Episode 183: Dark Sky Special Part Five: Dark Designs

Get A Grip On Lighting Podcast

It’s time to bring the question of design into this series. Nick Dunn has been trying to balance the question of people’s need for light and natural darkness as an ecological concern since he spent one sleepless night walking around Manchester.
Discussing his work with the Institute for Social Futures and the IDA with Michael and Jane he explains how he builds awareness for dark skies in society that vilifies the very idea of darkness, the need for night-time urbanism, and experiments with alternate exterior light sources.
We all need to confront a number of different mentalities to make darker skies happen, we need a sort of general absolution for the glare guilt of sales teams, a new way to inform end users about the harms bad systems might take (think cigarette labels), and reconsidering enforcement and incentives for brightness violations.