Club Nine Bridge golf resort, Jeju Island, South Korea © Bitzro

“Light controls people, people’s behaviour and emotions. It can make them even happier. In my lighting projects, I think about the people; about what they are doing, what they do here and why they do it. I put myself in the position of people working in that place. I am now concentrating on human beings, on the environment. I like to think of my lighting as ‘Human Centric’ and I am concerned about including human life in my light.
Even if the lighting seems very functional, I do not design it in that way. I imagine people working and the movement and I think about the music in that area. We hear a lot of different sounds in an area. Music is the combination of beautiful sound and a lot of noises.”

Does music inspire you?

“I played the piano for 15 years, but I then changed my major to design. Music is fourdimensional. The art is merely a question of time. Design is about space and it is three dimensional. One day I attended a lecture given by a stage designer. In stage design, light is a four-dimensional project, because light changes over time. I heard there was nobody specialized in that field and I joined an internship programme in the architectural department.”

“When I asked questions about lighting concepts, nobody could give me an answer. I searched for a school and got some information about the Parsons Lighting Design School. I went there after I graduated. My thesis was about the interrelationship between music and design. Music is space. I found that we need light to make space four dimensional. I read a book which said we should embrace the light into the space. I found that fascinating. And I became aware that light can make space four-dimensional. Light makes people change. People see some kind of emotion when they see the concept or the time of value, which is more like feeling the space. There are lots of tunes and music about moonlight, by, say, Debussy or Nocturnes. When I play that music, I can feel the moonlight. Light changes over time and the environment changes. And because of those changes in the environment, people feel different. If I hear Debussy’s Claire de lune at night or at day or in the moonlight, the change of environment effects my feeling. I want the user to observe the sound in a space and feel the emotion. I try to find the sound in an area and then I visualise that sound into lighting. There are certain sounds people like, others which they don’t like. That is the same with light. There are some kinds of light people like and some kinds of light people don’t like. So I try to imagine how the light can be acceptable to people and I try to visualise sound in light.”

Can you tell us a little about some of your projects?

“My first project after starting my company in 1998 was the ‘Club Nine Bridge’ golf resort on Jeju Island. The main architect was Denniston, a British company, and I supported the main architect with local ones. I wanted to give the main entrance a welcoming feel. Trees lined the pathway to the entrance and the architect wanted to erect poles next to the trees. But I didn’t want to use artificial poles; I wanted to see just the landscape, the purity of the material we were highlighting. The space concept is like the Korean traditional partition. When you close it, there are more areas that are closed. But when you open it, it becomes one big space.”

“Dark and light is repeated to contrast the different sides of the building which make up the main whole. “The landscape’s welcoming feeling harmonises and mixes well with the welcoming feeling of the light. The idea was to create the feeling that you are approaching a place with something precious inside, and that you are happy to approach that place. The trees are at the same time guarding the visitor and welcoming him.”

You mentioned the Korean tradition.
Does this influence you?

“I first want to discover what genuine Korean lighting could be. And then ask myself how can I globalise our Korean lighting? I’ve been working on overseas projects. I have a construction in Dubai, have worked on the Intercontinental Hotel in Angola, and I am also working on small projects in other countries, including China. I want Korean lighting to take its place in the world of global lighting. I found that the Arab emotion is quite similar to the Korean emotion. There’s no boundary in lighting design. There’s no border to sharing the value of lighting.

“I think the breakthrough in Korean lighting came with the lighting I produced for the National Museum of Korea. The concept is a castle wall. The whole building’s walls are 200-400 metres – very long indeed. And the
layered walls are very thick, like a real castle’s walls. In addition, it is next to the Han River and on lower land. The design was by a German company, and nobody had expected the lighting to be handled locally. But the project changed the concept of lighting design in Korea. At that time, we did not have lighting design and people did not know why they should pay for it. Through this project, we came to realise that lighting is important. In conservation terms, there should be no light. But this is also an artificial area, therefore we should not ignore the light. The question was: how to maintain a balance. And we should also tempt people. For this, natural and artificial light are important. Within the museum, there are indoor streets, like the backstreets of New York. So it was important that things be ‘naturalised’. We wanted people to feel they were watching outside, not inside. And so for the artificial light, we had to create a feeling of ‘natural sunlight’. And because of this, people said it was a landmark in lighting history.”

Who or what inspires you?

“My favourite composer is Beethoven – I often play his music. For imagination: Debussy and Paganini. I also do a lot of projects with students, getting them to analyse the fine details of a project in terms of light. For example, I get students to compare the differences between Rembrandt’s and Monet/Manet’s approach to light. People can have different emotions from the same piece of music. And the same is true of the impressions of light in an artist’s painting. “I also get inspiration from fashion, interiors, architecture magazines. And from movies and reading books. I used to design theatres.”

And do you like any particular architects?

“I like Louis I. Kahn and Tadao Ando. I can hear the music in the space they design.”