OTHER EVENTS AND NEWS

In Conversation with Ilene Shaw

OCTOBER 2024

IESNYC President Shoshanna Segal initiates conversations with colleagues and leaders in allied organizations to discuss relationships between the organizations and respective roles in different building industry sectors. We’re raising awareness about lighting, building coalitions, and covering hot topics – all to advance the art and science of lighting to benefit society as a whole.

Ilene Shaw, Executive Director, NYCxDESIGN

The NYCxDESIGN Festival is an annual citywide celebration in May, featuring hundreds of design events, from exhibits and trade shows to talks and tours, drawing hundreds of thousands of design enthusiasts worldwide.

IESNYC: I’m familiar with NYCxDESIGN events, and you are definitely Design with a capital D. It’s terrific that you appeal to both the general public and the design community. I'm curious to hear how you approach lighting as a discipline of design.

SHAW: Sure. To start with some background, we are not a membership organization like IESNYC. We are a nonprofit that was run by the New York City Tourism + Conventions agency for the first decade [formerly NYC & Company]. About 2 years ago we became a freestanding not-for-profit, with support from the city and the state. We are a galvanizer and an advocate of the design industries – all of the design industries, except we don't concentrate on fashion. (We didn't think the New York fashion industry really needed an extra festival in support of its own fine efforts. But still we welcome fashion house participation, and they have!)

The fashion industry in New York City is a good model for us. If you ask the public to name a designer, they will instantly say Calvin Klein or Donna Karan. And yet Frank Gehry and Philip Johnson are not names most people know. New Yorkers pass their buildings regularly. Or they love the Highline, but they don’t know how much James Corner continues to contribute to the city.

IESNYC: Frank Lloyd Wright might be the exception that proves the rule.

SHAW: Right… Architecture, products and industrial design, even graphic design speak messages to people on a daily basis. So we serve these industries – design with a capital D. We are recognizing and promoting design. And bringing attention to New York City as a center of design.

So you asked about the intersection with lighting design. Yes, the work of architects, interior designers, and public [space planning] definitely overlap with lighting – all the time. In other countries, designers are not so pigeonholed. For example, in Italy architects design jewelry, lighting products, furniture… Nobody questions that designers shape our physical world. But in the United States, they're more divided and put into their cubbyholes.

We have worked with the local lighting industry, and when Lightfair was in New York City last year, we created a tour series. It sold out, around 120 people per tour, across 2 days. Lighting designers gave presentations on-site of their work: descriptions, goals, and inspirations for each project.

We also produce the Design Pavilion, which is an in-the-street exhibition of design and architecture, and we work with lighting designers on those installations.

We've worked often with L’Observatiore and Hervé Descottes, for example. So we are connected to lighting and would love to develop it further. We have a talk series, and it would be very appropriate to concentrate on lighting design as an integral factor in experiencing architecture and interiors; as well as lighting product design and engineering…. So, those are my first thoughts.

More than just avant garde?

IESNYC: L’ Observatoire works on amazing projects, and their work is absolutely stellar quality. But they are a very specific type of lighting design firm, and they are mostly focused on a specific type of project, and they reach a specific audience.

Conservatively, there are 200 lighting design firms in the five boroughs. And the lighting community itself extends far beyond lighting design firms. We have engineering firms and lighting manufacturing, and distribution and contracting. I learn about amazing local companies every day.

So how can we, as a lighting community, better express the various ways we impact design; across across the five boroughs, across the types of buildings and public spaces?

While it's entirely possible to be a retail lighting designer or a hospitality lighting designer or a residential lighting designer, just pick your cubbyhole… New York City is probably the one place where it's possible to be all of those, and also do really interesting industrial and commercial projects and then impact world-famous museums one day and public housing the next. The city itself is huge, and each of its industries is that way too.

I'm going to talk about lighting as a little sub-industry, but we know how important we are. So since your focus is elevating NYC design in the public consciousness, what can we do, as an industry, to make ourselves more a part of that effort?

SHAW: Well, I want you to know that I started out in the lighting industry myself. Before I graduated from Parsons, I needed a job. So as soon as I learned to draft, I started at Design Circuit [no longer in business]. This firm did stage and concert lighting. But then they got into lighting discos, and that was my job when I was in school. What a lucky job for a college student in New York City… designing discos!

When I did graduate, a classmate and I started our own company designing and manufacturing small accessories for homes. And small lighting fixtures were part of that collection. Eventually, George Kovacs bought this little firm. I continued to run Kovacs’ Design Group for a while and worked on a lot of portable lighting fixtures.

So I have a love and a passion for lighting. And I see its impact around the City.

OK. Shoshanna, as President of the IESNYC, and with New York City being the birthplace of lighting design as a profession, I want to invite you to join our Steering Committee. The Steering Committee is made up of 65 representatives from all of the design and architecture schools in New York City, museums that have design departments, and the professional associations that have New York chapters – AIA, ASID, IIDA, AIGA, and so on; The One Club; our design districts – Meatpacking, Flatiron Nomad, Soho, Union Square, DUMBO, Downtown Brooklyn; and some of the city agencies like Design and Construction, DOT, EDC, Parks & Rec; and many more I'm forgetting.

