At the night of the Shanghai World Expo, the city’s best practice area at the eastern end of the Puxi campus has become beautiful under the lights.

The tulip lights from Lyon, France are slim and patchy; the light with projections makes the shadows of the mother-in-law and the looming insects look like walls; the creative light show leads the aliens through the tulip petals to explore the earth's plot, let people taste A "sweet meal".

The theme of the Shanghai World Expo is “Better City, Better Life”, and the night lights are an integral part of urban life. In a sense, the lighting case of the Best Practice Area of ​​the Expo City provides an ideal model for the future development of urban lighting. Then these cases reflect the development trend of future urban lighting. The author of Xinhua News Agency has recently The question interviewed Chinese and foreign lighting planning and design experts, and asked them to interpret this.

Focus on lighting planning

80% of the public area lighting in the Urban Best Practices Area of ​​the Shanghai World Expo and the architectural lighting of all the joint halls are designed by the Rhône-Alpes region of France.

The Roa area lighting case is also a highlight of the World Expo Best Practice Area. Jin Liang, the person in charge of the case, said that the biggest innovation in this case lies in lighting planning and design. “The city of Lyon in the metro area has been planning lighting since about 20 years ago, but it is still a relatively new concept in China” . He believes that in the future construction of urban lighting systems, it is necessary to introduce the steps of lighting planning.

Taking the light of the urban practice area as an example, the designer first defines the brightness and color temperature of each area, and then finds the main line of the “big garden at night”, whether it is plants, petals, fireflies or other shapes of light. They are all serving the main line of art.

Cobalt is one of the two French companies responsible for the design of the park's lighting, and its head Pierre Philippe Gard explained that their design hopes that when people walk in the practice area, “it is like going back to the country and being in the wheat field. Among them, this is particularly valuable in cities where lights are rampant."

The professor at the Musashino Art University in Japan said that the lighting plan should be considered to be integrated with the urban style. "Lighting planning should be a combination of unique light culture and modern technology formed on the basis of local history, topography, climate and terroir. It should show the unique history and culture of a city under the premise of making better use of local customs and culture. Lifestyle, aesthetic awareness and socio-economic environment."

According to the famous architectural design and urban planner in Chicago, Vojna Lancic believes that the rational planning and careful design of urban lighting is the key to bringing magical charm to the city night. From an aesthetic point of view, “The night of each city is secret. The secret lies in the careful planning and design of the lights, the structure of the city, and the interrelationship between the main water bodies and buildings in the city. When these characteristic urban elements When illuminated by the lights at night, it will transform the city we know during the day into a place full of magical charm."

Using energy-saving technology

With the emergence of the world energy crisis and global warming, "green lighting" has become an important concept in lighting design. Prof. Noodle said: “Green lighting is simply to reduce the use of unnecessary lighting. In the use of lamps, choose products with high energy efficiency, long life and low carbon dioxide emissions. In the future, wind and solar energy can be considered. Clean energy is applied to urban lighting to achieve the goal of green, low carbon and sustainable urban lighting."

Urban best practice area lighting uses energy-saving lamps such as LED lights and solar lights.

Jin Liang said that compared with traditional light sources, they can significantly reduce energy consumption and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which may be widely used in urban lighting in the future. However, he also stressed that there are still some limitations in the use of the two at this stage. For example, the brightness of LED lamps is not as good as that of traditional light sources, and cannot be used in places where the brightness is high. Solar lamps need to be installed with solar panels, which will affect the lamps. Beautiful and so on. He believes that traditional light sources have a lot of energy saving space through some design and technical improvements.

In this regard, the University of London College expert, British Lighting and Lighting Association Vice-President Peter Reynham also shared the same feeling, he said that most of the current British urban lighting systems use traditional light sources, such as most street lights using xenon lights, this Traditional light sources that have been technologically improved are also highly energy efficient.

In addition, experts believe that to reduce energy consumption and achieve green lighting, not only rely on energy-saving lamps, but also to control and manage the lighting system. Jin Liang believes that in the future, urban lighting will become more and more centralized management, and more use of weak electricity technology to control the lighting. Pierre-Philippe Gard believes that when managing urban lighting, the brightness of the lights should be adjusted according to different time periods.

Avoid light pollution

In the past, urban lighting, especially in large and medium-sized cities, focused more on the lighting of the night city with the help of lighting equipment. Experts believe that this practice not only makes the night scenes of the cities monotonous, but also causes serious light pollution and damages the health of residents.

The lighting design of the Urban Best Practices Area is specifically designed to avoid light pollution problems. “All the lights in the practice area are not shot in the sky and will not affect the aviation. In addition, we also take care of the visual comfort of pedestrians and tourists. People walk in the practice area without the glare of lights.” Jin Liang introduced.

At present, the issue of light pollution has attracted enough attention in developed countries. Some countries ban the use of building materials that are prone to light pollution, and some developed countries have enacted legislation to avoid light pollution. For example, depending on the actual conditions of the park, industrial area, residential area and commercial area, the UK has different upper lighting limits.

Derek Porter, lighting design expert at Parsons School of Design in the United States, believes that in order to avoid light pollution and improve light energy efficiency, city leaders and planners should consider the lighting master plan and adjust the lighting requirements according to actual conditions. In addition, everyone needs to act to reduce the damage caused by lighting to themselves and others.