Urban lighting has transformed vastly since Thomas Edison perfected the first electric light bulb. Latest advances include the rollout of digitally controlled LEDs and many novel data- apps accessible with today’s mobile devices. Architects, designers, artists and scientists are using these new systems to revitalise the nightscapes of cities around the globe. TU Munich SuperLux (smart light cities) symposium discussed how beautifully and intelligently urban scenes can be illuminated and activated after dark. www.superlux.org

2. SUPERLUX
Lehrstuhl für Raumkunst und Lichtgestaltung
Prof. Hannelore Deubzer

4. International Light Symposium Introduction
Astrospatial Architecture and Data Cities
Urban Branding
Creating with Smart Light
Project Sunrise
Responsive Urban Environments
Urban Media between Real and Digital Space
SPAXELS® The Art of Swarm Light Shows
Phiips Lighting Headquaters - Lighting at the Workplace
Light Week Munich
Smart Lighting Education
Prof. Hannelore Deubzer
Davina Jackson
Dr. Thomas Schielke
Dr. Vesna Petresin
Prof. Peter Droege
Susanne Seitinger, PhD
Thorsten Bauer
Chris Bruckmeyr
Nuno Galvao
Emre Onur
Alison Ritter and Joachim Ritter
INTERNATIONAL LIGHT SYMPOSIUM
SUPERLUX
Table of Content
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Urban lighting has transformed vastly since Thomas Edison
perfected the first electric light bulb. Latest advances include
the rollout of digitally controlled LEDs and many novel data-
apps accessible with today’s mobile devices. Architects,
designers, artists and scientists are using these new
systems to revitalise the nightscapes of cities around the
globe. TU Munich SuperLux (smart light cities) symposium
will discuss how beautifully and intelligently urban scenes
can be illuminated and activated after dark.
Lighting experts from academia, industry and light
artists will discuss emerging themes in light art, design
and architecture, debating technology and theory. This
symposium is an excellent opportunity for architects, urban
designers and decision-makers to clarify new strategies for
smart lighting in cities.
The symposium is being hosted by Prof. Hannelore Deubzer,
TU Munich’s Chair of Spatial Arts and Lighting Design,
and organised by German light architecture scholars Dr.
Thomas Schielke and Lutz Harrer, with Australian editor
Davina Jackson and Germany-based guest writers for
Jackson’s recent book “SuperLux: Smart Light Art, Design
and Architecture for Cities” (Thames and Hudson, 2015).
Videos will be shown from the recent SuperLux exhibition
at the City of Sydney Customs House. The first symposium
session presents the SuperLux essayists clarifying new eco-
ethics for data cities, urban branding with media facades
and recent advances with light festivals and public light
art. The second session focuses on technologies and the
third session presents case studies by leading international
creative leaders.
Welcome
Prof. Hannelore Deubzer
(Chair LRL, Dean of department of architecture)
International Light Symposium
SuperLux – Smart Light Art, Design & Architecture for
Cities

