Always travelling, always searching.

Interview with Sarah Elise Sartore

Biography

With a degree in architecture, I have been working in the field of lighting for about 20 years. I chose to
work freelance because I believe in the value of design and understand its complexity. The
name of my professional venture is Luce di Aranel: Aranel was my avatar as an
explorer, and embodies the Tolkienian poetics that I hope will never cease to
guide me. Always travelling, always searching.

Sarah Elise Sartore

Architect, Light Designer

Web site

lucediaranel.com

Social

Personal journey and inspiration

How did you get into lighting design? Was it a chance encounter or something you planned?

During my university studies, very little was said directly about light: it is a subject that I have dealt with transversally in various fields (more on an artistic and perceptive level), but never in a explicitly technical. When I left university, I didn’t even know it was a possibility career path, and I found myself there by chance, at a time when I wanted stability, responding trivially to an advertisement seeking an architect. The person who The interview was conducted by Barbara Balestreri, whom I will always hold dear in my heart, because she was the one who saw beyond the surface and set me on a path that eventually became my definitive one, to which I decided to devote all my energy.

Who or what has most influenced your way of thinking about light?

I can say with certainty that my overall view was influenced by what was one of my most intense periods from a creative point of view: I wrote my degree thesis on exploration. urban, as the art of going where one should not go. After graduating, this led me to led to me becoming part of a real family of explorers, Lost Italy, with whom we visited many abandoned places, documenting everything through photography.

We have always been driven by the same spirit of respect for these places, of curiosity towards history and fascination with a light that cannot be described in words. In the group there were, and still are, some amazing photographers who taught me so much and shared with me the importance of taking the time to observe, contemplate and appreciate. understand. In abandoned places, you have the opportunity to fully admire the relationship between natural light and architecture. In the work of a lighting designer, beyond all fundamental technical knowledge, it is equally important to know how to read light, visualise it and predict how it will settle in a space.

Do you have a “bright philosophy” that guides your work?

The only philosophy I can imagine is the need to be able to tell a story at the time of the project. In addition to knowing how to read light, you must also be able to understand the client and the goal to be achieved. This is easier said than done: it is a skill that must be cultivated as much as technical knowledge, but one must also have a certain innate ability: we are talking about empathy, the ability to read others. It is therefore not so much a philosophy of light as of design in general: knowing how to ask the right questions, understanding tastes and needs.

Approach and design vision

What makes a lighting project successful for you?

Knowing how to position a project economically is also a fundamental part of good success of this. Communication with all Professional skills involved: the lighting design must bring together the client, architectural concept, construction site requirements, electrical design, and interior design (in interior contexts). It is not possible to draw up a good project without having the whole package. information. So, another thing that is proving to be fundamental with experience, It’s about character: knowing how to make yourself heard, respected and get answers from everyone, at the right time. They are parts of a whole, without some of which the final project will not be effective.

A look at the sector and the future of lighting

How do you envision the evolution of lighting design over the next 10 years?

If I try to think about how the landscape has evolved over the last 10 years, I would say that in another 10 years, everything will be simplified and there will be greater freedom of management. of light. The advent of LEDs has made us a little dizzy: we see projects with an infinite number of lighting points, with many different scenarios, difficult to manage, with general overexposure, which is mostly useless and redundant. So in 10 years’ time, I imagine less sources, but with more automated management and customisation. Artificial intelligence It could, for example, record our habits and independently adjust the lighting in the course of the day. More effective sensors, programmed based on wellbeing data. objective and organisational needs. Light management is already a hot topic: I’m curious to see where it will end up.

Point-blank

A place that taught you something about light.

To reiterate what has already been said: any environment in an abandoned place, where there is at least one window with closed shutters covered in cobwebs and climbing plants, allowing light to penetrate through the smallest of cracks, revealing the space as if there were always belonged. Whether it’s a beautiful sunny day or a rainy day swinging.

If light were music, what would it be?

I would like to rephrase the question a little, because reading it made me think more of a book than a song. Immersed in everyday life, in the sterile necessities of the market, we too often forget the poetry that should move everything. Over the centuries, human beings have created wonderful things, but today I have the feeling that we are trying to erase everything noble that could be done. I have always had enormous respect for Kandinsky’s work, for which music, colour and light seem to me to be one and the same. I would recommend reading “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” to understand how to look at things.

Closing questions – Connection with Spacecannon values

How do you experience the relationship between creativity and technology when you design with light?

Technology is constantly evolving and is nothing more than a tool for communication. the best of what we want to design creatively. It allows us to look beyond, to move forward and find new solutions. Creativity has no boundaries, and technology walk hand in hand, because it also takes a lot of creativity to conceive new ideas. technologies. What exactly is meant by technology? It is a very broad concept: in any case, for As far as I am concerned, anything that helps you express yourself and create is welcome.

Are you working on a similar project?

Whether it’s a creative idea, an urban intervention, or a major event, we’re ready to listen.
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