A La Carte Light – Mondo ARC

A pioneer of independent lighting design in France, Roger Narboni’s work over the past quarter of a century has combined an energy-conscious approach to optimizing town lighting with a passion for designing visually appealing lighting treatments for buildings and places.

Walk around a French town or city and you are quite likely to come across a lightscape designed by Narboni. Working with another well-known lighting designer, Louis Clair, Narboni designed the exterior colour-changing lighting of Notre Dame in Paris and is currently implementing his lighting masterplan for the city of Toulouse. His work abroad includes the lighting of the record-breaking Rion-Antirion Bridge in Greece in 2004.

Described as “mysterious and fantasy-like” by Narboni, the lighting of the 2.25-kilometre-long bridge was designed to make the illuminated Greek landmark visible up to ten kilometres away by people living in the surrounding coastal towns.

As the bridge with the longest cable-stayed suspended deck in the world, the structure connects the Peloponnese to the Greek mainland across the Gulf of Corinth. The lighting concept was “intended to create a layering of shadows, relief and texture,” says Narboni. “Lit from below, the pylons gradually disappear into the night sky.” Underneath the bridge, the piles and the sea were left in shadow.

Born in Algeria in 1953, Narboni travelled to France to study Fine Arts. In 1975 he graduated from the Université des Sciences d’Orsay with a diploma in electronics. “I was interested in light – not lighting – in the late Seventies,” he says, “first as a painter and then in the early Eighties as a visual artist. My background was both visual art and electronic engineering, so naturally I found quickly that light was right at the intersection of these two major interests for me.”

In 1988, Narboni founded his own company, Concepto. Working in the field of lighting design gave him “greater freedom and pleasure than in the art field,” he says. According to Narboni, the art establishment in France was and remains still “elitist and not at all open-minded,” he says. “You are in or out, for the art, so-called, experts. You do only art works or you are not an artist.”

Narboni prefers a more eclectic approach to lighting – designing a light installation one day and perhaps the lighting for a fish market the next. And like any creative independent worker he has faced career challenges. He recounts a story about approaching the government for funding in the early Eighties: “I applied to the French Ministry of Culture, Department of Visual Arts, to get a research scholarship to create my own projects with light. And the answer of the jury of the commission was that ‘light is not contemporary enough for Visual Arts.’”

Twenty five years on, and Narboni and France have both come a long way. Now, he masterplans the lighting of the country’s cities. Along with other European cities, Toulouse has adopted a lighting masterplan that aims to enhance the quality of life for its population. Overall, the improved lighting of key buildings, parks and city streets will create a “positive impression on citizens and visitors,” he says.

As a part of the masterplan Narboni built a lightwork across the Garonne River, which flows through Toulouse. A 247-metre-long underwater light strip, made up of 265 1W cyan LED lamp fittings, links the opposite banks of the river at a medieval crossing point called the Chaussée du Bazacle. Designed to draw the public’s attention to the site, the 900W lightwork creates “an unusual, enchanting point of interest after dark,” says Narboni. The blue-green colour was chosen to contrast with the surrounding urban lighting and to avoid distressing the fish.

Around the city, Narboni is using LEDs to light the clock towers of Saint Sernin Basilica and the Church of Saint Joseph. LEDs in ground-level recessed fittings will illuminate three evening promenades, which are due to be completed in November.

The implementation of the Toulouse lighting masterplan has not been straight forward though. “Big changes are not often accepted easily,” says Narboni. Some politicians and local people have questioned his reasons for altering the lighting in the historic city centre, where Ceramic Metal Halide lamps have replaced high pressure sodium lamps. Using less energy, the new lamps provide better colour rendering, and create a warm light that complements the city’s brick and stonework. “The orange colour was awful and very sad at night,” he says.

Making the streets feel safer was also an important aim of the overall project, yet Narboni appreciates that lighting alone will not make Toulouse – which was badly affected by last year’s riots – a safe place. That requires “much more to be improved than light or lighting,” he says.

Narboni believes, however, that he and others working in the lighting industry can help to bring about social change and that it is the lighting designer’s role to think about it. “Light is related to space, to perception, to emotions through the human brain and body,” he says. “It has psychological and physiological interaction with people. The lighting designer has a role to play about that, not alone, but with all the others that are involved in this social changes – even with politics, it is our duty.”