A significant point of departure

We are already well into the year 2019, but it is certainly worth taking a look at what the coming months have in store. VIA-Verlag has great plans for this year. Our goal is to bring one era to a close and to embark on a new era…

This year we will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of our company. In 1994 we established the VIA company with the goal of promoting and helping establish Lighting Design as a profession. 1994 was also the year that the European Lighting Designers’ Association, ELDA was founded, with financial support from VIA. The Professional Lighting Design magazine was published for the first time in 1996, underlining the importance of purposefully designed lighting. In partnership with ELDA and the Swedish town of Alingsås, VIA supported the development of a workshop format to help young designers – and municipalities – to better understand how light can, and should, be applied in the public realm. The Alingsås workshop served as a model for a number of practical lighting workshops worldwide, and still does. The Professional Lighting Design Convention, PLDC is recognised as a leading global lighting conference, thus setting an example for other conferences. No other event has a greater significance for the future of architectural lighting design.

So much for what has been achieved so far.

This year marks the start of a new era and VIA-Verlag is at the ready with some inspiring new projects and concepts for the lighting design community. Over the last three years we have analysed the state of the market and have been working intensively in preparation for the next steps. No way are we rushing into unknown spheres; our goal is to hit centre, because we know what we are aiming for.

For a start we have decided to publish Professional Lighting Design as an online medium. That may sound a bit run of the mill at first glance, but the innovative, media-enriched concept we have developed will for sure send PLD online soaring to the top of the league when it comes to state-of-the-art media. In close collaboration with Rheingans Digital Enabler we have been able to discuss our ideas and concepts and already realise a number of our visions. Further steps are in preparation. We are fundamentally convinced that we have reached the point when a printed magazine cannot do justice to modern-day lighting design for interior and exterior architectural spaces. Which is why we have opted to continue on the new path we have chosen.

In October this year, PLDC will once again be staged in Europe. PLDC 2019 will be the eighth edition of the conference. Following the PLDC event held in Singapore, we are again looking forward to a Thought Leadership event that will go down in lighting design history. Rotterdam is known as The City of Architecture in the Netherlands. With Rotterdam as the venue, PLDC will again be addressing topics and issues related to architectural lighting design that are highly significant with regard to future developments. Please make a note of the dates 23. to 26. October, 2019 to be sure you are part of the lighting design community’s most important annual meeting and event.

In this context, it should not be too difficult to incorporate celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of VIA-Verlag on this occasion …

All the best,

Joachim Ritter