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Light remains the origin and sustenance of all forms of
life on Earth—but human living is being transformed
by ingenious applications of astrospatial technologies
that were devised to fly to other planets. This century’s
networked architectures of semiconductors, satellites,
scanners and sensors manipulate diverse electromagnetic
frequencies to convert light into unprecedented formats
and contents of data that are destined to inform most
human behaviours in future. Telematics and informatics
are taking our civilisation far beyond the milieu of
modernism enabled by Edison’s 1879 demonstration of
electric incandescence and the transmillennial ‘digital age’
underpinned by portable computers and mobile telephony.
In today’s “electroluminescent era” (Schielke and Jackson,
2015)—humanity’s third major period of lighting technology,
catalysed by semiconductor-enabled RGB LED systems—
we next expect a ubiquitous ‘internet of light’, pulsing
data through buildings, cities, devices and apparel via the
semiconductors which activate LEDs and solar cells (Haas,
2011). Tomorrow’s ultra-fast, high-capacity and energy-
efficient li-fi networks seem destined to transcend wi-fi
and radio telephony as the massively parallel electronic
infrastructure needed to underpin “the new space economy”
(OECD, 2007) and a vast science vision named the Global
Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS: GEO, 2005).
Although ignored by the mainstream media so far, these are
today’s most ambitious intergovernmental visions to reform
the world’s economic and environmental management
systems—and thus our societies and ways of life in future.
Today’s ubiquitous earth observations (EO) movement
updates Buckminster Fuller’s concepts towards auto-
piloting our planet’s complex operations like a “Spaceship
Earth” (Boulding, 1966; Ward, 1967; Fuller, 1968). Exploiting
all flickering frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum,
this satellite-enabled paradigm undermines architecture’s
classical ethos to build static, permanent monuments—and
is driving a new scenario of responsive interactions between
people and environments in relentless flux.
Davina Jackson is a Sydney-based author, editor and
curator, and a visiting research fellow with Goldsmiths
College, University of London. She writes for British and
European publishers on creative applications of technology
in urban contexts and is the editor of SuperLux: Smart
Light Art, Design and Architecture for Cities (Thames and
Hudson, 2015). During the trans-millennial decades, she
was a professor of multi-disciplinary design at the University
of New South Wales, an editor of Architecture Australia, and
a director (with Mary-Anne Kyriakou) of companies which
produced the world’s first three ‘smart light’ festivals in
Sydney and Singapore. She since has edited the world’s
first comprehensive report on the global Earth observations
movement, D_City: Digital Earth, Virtual Nations, Data
Cities (GEO/DCity, 2013) and has curated three exhibitions
on digital-environmental themes with the City of Sydney’s
Customs House information centre. Her next book is a
monograph on Douglas Snelling, a pan-Pacific modernist
architect and designer (Routledge, 2017).
Talk
Davina Jackson
ASTROSPATIAL ARCHITECURE AND DATA CITIES
A new urban ethos from electromagnetic fluxes

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Three decades ago the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank
(HSBC) Headquarters by Norman Foster emerged onto the
architectural seen as an exemplary product of industrial
design. The open layout with its exposed steel structure
generated a powerful corporate identity for the bank. But the
restrained atmosphere of white architectural lighting and the
lack of distinctive façade lighting has lost its attractiveness
aftersunset.Nowthecolorfulanddynamicrelightingpresents
a remarkable example of how an architectural icon has
shifted from a productivist ideology towards a scenographic
image. To the western observer the multicolored light
language may give off a playful impression, but to the local
culture the transformation evokes grandiosity.
Dr.-Ing. Thomas Schielke studied architecture at the
University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany, and now
is an editor at the lighting manufacturer ERCO, where he
leads lighting workshops and is designing an extensive
online guide for architectural lighting. He is a co-author
of the ERCO book „Light Perspectives – between culture
and technology“, has published numerous articles on
lighting design and technology and has lectured at leading
European and American universities, including Harvard
GSD, MIT, Columbia GSAPP and ETHZ. His regular column
“Light Matters” on ArchDaily reveals various perspectives of
architectural lighting.
Talk
Dr. Thomas Schielke
URBAN BRANDING

