32|REPORTAJE This is how you can experience light because without light you cannot see anything. If you are doing architectural lighting, for example, it is absolutely essential to perceive what the architects intend. We were discussing this issue in our office a while ago. We hope that we might get a chance to tell people that there is a difference between real lighting designing, about designing with light and the typical colored “blink-blink” that you see in old façade and shopping malls and which has nothing to do with lighting design; it is just “blink-blink”. Tapio Rosenius, lighting designer For me, the light has always been related For me, light has always been about emotion, movement...those kind of things. Today we are going to be talking about light as communicator. Light is information in terms of emotion, experience. A big building block for us humans on this planet. I guess it is a great opportunity for a larger community to become aware of lighting, the importance of it, particularly artificial lighting design as well as daylight lighting design. We are quite a marginal community at the moment, quite small worldwide. So hopefully this year we will widen that community a little bit. Philippe Stanfield, lighting designer There are two kinds of light: sunlight, which dictates, it is like the dictatorship of sunlight, where you have to reveal everything. Then there is another light, which is at nighttime and we manage to get a grip on it and create our own light, put it more in perspective with our own emotions and perceptions and our spirit. Light is spirit. I agree. We are always coming last. Everybody kind of forgets about the lighting designer so I think it is great as a wake-up call. Noriegga Lighting For us, light is the sense that brings harmony to the capricious will of the umbra; it is an oneiric journey through the senses. As designers, light is the raw material we use to cover and transmute our earthly space in order to melt it into the architectural profiles that offer pleasure and rest to the souls thirsty of beauty. For us, in Mexico, lighting design is still a craft. In our workshop, our parameters of design are so special because we try to avoid high volume of projects so we can attend to the details of each one of the projects we work in with an almost artisan patience and care. I hope that in the International Year of Light there will be more exposure of the craft of Lighting Designers and the work we do; acknowledging the level of specialization it requires so it can be taken to the level of profession. We do have several activities planned through the year. We will do the first one jointly with L-RO, an association that, with UNESCO, seeks the recognition of the profession of lighting designer at international level. We are preparing a night of light with the format PechaKucha, on February the 19, with the intention of creating a space for reflection around the recognition of lighting design and the culture of light, creatively and dynamically, with a select group of professionals of lighting and, of course, anyone that feels passionately towards light. The goal of this event is promoting the culture of light and offering our guests a complete view of the profession of lighting designer in Mexico. Ángel Martínez, architect As any architect would, I believe that light is a building material and as such, it has its regulatory and functional requisites but, at the same time, it is a means of expression. I hope it has a publicity effect, so people can understand what the “culture of lighting” is and what are its implications in disciplines such as architecture. I have nothing planned because I think the agenda of activities is still “in construction”. I will be attentive to the events happening in my area. Gustavo Avilés, lighting designer and architect Light is ancestral source of knowledge and survival. In essence, light is the element that allows us to perceive the existential reality that contains us, making it possible for things and space to become manifest. In this way, its function is essentially structural in the