corridors, enhanced bus stops for late night ridership needs, and public space amenities for shift workers adjacent to workspaces. Typical design tactics, starting with existing conditions studies are relevant. For example, a Shades of Night analysis, which is a framework to measure human activity in relation to environmental changes such as open-shut hours and lighting should be undertaken to characterize after-dark populations, their movement and needs. Consultant teams for nighttime design must be assembled to address shortcomings of the district. Which consultants can address safe meeting places? How about availability of food purveyors, including food trucks? Are night transit options that relate to local worksites in place? What about after-dark cultural offerings and protected public spaces, such as all-night libraries? These are experts in addition to the ones already mentioned, such as those well versed in permitting, sustainability, community engagement and real estate, among others. For rapidity, tactical urban and lighting solutions could be devised in the form of measurable pilots that would be planned as participatory exercises that concurrently build community capacity in the self-same districts. Longer term, smart technologies are available to enhance amenities and wayfinding. Let’s value essential, heretofore invisible, shift-workers as they work and traverse the dark city by establishing welcoming, safe public spaces.