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Fear of darkness is a primal instinct; we need light to cast
away shadows and defeat anxieties about the unknown.
Sight is the sense with which we perceive and navigate
our environment. All living creatures reproduce and evolve
through responses to Earth’s natural cycles with the sun and
moon. But with propagation of media culture and the growth
of urban agglomerations, cityscapes at night become are as
bright as Christmas. Light has become an exciting creative
tool as art, architecture, engineering and information
technology go from producing static compositions of
inert building materials to dynamic interactive arrays of
components and their interfaces. The paradigm shifted
from artificial light as a means of communication and
visibility, to light relayed as bits of information across
teleconnected devices and places. Computer-controlled
light transforms interior and urban spaces into datascapes,
while architectural facades become dematerialised screens
transmitting dynamic scenes. The idea of merging the
datascape with built environment has first been addressed
by the Hypersurface theory. Multimedia art today develops
environments and experiences that integrate material
structures with immaterial flows of time, information and
social behaviours.
Pixels can be deployed flexibly within any environment or
scale for aesthetic purposes, including visualising a city’s
data for enhanced navigation and signalling. As an artist,
I am interested in our relationship with the environment,
datascapes, media, our senses, creativity and community.
My responsive multimedia pieces examine the dreams and
pitfalls of synergies between technology, culture and society.
Dr. Vesna Petresin is a time architect, space composer
and performer. Currently a visiting research fellow with
Goldsmiths College, University of London, and an artist-
in-residence with ZKM Media Arts Centre in Karlsruhe, she
earned her PhD for research on temporal composition in
architecture, art and music. In 2004 she joined French artist
Laurent-Paul Robert to establish the London-based Rubedo
art collective, which integrates sophisticated themes and
techniques from optics, acoustics, complex geometry,
psychology and synaesthesia. The Rudebo team has
delivered performances, immersive experiences, multimedia
installations and artefacts to international festivals and
venues including the Tate Modern, Vienna Secession,
ArtBasel Miami, the Venice and Beijing Architecture
Biennales, the Royal Festival Hall and the Sydney Opera
House.
Talk
Dr. Vesna Petresin
CREATING WITH SMART LIGHT

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Lighting uses 20% of global electricity generation, estimated
to emit nearly 2.8 Gigatons of CO2, and costing some 4
billion USD each year. Peter Droege presents a strategy
of deriving all of this worldwide by 2040 through the most
powerful light source: the star we call Sun.
Prof. DI MAAS Peter Droege is General Chairman of the
World Council for Renewable Energy and directs the
Liechtenstein Institute for Strategic Development in Vaduz
and Berlin. During three decades of practice, research and
teaching at MIT, Tokyo and Sydney universities, he has
won many international prizes for visioary urban design,
strategic city planning and sustainable development. He has
published significant books and many articles developing
and promoting advanced urban planning and regenerative
design principles, encouraging the practical replacement
of fossil and nuclear sources with renewable energy,
while regenerating land and water systems to sequester
atmospheric carbon.
Talk
Prof. Peter Droege
PROJECT SUNRISE

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Talk

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There has been a proliferation of new, creative urban lighting
projects for public space in the last decade. Two key trends
have supported this rapid expansion: The advance of solid-
state LED lighting technologies, on the one hand; and readily
available digital processing capabilities both locally and in
the cloud, on the other. In order to structure how these new
projects shape social spaces, I propose a framework from
ambient to dynamic to responsive and interactive. These
categories are not mutually exclusive in time or space. They
are meant to provide a framework for creative practitioners
to exploit the real and new capabilities lighting offers today.
No longer is light a supporting actor for shaping outdoor
environments. It is becoming one of the most powerful,
holistic tools for urban design. Light for Public Space
provides many examples for inspiration. Looking ahead, as
these new technologies become more commonplace, many
new topics around the longer-term sustainability of digital
lighting infrastructures and related topics of governance,
privacy and the maintenance of public spaces will become
increasingly important alongside creative expression.
Susanne Seitinger, Global Sub-segment Manager for
Open Spaces in Professional Systems at Philips Lighting
is responsible for leading the strategy around the impact
of programmable LED lighting elements to create safe,
inviting and responsive urban environments. Her combined
background in architecture, urban planning and human-
computer interaction is comprised of research and design
projects like the Digital Mile in Zaragoza, Spain and Urban
Pixels, wireless LED pixels for ad-hoc media façades.
LightBridge, a project in honor of MIT’s 150th anniversary
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, used new configurations of
low-resolution displays and sensor-activated urban screens
to showcase the potential of responsive infrastructures in
future urban lighting plans. She recently published Light
for Public Space which provides an extensive overview
of recent city lighting design trends: www.philips.com/
lightforpublicspace
Seitinger received a BA from Princeton University as well
as a PhD, MS and MCP from MIT. Her PhD dissertation—
Liberated Pixels: Alternative Narratives for Lighting Future
Cities—explored the aesthetic and interactive potentials for
future lighting and display infrastructures.
Talk
Susanne Seitinger, PhD
RESPONSIVE URBAN ENVIRONMENTS
Interview by Dr. Thomas Schielke

