Welcome back to Linea Light Podcast section. Today’s guest is Marta Coda, who is a freelance lighting designer in Madrid, and she will talk about garden lighting.
As she says, a project of garden design has to start by “planning the panorama” that the client has in front of him for the majority of the time during the day. Starting from this point, there are several different layering levels of plants to consider and, consequently, of light, so it is essential to focus on the management of the light and its space limits. It is also needed to organize specific actions on the different layers in order to build comfortable and beautiful spaces. The management of the horizontal and the vertical spaces is fundamental. Marta gives priority to lead the vertical surface and, for this reason, uplights will be very useful thanks to the effects of the different optics. As regards the projectors, which are a flexible category, they are very helpful to give light to big areas (installed on poles, on the ground or on tree’s trunk) or to emphasize specific elements, as for example pieces of architecture, through accent light. At the end, bollards are made to give light to horizontal surface, useful to mark ways or to bright low vegetation. A key feature in garden design is the reduction of glare. For this reason, Marta suggests to always prescribe lighting fixtures with recessed source of light or with special filters or accessories that allow the control of the glare. It is also important to choose small and beautiful lighting materials, both downlights and uplights, bollards and projectors, because of they can be good to see during the day too. Each lighting product introduced on the landscape has to be in harmony with the rest of the place so we need to take care about finishes.
