As in previous years, the 2017 edition of PLDC ended with the Professional Lighting Design Recognition (PLDR) awards ceremony. Spanning eight different categories, the awards aim to “recognise those individuals, practices, institutions or manufacturers who have most contributed to the advancement of Architectural Lighting Design through their work, activities and events». The nominees were shortlisted by the PLDC Scientific Committee. They have named iGuzzini the overall winner of the Best Partner in the Industry 2017 award for their devoted support of the Configuring Light/Staging the Social research project, a programme aimed at promoting light as a tool for social innovation.

Configuring Light/Staging the Social was launched with the objective of developing innovative sociological research methods in urban lighting design and is the result of the collaboration between the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (represented by Don Slater, Associate Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Configuring Light Cofounder), King’s College London (represented by Dr Joanne Entwistle, Senior Sociology Lecturer and Configuring Light Cofounder) and Social Light Movement (represented by Elettra Bordonaro, LSE Visiting Research Fellow).

iGuzzini collaborates with the architect and lighting designer Elettra Bordonaro through a research grant that allowed the implementation of Social Lightscape, a biennial program composed of a series of international regenerative workshops across underprivileged areas of London, Muscat, Timisoara, Brisbane, Rome and Paris. These workshops are organized in order to promote the application of the sociological research into the lighting design process using a creative and practical way. The programme aims to promote and implement the outcomes of sociological research into lighting design, in a creative and practical way. The purpose of this research programme is to serve as foundation for a lighting design manual that promotes the importance of incorporating social science methodologies into lighting schemes rather than only relying on technical data (illumination levels, standard compliance, etc.). This manual will be released in March 2018 and the launch will be hosted by the LSE.

“Two years ago, we decided to embark on a partnership with iGuzzini for a series of workshop called Social Lightscapes. The aim of this collaboration is to look at light as social enabler. Since we work in very diverse cultural contexts and in different cities with varying backgrounds, the participants are asked to research the peculiarities of each space in terms of socialization, and then to use light as a tool of exchange to get closer to the community”, declared Elettra Bordonaro. Social Lightscape is the most recent in a long history of social innovation projects aimed at improving collective spaces through light, a topic that iGuzzini has been promoting since the early 1990s with the early biodynamic light studies and campaigns against lighting pollution.