Renowned Dutch lighting designer Rogier van der Heide once said that “lighting design is not about the number of lights or the lumens they emit. It’s about the story they tell.” Over the course of a distinguished career in lighting design, Conor Sampson, BArch’96, has had the opportunity to tell some compelling stories.
“One of the reasons I went into lighting design,” says Sampson, “is because no one gets very excited about lighting until it’s wrong, and then everyone has something to say about it – be it their backyard lighting, their classroom lighting, or their office lighting.
“I felt lighting could make the largest impact with the least means. This latency is what makes it the most attractive, in that it doesn’t scream. Most of the time when we’re doing projects, we’re trying to react to, emphasize or strengthen something that may exist already.”
“One of the reasons I went into lighting design is because no one gets very excited about lighting until it’s wrong, and then everyone has something to say about it.”
Conor Sampson, principal, HLB Lighting Design
Sampson founded the Montreal-based lighting design firm CS Design and has worked on a wide range of projects – some involving very familiar landmarks like Montreal City Hall and Toronto’s Union Station.
Other projects have included St. Joseph’s Oratory (its redesigned dome and museum), the Port of Montreal Tower, and Impulse, a playful interactive installation at Place des Festivals that featured glowing seesaws that emitted light and music when users rode them (the prize-winning installation was later mounted in New York City). Anyone who has visited McGill’s downtown campus in the evening has likely admired some of Sampson’s recent work – he oversaw the exterior lighting design for the McCall MacBain Arts Building.
Over the years, Sampson and CS Design earned several of Quebec’s and Canada’s top awards for architectural design, including the Prix d’Excellence en Architecture, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Urban Design Award, and the Grands Prix du Design. Sampson is now a principal with HLB, one of the world’s top lighting design firms – CS Design merged with HLB last year.
Sampson says he found his way to architecture and lighting design once he ruled out the things he wasn’t good at.
“I wanted to be a brain surgeon, but quickly realized I couldn’t do organic chemistry or biology,” he recalls. “I was very good at drawing, and had good fine motor skills, so I ended up with a CÉGEP degree where I’d pruned back the sciences and supplemented it with computer programming and art.”
He went on to study architecture at McGill.
“Architecture is the most amazing classical education you could hope for,” says Sampson. “It covers everything from history, to painting, to drawing, to math, project management, and social skills like presenting and arguing. It’s a brilliant program.”
Once he settled on lighting design as his focus, he picked up a master’s degree in that speciality from New York’s Parsons School of Design. Now, he’s the one doing the teaching. He has been an adjunct professor of architecture at McGill for 20 years.
“I teach something very precise and particular, a subspecialty that infuses everything. You can’t avoid [lighting] if you’re going to do architecture,” he says.
For one of his favourite projects as a lighting designer – the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace, an extension to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts – he was asked to light the building without putting holes in the ceiling or having any visible hardware.
“It’s a typical demand from architects: The light has to come from somewhere, but we don’t want to know where. That’s right up my alley because I’m more interested in the effect of light than the delivery mechanism. Nevertheless, you have to master both,” explains Sampson. One strategy was to use the building’s reflective ceilings to heighten the impact of its lighting. When the pavilion was awarded a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture, the jury for the prize praised the building’s lighting. “Visible from a block away and transforming into an illuminated lantern at night, the pavilion offers a transparent and welcoming transition from the gallery to the city.”
Sampson is currently providing his expertise in lighting as a consultant for McGill’s Sustainability Park, a major new research, teaching and learning hub being built on the site of the old Royal Victoria Hospital.
“This is a whale of a project,” says Sampson. The park will require lighting multiple spaces including auditoriums, research labs and meeting areas in both new and restored historical buildings.
From an architectural perspective, Sampson faces two main lighting challenges. Because McGill is developing it as a sustainable campus, that means the lighting strategies will have to be devised to conform to both LEED and WELL sustainability standards. Both programs emphasize daylighting, so Sampson and his collaborators need to ensure a certain amount of daylight throughout all buildings.
“The whole site sits on the east side of Mount Royal, so you have this huge, looming object to one side which blocks an awful lot of sunlight, and the back portion is nestled behind the historic wing, and is down low,” says Sampson, outlining the obstacles.
Bringing light across the whole complex was accomplished by introducing light tunnels throughout the park that will allow sunlight to filter down, he adds.
Another challenge was reducing glare in the forecourt, which will house large-scale classrooms or auditoriums underneath skylights.
“The most interesting aspect was the exterior, because we’re on a protected area with respect to Mount Royal,” says Sampson. “There are overlapping code restrictions from the city of Montreal and the mountain, plus the LEED and WELL programs that have to do with light pollution.” Lighting will need to be controlled “so it doesn’t flow all over the place. But also, the colour of the light [will be an issue], because warmer lighting is less disruptive to the natural environment,” he says.
The park, slated to open in 2029, will be one of the world’s leading centres dedicated to complex global sustainability challenges. It will also be a showcase for some innovative approaches to lighting design – one more story that Sampson has played a major role in crafting.