IESNYC: I would love to sit on your steering committee! That sounds perfect.

SHAW: Great! The American Society of Landscape Architects is also new. We have been adding the appropriate associations, so I was thrilled when you contacted us.

So that's how we can start. Let’s get you involved and meeting people. That’s how we cross-pollinate and develop ideas for the 2025 Festival in May. We encourage you to do something with your members and we can help you plan and promote that. It all starts with conversations.

IESNYC: That's lovely.

Seeking thought leaders

SHAW: We’ve also started a new keynote lecture series. It was very technology-driven this year, but it was tech companies that came forward. There's so much happening with LED and digital lighting. And there's all kinds of magic happening with lighting Downtown and amazing venues to host lectures.

Now, who comes to these? We are open to everyone, and we do hope that the public attends. But most of these programs are attended by industry. We have the attention of the design industry. Mostly architects and designers and industrial designers come to these. We find that a lot of marketing creatives, advertising, film – they come as well, but it depends on who's speaking and what the topic is.

IESNYC: So let's assume for a minute that some of the readers are not familiar with your annual main event. It's not a trade show because it's open to the public.

SHAW: Right. NYCxDESIGN Festival is a citywide annual effort to call attention to over 260 events that happen during that one week, around the City. In 2025 it will be May 15–21.

At the same time, is the International Contemporary Furniture Fair trade show, also known as ICFF. Last year, when Lightfair was in New York, they aligned with the NYCxDESIGN festival. We thought it was a terrific crossover, and we would definitely invite them to do so again if or when they coincide in New York.

I was surprised, because I did go to Lightfair in the past. A lot of architects and designers are not aware of the show, and they should be.

IESNYC: With the change in show ownership [The International Association of Lighting Designers and the Illuminating Engineering Society remain partners] there's the hope on the part of both nonprofits that the new ownership will enhance the design cred of the show. I have, in the past, been hesitant to invite our architectural clients and colleagues. I really hope that the partnership with Messe Frankfurt will rejuvenate the show – in terms of design with a capital D.

SHAW: The IALD New York Chapter would be an appropriate organization to ally with, but we do have some national and international organizations we work with. New York City is international. We're very close with the Italian Trade Association and the French and the Argentinian Consulates. They’re all doing things here during NYCxDESIGN, promoting what their countries are creating. We entertain the foreign press when they're here for the festival. We emphasize our international reach. And we give our local and regional chapters the opportunity to shine.

IESNYC: We find that the local members of any design organization often stand in for the whole organization. And I think that's a good thing. It gives us opportunities to advocate for the importance of lighting in the design industry as a whole.

SHAW: New York City has a larger design community than any other place in the world, by far. And for those wanting to sell to [or service] the industry, they have a huge audience here.

IESNYC: One of the things that I am focusing on recently is… I think we all have a tendency as professionals to assume that what we do (whatever that is) is the most most detail-oriented and exacting component of a project. I picture that everybody else must have tons of minions to carry out orders. Not in a negative way at all, but I do think that about my architect clients.

Whereas, on my side, I have one, maybe two people supporting me and therefore what I do is so much more difficult. This is probably actually true of everybody, no matter how big your team is. We are all so completely attuned to very specific details….

It’s hard for me to get an architect or interior designer to focus on this one little thing that’s crucially important to me. And the opposite is true too. The architect is trying to get me to focus on something else. The good news is that we’re conscientious. It's not a lack of empathy, and it's not a lack of respect.

But it's somehow a lack of understanding of how details can impact how light interacts with the space. I’m looking for a way to articulate how choices impact the psychology of the environment.

Because of the way that timelines and budgets and workflows have become compressed… there used to be time to sit around a table with a roll of Canary [sketchpaper] and flip through idea books. There’s like 15 flavors of bright and uplifting, or romantic and moody. There used to be time to explore what the vocabulary meant to each person. By drawing as a collaborative process, color and form took shape.

We spend a lot of time looking at renderings and fly-through models. So we get to the “what's it gonna look like” part very, very quickly. This doesn't allow the design to develop holistically. There's a disjointed process that comes from the way that technology has interfaced with the design process. You might wind up with the walls one color and the ceiling another color, and they don't have a relationship to the lighting design.

This idea of technology as a shortcut through design. The design process needs time and space and air. A plant is actually a pretty good metaphor. There's a communicative structure below the surface and a communicative structure above the surface, and neither can function without the other.

That’s my soapbox. But I'm really excited to inject more of a lighting presence into your organization, that seems to have its fingers in a lot of different crevices of the city.

SHAW: You're making a case for lighting designers as experts that are a necessity in architectural and interiors projects, or art or infrastructure – everywhere. That sounds like a keynote. I'm thrilled to have your organization join our steering committee, so that we can bring this to light, pun intended