Scholarly record

THE CITY’S VISIBILITY AT NIGHT. THE CREATION OF THE URBAN NIGHTSCAPE BY USING ARTIFICIAL LIGHT ? A CASE STUDY

J. Szwed

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to confirm the thesis that the planning of lighting and illumination is a factor increasing the attractiveness of the night landscape, which significantly improves the quality of life and is positively viewed by the residents and visitors. The author presents new artistic trends in night landscape development, aimed at protecting the historical heritage and local identity of cities, as well as shaping their contemporary image by creating (or updating) planning concepts within the context of the post-modernist society's changing needs. The research includes subjects from the field of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and spatial planning. It is supported by notions from the fields of sociology, environmental psychology, art history, philosophy and cultural anthropology. The work is based on the inductive method of scientific research. Non-statistical analysis is supporting the subjective choice of sources and contents which allow formulate conclusions. The author indicates three types of illuminated images of cities according to the achieved overall visual effect as well as the function of the illuminated landscapes in cities. The adopted typology of the night landscape facilitates the understanding of the rules governing the art of developing urban night landscapes. It allows to invoke a broad range of contexts, open up new languages for the interpretation of illuminated space. Planning lighting according to these three types can help highlight the meanings encoded in material and non-material symbols constituting the uniqueness of a given city, which can, in theory inspire future work related to the creation of night landscapes by artists, architects and planners within the scale of the whole spatial unit.

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