The IESNYC Supports PhoScope’s Recreo de Noche Program With a Grant of $10,000

CañoMartinPeña – Rendering by PhoScope

The IESNYC is supporting PhoScope’s pilot project for Recreo de Noche (RDN) with a $10,000 grant. There are communities in Puerto Rico that still do not have electrical power, and RDN will light community playgrounds to serve the immediate social and recreational needs of residents to use after sunset. The IESNYC joins Designers Lighting Forum of New York (DLFNY) in supporting this initiative.

RDN is a replicable model for the procurement of a set of solar lighting products which are given to community groups who then distribute and install them in collaboration with a team of volunteers. PhoScope has partnered with Lighting in Action (LIA) and Concepteurs Lumière Sans Frontières (LSF) to implement a pilot project in San Juan, with the Corporation del Proyecto ENLACE del Caño Martín Peña (ENLACE) and the local communities. The pilot is expected to be completed during fall 2018, and will roll out to other communities afterward. For each project, the lighting layout is determined by the local users, while volunteers will provide guidance by means of public discussions, participatory workshops and hands-on assistance.

“The IESNYC has decided to fund this project because we feel there is a need to support projects that create a greater good through the use of light for people and their surroundings,” says Phil Cialdella, MIES, president specification sales, Light Abilities, and member of the IESNYC Board of Managers. “The Board felt this effort, in a focused way, enhanced the lives of the people locally with light, and would be delivered in a caring way.”

Last June, the IESNYC recognized the importance of PhoScope’s work by awarding the organization with a Lumen Citation for a Humanitarian Action for Solar Lighting in Martissant, a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

In addition, Nathalie Rozot, MIES, IALD Education Member, who is the founder and CEO of PhoScope, was recognized by the Section as Member of the Month in July 2018.

“I am so grateful to the IESNYC and the DLFNY for sponsoring this important project,” says Rozot. “Their generous support shows that our lighting community is rising to the occasion and that we are all ready to bring light to Puerto Rico.”

For more details, visit phoscope.org/phoshaping/recreo-de-noche/

About PhoScope
PhoScope is a think tank on light committed to establishing a new platform to facilitate change in the practice, education and critical study of lighting. Complex lighting ecologies are integral to the cultural history of our varying and evolving constructed environments’ forms and functions. They posit that new transdisciplinary scientific, design and critical criteria must be integrated for the emergence of a modern lighting field that acknowledges and addresses the complexity of 21st century lighting ecosystems. PhoScope is incorporated in New York State as a not-for-profit 501C3 organization.