Barbara Horton

“Look and listen, and you’ll know what moves people”

“I think I got into lighting by osmosis,” says New York-based lighting designer Barbara Horton. “I was actually an interior designer, but just happened to be married to the founder of the company. He was extremely passionate about all he did and this rubbed off on me.I came to understand that lighting really combines art and science. Atmosphere is created by blending physics and psychology and all those other things. I realised that as an interior designer I was only affecting the tangible things; I wasn’t really affecting the environment and the experience that people have through light. Today, the opportunity that lighting affords me is that I get to work with great architects and great interior designers all over the world.”

What sort of projects do you undertake?

“Extremely varied. We do offices and airports, but also monuments – just about everything in fact. Lighting is such a fascinating part of architecture. But so often it’s approached purely from the technical point of view. A lot of times, when we work on a project, somebody wants to know how many foot candles there are. Foot candles – the measurement of light. And we try to explain as best we can that it’s not about measuring light, it’s about how the room feels. I sometimes use a slide-show and ask them: ‘if I had seven foot candles in this space, which space would you rather be in? The white space or the black space?’ Well, if it’s a theatre, people prefer to be in the black space, and if it’s a school they may prefer the white space. So it’s about trying to help people understand that you can transform the space by bringing out finishes, textures or whatever.”

“Doing conceptual boards, renderings, models, whatever we can to help them feel the space and see what the alternatives are – that’s really important. I go to the owner or architect and say: ‘Let’s look at the floor plan, or the model or the building: what is it that you want to feel? Let’s walk through this and create an experience. Is it light? Is it dark? Do we have shafts of light? Do we use colour? What do we do to make this space become something that people can interact with?’ It’s not about the technique, it’s about how people feel in the space. I am very much a people person.”

Can you give us an example of your ‘people approach’?

“We did a project for the Phoenix Public Library – not the entire library, but the Teen Center. The problem was: how, in this computer age, do you get people to take books out of the library, or even visit one? Libraries are quiet places, yet also places where people meet. But they’re transforming themselves. Phoenix was one of the very first progressive ones to try to get the teenagers back in.”

“We played around with dark surfaces. We made it very moody, very theatrical. We also created lighter areas, where necessary bringing in natural light. We wanted it to feel like Starbucks. Starbucks feels like a living room: it’s a place where you relax, meet your friends, have a cup of coffee, and more and more libraries these days do have coffee, so that’s kind of interesting.”

“There isn’t just a sea of downlights in the ceiling. It’s accented, with little highlights, adding to the drama. And the lighting is interactive, with dynamic colour-changing effects. Kids find it a fun place to go, and I think that’s partly because they can control and change the lighting as they need to.”

What emotions or moods do you want to create in your work?

“It really depends on the project. Retailers want drama, theatre, or they want to be the brightest boy on the block. If it’s an airport… you know, it’s funny, some of our staff are like, ‘airport … there’s no emotion in an airport’. Oh yes there is! If you’ve ever gone and watched what happens: people arriving, people departing. It’s the biggest soap opera you’ve ever seen, so many people moving through the space. It’s our job to use light to offer them a degree of comfort. So even in the, let’s say more mundane projects, we always try to get inside the head of the client or architect to elicit what they really want to feel there.”

“Recently, we went away for the weekend, down to Annapolis. While everybody else was shopping, I was really stepping back and watching. How were people moving through the streets? What were they attracted to? I try to make sense out of it all. I’ve always been like that, so this isn’t just my 27 years of experience. I say to everybody here: ‘We live in New York City, it’s the biggest experimental pot you could ever have. Get out of the office, go see what’s going on in the world. Don’t read it in a magazine when it’s down the street. Get out there and feel it.”

Do certain colours create certain moods or emotions?

“Well, yes, lighting really can change our mood. Let me give you an example. Within the range of white, you can have a warm colour or a cool colour. If you’re in a restaurant and everything has a very warm tone, you feel warm, relaxed, enveloped. The kitchen door opens and they’ve got a cool-white lamp in there. This still happens, sadly. When that door opens, what does it feel like? It feels like you’ve just looked into Siberia. And nobody wants to sit next to that when you’ve just had this wonderful warm candlelight glow.”

“Again, cool and warm: if you give people down south a choice, they want the cooler white every time because psychologically it feels cooler to them. Hospitals are another place we’re starting to see it. We’re seeing children’s wings using light to make youngsters feel more at ease; there’s a huge amount of emotion in a hospital environment, one way or the other.”

What about colour and colour changing on the exterior of a building?

“Colour on a building can put a smile on our face or make us think ‘I’ve got to go find out why it’s that colour’. But if you have colour every day, it’s not fun anymore, it’s not special. “I think having that neutral experience on an everyday level and then those moments of something that changes, that’s what makes colour exciting.”

You do work in lots of other countries, are there cultural differences that affect how you design lighting in those countries?

“Absolutely. The Middle East is a great example. Many years ago we did a project to light a water tower. We – the American architect and us – wanted to light it very white, very beautiful. Well, through some fluke of technology, the lamps used all had a slightly different colour. Some were a little pink, some a little green, some a little blue and some were white. They got installed and this tower now has streaks of all these different colours. The architect called and said ‘These lights look terrible! Get them changed!’ So we go back and get all the newly tested lamps: everything more consistent, everything white, we put them in and the local people say, ‘We hate this, we liked all the colour’. Now the colour was by accident. It was not intended that way, but that was a rude awakening: our culture had wanted that white light, everything perfect, but the culture we were designing for said, ‘You didn’t give us anything exciting’.”

“All the projects we’re working on right now in Dubai and Cairo are so much about colour change… but not because they want to be Las Vegas. I think it’s because in their culture, it’s important to find colour, vibrance, in everything. Think about it – everything is neutral, their clothes are black or white. So to create something that makes people feel good or becomes celebratory or is just different, I think is really important. I can’t explain why that same phenomenon exists in Korea or Taiwan or Japan, where colour and light are so significant, because they don’t have bland environments. I don’t really understand that, other than I think there’s a tradition of bigger, brighter, better, more vibrant, more colourful, more animated gets you more attention.”

Finally, what inspires you in your design work?

“I draw inspiration from nature – there is no single architect or designer or anything like that that I would say moves me to the core. “It’s really about being in the Muir Woods and seeing the light filtering through the trees and seeing all the reflections – that’s probably the most spiritual thing I could ever feel.”