Light As Luxury

Thought: For a growing number of us, light and space (indoors and outdoors) is limited and even diminishing. We live in cities that grow taller with parks that are strips not plots and apartments that shrink and look out at walls. Even suburbia gets curtailed by a time & distance to employment equation which sooner or later leads to greater and greater density. It is therefore a growing responsibility for brands and public bodies to provide us with environments that give us light and space to satisfy the absence created by our personal circumstances.

Public bodies seem to be doing this very well. It’s amazing to think that many of the most creative buildings being built today are public projects. The library in downtown Seattle is a great example – providing plenty of space and light.

People should be attracted to brands that provide a similar service. Before, brands have tried to create hyper-efficient environments like supermarkets to satisfy our time-starved lives, but maybe now they need to create space and light giving environments too.

The picture accompanying this article is of a new building on Crosby Street in New York. Crosby Street is a lovely little cobbled street sat between SoHo and Nolita, but it’s also very narrow and fairly dark. Having been thinking about this theory of Light As Luxury, we came across this building and looked at how it was juxtaposed by the the much older, more windowed buildings from a time of more space and light. We couldn’t help asking, ‘Why did someone build this with such small windows when we’re in a time when we all need light in our personal lives?’

Just a thought.