Another health hazard, have you heard? Besides pesticides and second-hand cigarette smoke, to name a few, there’s “light pollution,” and Londoners have reason to fear it.
What is 'light pollution'?
Consider MSG Sphere, an ultra-luminous, extremely tall (364-feet) dome set on a concert hall planned for Stratford, east London. Residents worry that its one million light-emitting diodes will disturb their sleep.
How can Londoners fear a building before it’s built? Residents in Las Vegas, where a similarly humongous domed concert hall debuts this year, relayed that when the lights were tested, the effect was “like a sun on earth,” said resident Billy Cline.
He told The Guardian that he could see the shimmering dome from his balcony two miles away and felt the explosion of light like shock waves he tagged “light pollution.”
Cline said he felt this ill-effect especially given that the bedazzling surface of the dome will also be streaming videos and advertisements.
It goes without saying that such shock waves would be worse for Londoners. After all, Stratford is no Las Vegas. Their neighborhood is not in the middle of a desert.
Not to worry, says MSG Entertainment, the company running the show. The Guardian quotes management saying that the concert hall is “the next generation of immersive experience.”
Is that supposed to make people feel better? Is MSG Sphere’s Disney World Amusement Park glitz supposed to comfort a residential neighborhood?
Speaking of Disney, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. once also had a light-reflecting problem owing to an exterior finished of highly polished, stainless steel.
The reflective aspect of a sun-lit high-polished, mirror-like surface was all the more intensified by the concave shapes of the walls.
Condominium residents in the L.A.
area complained of blinding light when the sun bounced off the shiny steel, not to mention the heat generated by the illuminated metal.
Wait, there was more. Besides the irritation to the eyes and the unbearable heat released by the radiant steel into the nearby apartments, the sidewalks also took the heat.
Sidewalk temperature was reported at 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
Add in the possibility of traffic accidents from the brilliance of the dome, and you had a slew of unhappy experiences.
Modifications to the rescue
The shiny stainless steel was eventually given a matte finish. End of problem. Short of lowering the wattage on the MSG Sphere in East London, it’s not clear how that story will end.
Of course, there are other kinds of pollution from architecture besides blinding light. There’s what I’d call perception pollution. I’m thinking of the L.A.’s concert hall again.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall was designed by Frank Gehry, who seems to have a distaste for right angles. He not only runs from straight lines but he also bends what’s left into a mishmash of metal sections that appear blown apart.
Gehry’s work is not the only perception polluter. There’s the Seattle Central Library styled by architect Rem Koolhaas with cantilevers going every which way that can make you woozy.
And talk about dizzying buildings, it’s hard to overlook architect t Zaha Hadid’s Library at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
Besides her bewildering free-form style, this library dips at a staggering 35-degree angle. You could lose your lunch looking at it.
So, when there’s talk of pollution, you may think of contaminated water. But the mind’s eye can also be sickened.