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We find ourselves at the beginning of a digital revolution
within the real space. The mediatisation of urban space
often leads to negative reactions and general reservations.
This defensive reaction is completely justified, but is based
only on the image that we currently have of the digital and
that we project onto our reactions. In the future intertwining
of digital contexts with the real space, the digital will have
to subordinate itself to real space to a significant extent if
it wishes to be a part of our living environments. Narrative
formats and grammars that were valid until now won’t work
in this environment – adequate narrative forms and designs
for space-media still have to be invented.
Thorsten Bauer is an award winning Creative Director of
international installations in the field of Projection Mapping
and Media Architecture. Founder of the artist collective
Urbanscreen and co-founder of the Urbanscreen GmbH
Co&KG. Freelance Creative Director, Curator, and Consultant
for immersive media installations.
Talk
Thorsten Bauer
URBAN MEDIA BETWEEN REAL AND DIGITAL SPACE

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Spaxels, Space pixels, in the current incarnation an artistic
tool for the temporary occupation of urban airspace. Since
2012, the Ars Electronica performs with its autonomous
LED-Quadcopter swarm in the night sky over international
cities. Spaxels as artistic or even commercial transformative
and space freed display in the aesthetically neglected space
between perceived ceiling of a metropolis and the lower
limits of commercial airspace. Where static skyscrapers are
desperately trying to scratch the night skies, Spaxels may
be a new dynamic and volatile medium that frees us at least
for a few moments from the focusing screen syndrome, the
socially prescribed flatness of our senses.
Chris Bruckmeyr, Mag., studied Communication Science
/ Market and Opinion Research at Vienna University and
works in Linz/Austria. He is a creative Producer at Ars
Electronica SPAXELS® GmbH. The new subsidiary of the
Ars Electronica designs and executes spectacular airborne
light shows for outdoor events (http://www.spaxels.at).
He is a sound Artist and performer (FUCKHEAD / raum.null).
His various performances include Ars Electronica Festival
2014 – 2016 and Heart of Noise Festival 2016.
Talk
Chris Bruckmeyr
SPAXELS® The Art of Swarm Light Shows

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While developing the design for the new PHILIPS Lighting
Headquarters, the designers had to use light in many
dimensions: from productive to emotional, informational and
branding. The presentation will tell the story of how these
different dimensions came together for this project.
Nuno Galvão is an Architect and project leader at LAVA
(Laboratory for Visionary Architecture) in Stuttgart, Germany.
In his 10 years of architecture practice he worked mostly in
conceptual to design development stages of large scale and
complex projects. His work deals often with new ideas for
contemporary work and living spaces supported by recent
research on the field. His graduation thesis compared the
discourse of Modern and Post-modern Architectures. At
LAVA he continues the development of an Architecture
centered on Human and Nature while blending areas like
parametrization, digital fabrication, artificial intelligence,
building information modeling, virtual reality as well as
Ecology, Art and Phenomenology.
Talk
Nuno Galvao
PHILIPS LIGHTING HEADQUATERS - LIGHTING AT THE
WORKPLACE

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LICHTWOCHE MÜNCHEN is an annually lighting event and
started last year. The aim is to bring people together to raise
awareness for light and to create a new platform in Munich
for professionals and the public. The program contains
lighting tours, lectures, workshops, installations, exhibitions
and a competition for students.
Emre Onur is chief-editor of the LICHT magazine, based
in Munich (Pflaum Verlag). He finished architecture at the
University of Stuttgart and with an MBA in International
Management at University of Nürtingen. He has experience
in publishing and media since 12 years in several media
companies and for several magazines.
Talk
Emre Onur
LIGHT WEEK MUNICH
Interview by Dr. Thomas Schielke

