Right night light: Nocturnal architecture should drown out heritage buildings

Rajnish Wattas

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Many years ago, my first experience of nocturnal architecture was the cityscape of Paris on a boat cruise along river Seine. The tour started from Eiffel Tower, which itself was aglow with the warm hues of night light. And it sparkled for five minutes every hour, like a latter-day nocturnal clock tower of the city.

The cruise went past many famous landmarks of the ‘City of Lights’, each historic monument bathed in a warm glow imparting it an ‘oil lamp light quality’ of Rembrandt paintings. The cityscape had taken on a new face, but the lighting was subtle, evoking its historicity. The tone and texture of the stones that had built the monuments seemed to come alive.

Over the years, looking at some of the most iconic world heritage sites like the Acropolis in Athens lit up at night, viewed from the terrace of a hotel in absolute silence (guests are not allowed to speak), it was a meditation on classical architecture created by our ancients at the very cusp of civilisation. It was this sight of the Acropolis that gave Le Corbusier his epiphanic moment of architecture; the rest is history.

Historic architecture all over the world is given the same respect. Whether it is the nightscape of Rome, Florence, Venice or Istanbul, facade lighting is done with great nuance and sensitivity of aesthetics, giving the nocturnal cityscape a new art form and an existence beyond its diurnal reality. The heritage lighting of Trevi Fountains, Colosseum, Mausoleum of Hadrian and the Roman Forum ruins almost recreate the power of Roman architecture and its splendour over the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Architectural lighting has a profound effect on spaces, evoking emotions to its spectators and helping architecture and interior design achieve its true purpose. “Our work is to literally sculpt the light to highlight the smallest architectural details, thus bringing out the character and the story of the site being illuminated. This way, we reveal or interpret heritage that has been lost or essentially forgotten,” says Toon Reynders, a lighting expert.

The early beginnings to floodlight buildings came with the advent of an abundance of electric power. Europe with its ubiquitous historic monuments, public squares, plazzas and fountains lit up its cities to not only imbue them a new beauty, but also invite greater tourist attraction. With the advent of the 20th century, the tall skyscrapers of American cities like Chicago and New York created their own aesthetics. The high-rises needed signature tops to compete with their adjoining rivals in the race to get noticed. The Chrysler building of Manhattan with its art deco top lit up its cathedral like a spire with spotlights. The Empire State building lit up its top terraces with colours that would change to mark special events, anniversaries and commemorations.

Modernist architects like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Phillip Johnson, who built profusely in glass, created the idiom of leaving the interiors lit at night, making the building itself a mass of luminosity and a work of art in its own right.

Many Indian cities and landmarks, too, have marvellous heritage lighting, such as the Jaisalmer Fort built in yellow stone. The light makes it rise like a gigantic ship of gold floating on the sands of the desert at night. The sensitively done illumination of City Palace, Udaipur, bathes the building in golden hues as it shimmers in the tranquil waters of Lake Pichola.

But lately, carried away by the enormous possibilities and instant excitement of multi-coloured razzmatazz enabled by new technologies, many historic sites are getting swamped by misplaced crusades of ‘beautifying’ them in garish glitz.

On a recent visit to Central Vista, New Delhi, I noticed the grand national edifices of Lutyens-Baker on Raisina Hill drenched in pink, purple and other bright lights killing their inherent beauty of sandstone textures, classic columns, chattris, domes and cupolas. The lotus fountains with cascading pools near Vijay Chowk were dabbed in garish green lights. Perhaps this visual extravaganza has been imparted specially to simulate the colours of the national flag, to mark celebrations befitting the momentous occasion of the 75th year of the country’s Independence. However, national monuments like these have great symbolism and need more aesthetic fine-tuning in their lighting design to fulfil such laudable goals. Of course, India Gate was decked up beautifully in the tricolours because of the flat surface available at the top for such a display.

Chandigarh’s Capitol Complex adorned with Le Corbusier’s enigmatic, sculptural and playful forms of edifices is a perfect setting for such a spectacle of night lighting. But alas, on the few occasions that they are lit up and opened to public viewing, insensitive floodlighting in rainbow colours drowns out the genius of their artist-sculptor architect’s palette of forms, and obliterates their enigmatic individual identities. It’s a pity that the city that prides itself on its Unesco heritage tag has not able to create a world-class illumination plan for its crowning glory, the Capitol, that attracts architects, urbanists and art lovers from all over the world.

Another worrying trend in the current national obsession with lighting up nocturnal landscapes of our cities is to install insensitive multi-colour lighting on trees, green roundabouts and parks. The harm it does to birds, small organisms and biodiversity of our urban landscapes is a matter of great concern. Careful expert advice needs to be taken before undertaking such mindless and wanton ‘beautification’ projects.

God made the night sky so that man could connect with the cosmos and the celestial expanse of its stars and heavenly bodies to transcend the humdrum of everyday life. New technical innovations are enabling dynamic possibilities of the nightscapes of our cities. We must use them to create new art forms and not latter-day Las Vegas or Times Square nocturnal phantasmagorias.