Lighting Hero & Villain of the month is now up!

The largest city in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, has developed into the center of economic activity for the country. The city is in the mists of a huge transformation with new building wherever you turn. We will have to wait and see how the streetscape and lighting environment will be altered. Birds-eye view from the tallest building in the city at the time of survey. Lights from construction　sites all over the city are an undeniable element of the nightscape, but it won’t be long before several skyscrapers begin to dot the skyline of Ho Chi Minh. The principal user of the streets of Ho Chi Minh is the constant stream of motorbikes. Street lighting consists mainly of functional roadway pole lighting and the headlights of these motorbikes. They seem to have forgotten the sidewalks and pedestrian traffic. From restaurants along a main street to the night market and department stores, fluorescent lighting is everywhere. This is Asia before the introduction of LED`s.

Date of Issue: 20 November, 2023-Activity 1 / Night Walk Vol.72 – Sangenjaya & Kyoto（2023.09.26）-Activity 2 / Round Table Discussion vol. 70 – Sangenjaya & Kyoto Review (2023.10.27)-Activity 3 / Visiting Tanteidan in Kozushima-Island (2023.10.17)-Activity 3 / Night Walk in Hong Kong Historic Meet Light @ Hong Kong Island Mid Level (2023.09.05) Night Walk Vol.72: Sangenjaya & Kyoto ～Let’s Go Search for Darkness～2023.09.26　Shinichi Sakaguchi ＋ Tomoya Furukawa＋Ryuji Hatta ＋ Ryuma Shiota＋Noriko Higashi This time, our night walk survey was themed “Exploring the Darkness of the City,” taking us through the green paths of Setagaya in Tokyo and visiting shrines in Kyoto where darkness lingers. Typically, our walks focus on the lights of the city, but this time we decided to take a different approach with the theme “Let’s Search for the Darkness of Tokyo”. While parks, shrines, and cemeteries are places with inherent darkness, we thought there wasn’t much room for discussion. Instead, we focused on Setagaya’s green paths, which are commonly used at night for commuting, school, and jogging. Although these paths are very pleasant during the day and popular for strolls, we wanted to see what the nighttime environment is like, so we divided into three groups to explore. (Noriko Higashi) ■ Group 1: Ikejiri-Ohashi to Sangenjaya The first group walked along the Meguro River Greenway and the Karasuyama River Greenway from Ikejiri-Ohashi to Sangenjaya, which are connected by a single greenway, and we were able to feel the various expressions of the greenways from different…

New development and activity at the fishing port generate energy in Korea’s second largest city, Busan. In sharp contrast with the dark waters, stores with flashy neon signs edge the perimeter of the bay and people sit mesmerized along the beach, staring into the black ocean, as the summer nights slip by. Looking down on the city from Busan Tower. The Jagalchi Market, full of activity and the smell of fresh fish, is flooded with fluorescent light. Long into the night, people enjoy their time along Kwanghalli beach.

City Night Survey : Saitama-Shintoshin 2019.04.11　　Lin Hu + Hikaru Kimura Saitama Shintoshin is a district established around the year 2000. Centered on JR Saitama-Shintoshin Station, it is an intensively structured urban area featuring a variety of functions, including large-scale commercial facilities, a major multi-purpose arena, government office complexes, and hospitals. This survey examined how this planned city has evolved from the perspective of lighting. Nightscape over the heliport from the Saitama Government Office Complex Light Linking Spaces A pedestrian walkway system is installed around Saitama-Shintoshin Station, utilizing an active pedestrian-vehicle separation plan that allows for smooth circulation from the second-floor station gates to various facilities. While the ground level is brightly illuminated by roadway pole lights, the pedestrian walkways feature lower-level lighting such as uplights and footlights—excluding some decorative pole lights in park areas—creating distinct expressions of light for each zone.Saitama-Shintoshin Station is connected to Kita-Yono Station by a walkway spanning approximately 600m. A continuous cantilevered glass canopy allows pedestrians to walk without getting wet in the rain or being stopped by traffic signals. Along this route, there is a straight path of about 100m running parallel to the railway tracks. Here, despite the cantilevered canopy structures being identical—likely due to differing construction phases—the lighting techniques varied across three distinct types. Although the architectural design is similar, the change in lighting methods results in varying levels of brightness depending on the location. While achieving uniformity may seem important, using different…

Night Watching Tour：Oouchijuku Let’s go look at lights on the snow-scape! 2020.02.08- 2020.02.09　Namiko Watanabe + Noriko Higashi In search for a festival of lights in Japan, we headed to the Winter festival at Oouchijuku. Our 19 members headed north from Tokyo towards a fantastical view of snow and the lights of the old villages houses. Looking down on Oouchijuku, we were lucky it started snowing the day before, barely creating a beautiful snowscape Oouchijuku cuisine – Green Onion buckwheat noodles- where we use green onions as our chopsticks Located in South Aizu in Fukushima Prefecture, Oouchijuku prospered as a passing town on route from Nikkou to Wakamatsu in Aizu. It is a beautiful town, designated as an architectural cultural heritage, where cottages with thatched rooves still stand. Our Night-watching tour planning committee, after lots of investigation decided upon this Winter Festival in Oouchijuku. Let us find out if we were able to glimpse the view we were promised! ■Tour Cancelled⁉ The theme of this tour is “Let’s go look at lights on the snow-scape!”. Our goal for this tour was to go see the glimpse of warm light spilling out from cottages buried in the snow or as we like to think “THE Japanese Snow-scape and Cottage lighting”, but sadly this winter was an abnormally warm winter. It had not snowed even a week before the planned date for the tour. A lot of the festivals were cancelled or shrunk…