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The time has come to get truly smart and restructure the
lighting design market, ensure universities offering Lighting
Design programmes base their syllabi on an accepted core
curriculum, define a career path in Lighting, identify those
already practising lighting design who are competent to
perform this responsible task, develop ways of testing their
expertise and create real and controlled opportunities for
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and research
programmes. The ultimate goal is to achieve official
recognition of the profession. And (further/continuing)
education is the answer.
Alison Ritter, B.A. Hons, PGCE studied German in Great
Britain and is a teacher by profession. She has 20 years’
experience in translating texts and documents related
to lighting design and lighting technology. She was
one of the founders of Professional Lighting Designers’
Association, PLDA (formerly ELDA) and was responsible for
the management and organisation of the association until
September 2010. She also was a Fellow Member until 2011.
Alison is heavily involved in the PLD magazine and PLDC,
and is dedicating increasingly more time to facilitating
Continuing Professional Development for lighting designers.
On the academic front, she maintains contact to leading
universities in the field and is actively following the process
to recognise Lighting Design as a profession.
Joachim Ritter, is a free-lance journalist with 25 years‘
professional experience. Special topics: architecture, lighting
design and lighting technology. Joachim is the owner of the
VIA-Verlag company and editor-in-chief of the Professional
Lighting Design magazine. He is a Founding Member and
was a board member of the Professional Lighting Designers’
Association, PLDA for 13 years. Until 2011 he was a Fellow
Member. He also co-organises international workshops,
conferences and other educational activities to promote the
lighting design profession. He is organiser and founder of the
global lighting design conventions in London PLDC 2007,
Berlin 2009, Madrid 2011, Copenhagen 2013 and Rome
2015. Joachim Ritter served also a Member of the Board
of the IALD Education Trust Fund of the IALD, International
Association of Lighting Designers from 2005 to 2006.
Talk
Alison Ritter and Joachim Ritter
SMART LIGHTING EDUCATION

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In kind support of:
Event Partner and
Sponsor
Media Partner

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Imprint
Technische Universität München
Fakultät für Architektur
Lehrstuhl für Raumkunst und
Lichtgestaltung
Prof. Hannelore Deubzer
Arcisstrasse. 21
D - 80333 München
T. +49 89 289 225501
www.lrl.ar.tum.de
sekretariat.deubzer@tum.de
Concept + Moderation
Dr. Thomas Schielke
Organisation
Lutz Harrer
Davina Jackson
Marco Neuss
Dr. Thomas Schielke
Documentation + Layout
Arabella Becker
Cover picture
Museum of European and
Mediterranean Civilations (MuCEM)
from Artist Yann Kersalé and
Architect Rudy Ricciotti
All lectures are available online on
Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/architektur

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Prof. Hannelore Deubzer
(Chair LRL, Dean of department of architecure)
hannelore.deubzer@tum.de
https://www.lrl.ar.tum.de/startseite/
Davina Jackson
davina@davinajackson.com
http://davinajackson.com
Welcome
Astrospatial Architecture and Data
Cities
Urban BrandingDr. Thomas Schielke
info@arclighting.de
http://www.arclighting.de
http://www.erco.com
Dr. Vesna Petresin
v.petresin@gold.ac.uk
http://doc.gold.ac.uk
Creating with Smart Light
Prof. Peter Droege
droege@solarcity.org
http://eurisd.org
Project Sunrise
Susanne Seitinger, PhD
susanne.seitinger@philips.com
http://www.lighting.philips.com
http://www.susanneseitinger.com
Responsive Urban Environments
Interview by Dr. Thomas Schielke

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Speakers
Chris Bruckmeyer
office@spaxels.at
http://www.heartofnoise.at/2016/en/line-up/fuckhead/
http://www.aec.at
Thorsten Bauer
post@urbanscreen.com
http://www.urbanscreen.com
Urban Media between Real and
Digital Space
SPAXELS® The Art of Swarm Light
Shows
Nuno Galvao
www.l-a-v-a.net
Philips Lighting Headquaters -
Lighting at the Workplace
Emre Onur
emre.onur@pflaum.de
http://pflaum.de
Light Week Munich
Interview by Dr. Thomas Schielke
Alison Ritter
info@via-internet.com
http://www.via-verlag.com
Smart Lighting Education
Joachim Ritter
info@via-internet.com
http://www.via-verlag.com
Smart Lighting Education