Designing the lighting for a research station in the Antarctic was an “amazing job”, says Martin Valentine, the lighting group director at Faber Maunsell.

The Halley VI Research Station will effectively be a space station on the Brunt Ice Shelf, where the British Antarctic Survey is being carried out.

“It’s so remote and it’s such an extreme environment that you are creating a lighting design for people that have no light for three to four months of the year,” Valentine says.

His job is to understand the technology and the quality of light, how it affects the brain and helps keep body rhythms in line, so the scientists don’t suffer from sleep deprivation, seasonal affective disorder and stress.

“Inside a base like that you’ve got to give them good quality light, not horrible fluorescents. It’s a real balance of getting good low-energy, good long-life, and ensuring that people have a good chance of getting a natural 24-hour rhythm going in their body because stress will affect people.”

The other challenge is that when the scientists pack up and leave in, say, 20 years’ time, they can’t leave anything behind. “So we’ve designed it that most of the lighting will not need to have a lamp changed in 15 to 20 years.”

Valentine says that there is no formal route into lighting except having a passion for either engineering, art, architecture or interior design.

He did a higher national diploma in electrical engineering in London, followed by an MSc in light and lighting at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, one of the few degrees on lighting in the world.

Having an engineering background meant he had “a very good technical understanding of lighting and lamps and technology”, he says.

“And then my skills in understanding architecture and the history of architecture and interior design materials finished the package.”

Valentine likes that fact that with lighting, there is no right or wrong way to do things, as opposed to most parts of engineering design, which are based on set standards.

“There are a number of ways you could approach the space. And by understanding a bit more about colour, texture, mood, health, the brain and emotions, you can completely change a space with light,” he says. “The best thing is, thinking three dimensionally really means you can change people’s lives and you can really make or break a building.”

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