Urban Light and Natural light in Western Australia2025.10.28 – 11.01 Hongna Chen + Puyu Wu This lighting survey investigates the influence of Western Australia’s local culture and natural landscape on its lighting environment, exploring whether its relative remoteness has led to distinctive approaches in lighting design. For this purpose, field investigations were conducted in Perth and its surrounding natural areas. ■ Perth’s Geographic LocationPerth is a city in Western Australia and is often described as the world’s most isolated major city. This characterization stems from its extreme remoteness with the Indian Ocean to the west, vast outback deserts to the east, and long distances from other major cities—about 4,000 km from Darwin, 2,700 km from Adelaide, and over 3,000 km from eastern cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. The unique nightscape of such a “remote” city is the central focus of this survey. ■ Panoramic Night ViewTo take in the city’s nightscape from above, we chose King’s Park, the largest park in Perth. The park is a popular recreational spot for locals. On our way up, we saw many people hiking, picnicking, and sunbathing. We joined them at the hilltop to await nightfall. From Kings Park, Perth’s nighttime view clearly reveals the structure of the city’s lighting. The CBD skyline is defined by clusters of bright, cool-white light from office towers, while the streets below form a grid of warmer, yellow streetlights. The Swan River is faintly outlined by ambient…

Sydney Lighting Survey: How Sydney CBD glows at night 2019.09.19 – 2019.09.21　 Momoko Muraoka + Sunyoung Hwang Sydney, a capital city of New South Wales is famous for its beautiful beaches and iconic Opera House. It makes it to the most populous city of Australia with more than 5.2million population. The climate of Sydney is subtropical with no extreme seasonal differences. Highly saturated clear blue sky, lush greeneries, beautiful waterscape, and iconic Opera House – Sydney is the city that has it all. It is quite a lovely place to be and usually makes it to the top rankings for the most liveable cities in the world. This time, Lighting Detectives flew to Sydney to find out how it lights up at night as a famous tourist destination. The survey focuses on the Sydney CBD (Central Business District) area. When looked down from the Sydney Observatory, the city did not have much of the façade lighting. Many of the buildings were glowing with their interior lights. There were not much of RGB lights nor media facade light except few areas of Darling Harbour and Pitt Street, the shopping district. The shot taken from North Sydney to have an overall view of Sydney CBD with iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge shows this more clearly. Sydney seemed rather classic with a warm tone of lighting on these iconic features and minimum architectural lights. Interview with the city of Sydney Interview with…

Global Nightscape survey in Melbourne 2014.11.11-11.15　　Misuzu Nakamura+Haruka Sakoda　 For 4 years running, Melbourne has been chosen as the best place in the world to live. City planning has successfully focused on public space to build one of the world’s leading and charming cities. The cityscape is harmonious balance of old and new buildings. Main avenues lined with trees and lampposts are beautifully maintained, along with smaller alleyways, and even the waterfront along the river flowing through the middle of the city is carefully planned. We surveyed the Melbourne nightscape in search of the secret to its coziness. We can clearly feel the difference of lighting atmosphere between CBD area which is occupied with blacked-out buildings and surrounding local area which is covered by twinkling warm-colored street lights, when we look down from “Eureka Sky Deck”. The lighting plan of the city seems to have intent to differentiate business districts and cozy alleyways, using different color temperature as public lights. The waterfront area was well-maintained with designed pole lights and façade lighting from the surroundings, but some of tree lightings were by glaring spotlights. Many people were enjoying their walk along the river. We found a lot of “catenary downlights” in the city. Instead of pole lighting, catenaries covered large squares, wide intersections and narrow pathway between the building. When the night falls, the downlights looked like a starry sky. As we can see that so many people were gathering at…

The beautiful nightscape along the bayside is the pride of this tourist town. Picking up momentum from the 2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney is again shifting gears. The waterside at night is full of postcard type scenery with places to see and be seen. The view is rich, as Sydney is surrounded by water. The view from Mrs. Macquaries Point reveals the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge in one glance. Transparent globes mounted on lampposts unify the waterfront in front of the Opera House. The weekends in front of the Opera House are festive with colored lighting and visitors gathering under tents.