Night Walk @Singapore Botanic Gardens
Landscape and Parks
2018/10/11 Mayumi Banno＋Sunyoung Hwang ri Goh
Two walks in the month of October with professionals from the landscape and lighting industry. One in the real nature and the other in the concrete jungle!
Group picture at the wrap-up session!
This end of year had us finishing off with 2 walks in the exciting month of October!
We had a walk at Singapore Botanic Gardens where it was the first time that we solely focussed on inviting professionals to participate. Shortly after that, we conducted another Heroes and Villains walk at Marina Bay in conjunction with PLDC Singapore 2018.
Measuring lux levels at the visitor’s entrance
Heroes and Villains review!
On the way to the Bandstand for the Guerilla light-up activity
■Singapore Botanic Gardens Walk
On Thursday 11th October, Lighting Detectives Singapore chapter organised a walk to the only UNESCO World Heritage Site on the sunny island, Singapore Botanic Gardens. Only recently awarded the title in 2015, the garden consists of three lakes, the signature National Orchid Garden and a Rainforest amongst many other attractions. It is also the third garden in the world to be listed as a World Heritage Site.
Landscape and Parks was our theme for the third walk and we wanted to examine what was so different in the lighting environment of the nation’s pride and joy and how the government balances the concern they have for the wildlife in the jungle there.
Invites were sent out via email to many landscape architect teams that work with our members in order to explore a dialogue of a different kind. The response we received was overwhelming; landscape architects from many firms such as Element Design and DPA joined us and even developers from Sentosa Development Corporation and members of the local government board NParks expressed their interest.
We had 16 participants join us for the walk, and 2 of which were from the general public. Walking as one big group, we started with an introduction to Lighting Detectives and some questions to guide the dialogue. We had a guerilla light-up activity at the Bandstand to show the effects of different coloured light and how it can change the mood of a place, followed by a tree uplighting session using torch lights that required more attendee participation. We provided high-powered torchlights and coloured filter paper for them to play around.
Our wrap-up discussion was held at a restaurant, Fusion Spoon, at one of the visitor entrances. It was also our first time to initiate the use o f Facebook event as a platform for the upload and collation of Heroes and Villains pictures with comments. This was highly successful and even allowed for post-event discussions online and created more awareness of our social media presence. It was a fruitful dialogue that provioded insights to the special attention paid to the design and maintenance of the park, and their consideration for the inhabiting wildlife using a dark lighting environment that was also glare-free and consistent in maintenance. Many participants left with appreciative feedback of such an event and assured that they would be keen to participate in our future walks!
