Switched On London aims to highlight sustainable lighting design for the evening in an urban setting. This Festival of Lights is running for a week finishing on Valentine’s Day. Various sites around the Thames (between and around the areas of London Bridge and Tower Bridge) have been lit in various energy efficient ways – each project is the result of the combined effort of unique pairings of a lighting designer and manufacturing company. The sites will then be audited for energy consumption. This festival also happens to coincide with The ARC Show at the London Design Centre (finishing tomorrow) where lighting manufacturers unveil their new products to lighting designers and architects.

The photos in the SOL brochure are much more impressive than the ones I was able to take but here are my efforts anyway for what its worth:

Maya House	London Bridge Post Office	Hay’s Galleria	Bermondsey St. Car Park

Southwark Cathedral	London Bridge	Hay’s Wharf

HMS Belfast	Design Museum	HMS Belfast again cause its pretty

Tower of London	Tower Bridge	Garden Of Light, Potters Fields Park

Breathing Trees, Potters Fields Park

What I like about this festival is its emphasis on finding more energy efficient ways to light up our neighbourhoods rather than coming out right and saying we should turn our lights off and live in the dark. This kind of thinking should be applied to all our lives – its inevitable that we will engage in some sort of environment-destroying activity (such as flying) so what we should be focussed on is not trying to eliminate it from our lives but finding more efficient and less damaging ways to fly etc.

As the Director of Switched On London says “It is essential to illuminate better, not less.”