by AMBER FAN<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today I sat down with Design Professor Rebekah Matheny, an expert in lighting design, who also has a background in both architecture and interior design. Rebekah provided me with lots of insights and resources regarding the current lighting industry as well as codes and knowledge of the interior space in parking garages.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The dialogue has been edited for clarity. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n What your opinion or input of the current on-campus\ngarage environment?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would use the word brutalist. A brutalist architecture is\nconcrete, monolithic, heavy, opposing. I feel as though all of the garages on\ncampus have that. I’ve experienced South Union, Arps have a brutalist aesthetic\nand overall feeling to them, which is a standard concrete parking garage. However\ncontemporary parking garages from an architectural standpoint incorporate other\nelements that take away from that oppressive feeling such as the use of natural\nplant life. You talked about lighting and oftentimes out-of-date lighting will\nflicker, which gives a sense of eeriness. It’s a psychological effect; you know\nyou’ve seen it in the films when lights flicker it gives a sense of eeriness or\nscared or that something ominous or bad is going to happen. And so, I think a\nlot of the lighting in the parking garages are outdated. They are using the\nfluorescent or halogen lights and they don’t have a sense of bright, safe,\nclean lighting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You briefly mentioned contemporary garages, where they’ve incorporated creative aspects like natural plant life, will you expand on it a little?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven just in Columbus there’s a parking garage that has the\nLED light installation along the side of it in downtown. There are examples of parking\ngarages where they’ll do what we lovingly call them growees, but they’re vines\nthat grow up the sides. And it just gives natural plant life which works for\nmultiple elements: one, using natural plants provides a sense of greenery and connection\nto nature from a garage aesthetic standpoint; from an environmental standpoint\nit provides something that’s going to help with air purification and carbon dioxide,\nwhich is transferred from cars and vehicles directly to cleaner air, but also\nthey act as a shading device from a lighting perspective to prevent overheating\nin vehicles. So, growees do multiple things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What might be the key things to consider when it comes to designing and constructing a facility like the parking garage? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere’s a lot of codes particularly with incline and slope: the grade for a vehicle to go up. That’s regulated with the parking spaces, number of handicapped spaces and proximity to means of egress are regulated, patterns of egress are regulated. When I say patterns of egress, meaning distance traveled and mode of vertical circulation: so, number of stairs, distance from the furthest point to the stair as well as accessibility standards for handicap or other disables and elevators and things of that nature. So, there’s a lot of code, criteria that goes into it. From an architecture standpoint, you’re also dealing with a lot of dead load, so that much concrete structure plus the vehicular weight has a large dead load onto the site itself. Your footings are larger because you’re dealing with the weight of a car, not just weight of people and furniture, which is lighter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I watched your TED talk about how there could be ways to evoke people’s sensory memory within the interior space and I was wondering if you think that could be something applicable to parking garages, because their main purpose is for transportation.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRight, a parking garage is typically a mode of transportation. It’s a moment of arrival and departure and there’s not really any occupation that occurs inside of it, but I think that parking garages in general could be rethought of completely. I think about flat Lots in certain places that are marred by a feeling where they have wandering ponds and bioswales integrated so that the water-runoff with the oil drippings get filtered before they go into the waste water stream, but they also evoke a sense of nature and natural paths and create moments of park-like atmosphere. And so, there are innovative parking experiences that could evoke a space that’s outside of what a standard oppressive parking garage is perceived as. So then, things of that nature are going to not feel like a parking garage, instead it’s gonna feel like a park that I just happened to park inside of. There are great examples of things like that <\/p>\n\n\n\n So now there are lots of these security stands on campus that has blue light on top of them and I read that blue lights are supposed to help people feel calmer. When installed in public spaces they could potentially help reduce crime. There was this article that talked about suicide prevention through blue light installation in one of the Japanese train stations. However, there were scholars who had collected data and suggested that people eventually grew used to the lighting.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI could see where that could be a possibility. It’s just\nlike anything you get acclimated to. I think what’s potentially more a\ndeterrent, for example, you see red and you see red light and you think danger or\nstop. There’s psychological connotations or connections between colors and\ncolors of light in certain things and that could impact it; we see red yellow\nand green in traffic lights, but we don’t see blue, because blue is calming, it\nfeels more like water in nature or underlit pools, but maybe that’s the idea. If\nyou go to an actual sense of nature where the blue light incorporated with some\nof these other strategies of well-being, then maybe it would be more effective,\nbecause it’s considering a more holistic approach rather than just a band-aid\neffect. Something that you might want to also look into: GE has a system called\ncurrent and it has embedded technology in light fixtures. Anywhere you have\nlight, you have electricity, anywhere you have electricity, you have the access\nto technology or Wi-Fi as capability; so, current is a system, and I believe San\nDiego has it installed citywide as a test, where they have heat sensors that\ndetect bombs in all of the light fixtures in the entire city. So if you recall\nback in New York, where a bomb was put in the garbage bin, that would have been\nprevented had the system been used, because they would be able to immediately sense\nthe heat from the bomb and be able to track where it’s going throughout the city,\nbecause it would be embedded in every single street light. You can also embed\ncameras for security purposes. So, I think there’s ways to use technology,\nalmost in a slightly big brotherly way, but for a security purpose, especially\nat a university. If you knew that you were being watched, then the likelihood\nof you jumping off of something might be smaller, because you would know you’d get\ncaught. Also, in every light fixture that could be put into a garage you could have\nsecurity cameras. Okay, so there’s other embedded layers of newer technology\nthat could be utilized to increase safety and security.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, currently the top level of the Union South garage has\nfences put-up to prevent students from commit suicide. What\u2019s your point of\nview on that?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think with the idea of wellness on campus and the notion\nof stressors and mental health that cause suicide, such as depression and\nanxiety that lead to suicide needs to be addressed. That’s the bigger issue and\nthat needs to be a campus-wide conversation to increase wellness on campus\nperiod, but there also needs to be something done preventatively. Back to the\nidea of a brutalist structure, you think what is the fence? Anything good? What\ndoes a fence represent? It represents a barrier, and aesthetically you will see\nfencing as a separator, and yes it probably prevents people from being able to\nclimb up and jump off as easily, but again, what is the message? All of those things\nhave a mental connection to us: you think of the border wall or the border\nfence, and it’s about this oppressive quality. Now, if that fence had plants\ngrowing on the side of it or if it was, instead of a fence, a series of rose\nbushes with thorns; you’re not gonna walk through a rose bush of thorns and not\ngonna climb it. There are other ways to achieve the same objective without\ncreating something that’s oppressive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by AMBER FAN Today I sat down with Design Professor Rebekah Matheny, an expert in lighting design, who also has a background in both architecture and interior design. Rebekah provided me with lots of insights and resources regarding the current lighting industry as well as codes and knowledge of the interior space in parking garages. 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