Berg Lighting Design
Bringing Design to Light.

Berg Lighting Design offers a full spectrum of lighting consulting services to enhance architecture, landscape and fine art. Jeffrey T. Berg, AIA, LC, formerly a principal of Berg/ Howland Associates, brings over three decades of experience designing lighting to complement institutional, commercial and residential interiors as well as building facades, landscapes and public art.

Spotlight


Looking Back to Look Forward –

William M.C. Lam

William M.C. Lam
The experience of working for Bill Lam ran from the ridiculous to the sublime. I’ve always tried to play it straight in life, but I managed to get myself arrested once while travelling with Bill. We were in Caracas designing lighting with a local architect working on an urban renewal project. We were photographing the outside of a military prison that was to be converted to a museum showing the evils of the recently ended dictatorship. Our picture taking made the guards very upset, and we soon found ourselves detained inside. Now, getting locked up with the boss could be your worst nightmare, but this wasn’t so bad. First of all, he was much better at getting indignant than I am. And, it was good to have company. Fortunately our client did some fast talking and got us released in a couple of hours.
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William M.C. Lam

Daylighting model of the Government Service Insurance
System Building in Manila, The Philippines.
Photos: The Architects Collaborative and
William Lam Associates
We were very cautious for the rest of the trip. I did begin to wonder what else was not included in the job description!

Now I am an alumnus of Bill’s consulting practice. I say “alumnus” because we all received an education. What did we learn? Certainly we learned about the behavior of light, particularly its interaction with the surfaces of a building and how that interaction affects our perception. More importantly, we learned to observe, to see for ourselves how this basic element of nature acted and affected us. We were goaded constantly with questions like “What is the use of this space?”, “What would make it comfortable?”, “What does the user need?”, and in a more formal sense, “What is this building about and what is our concept for it?” It is this continuous investigation and testing that I remember as much as anything. The emphasis on function in its broadest sense is fundamental to Bill’s design approach. I think this is partly the result of Bill’s design education, but it is also the result of an attitude toward living. The novelist Tanizaki expressed it in more elemental terms, saying, “The quality that we call beauty…must always grow from the realities of life.” It is a great gift to have learned this.


Scale model of the Government Service Insurance
System Headquarters in Manila, The Philippines.
While at William Lam Associates I worked on the Government Service Insurance System Headquarters in Manila, The Philippines . The design was inspired by the regional landscape of rice terraces. The terraced and notched building mass permits daylight to penetrate, with control by fixed shading and reflecting surfaces. For William Lam Associates I directed daylight model testing, worked out the electric lighting details, and calculated the artificial lighting contribution and energy use. The client had a full scale mockup of a corner of the building made near the site. The overall building design won an Owens-Corning Fiberglas Energy Conservation Award in 1982.

Jeff Berg



Affiliations


Illuminating Engineering Society



American Institute of Architects



LEED Certified




Recent Awards



IES Illumination Awards
for MIT Building One Classrooms;
Ellenzweig Associates, Inc., architects




IES International Illumination Design Award
Award of Merit for Leon & Company Hair Salon;
Toshihiko Taketomo Architect




IES Illumination Design Award
for Harvard Dental Medicine Research
and Education Interior Lighting
Anshen + Allen + Rothman, architects


More Awards...





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