Function or Identity? The two different approaches in creating nightscape

West design team has done numerous successful projects in night landscape, in which, design at the macro to the micro scales, made the group successful as an international leader in landscape architecture. Large number of west8 projects is to design lighting details in small-scale landscape. Adopting two different approaches: identity and function has led to the creation of two different spectra.
The team with its successful designs at lighting and nightscape indicates that contextual and identity approaches can play the most important role in advancing the goals. These so-called "second nature" landscapes are considered to have special lighting from the perspective of its location. According to the project, a specific component of site substrate is selected as a symbol which is familiar to the audience, and will be as a special lamp or lighting. At the lowest mode, it is involved in landscape as an identity symbol with other elements. Finally at the highest mode is the original idea and the only identity symbol without any other elements.
In this view, the various elements of the site, including history, body, people and their culture, as the substrate of​​ the project, create the identity of the space. It is only due to the field of landscape architecture that they can be understood at all levels including lighting.
Another part of the projects are detailed design in lighting for mass production and use in different locations. In these projects functional approach is the most important, and the two aesthetics and identity approaches come after, but these are not parts of the site substrate. So, constructing simple forms with high flexibility, high efficiency are always considered with stable and consistent use of materials such as aluminum, which offers free design. These designs, with technologic and formic sight cannot play a ​​great role in maintaining the identity of a landscape and seems to have fixed designs, in contrast with specific identity of every landscape, which must be modified with other elements of environment, not to contribute to the integrity and identity.
This paper discusses the effectiveness of West 8 landscape approaches in the Urban Lighting Tools design by analyzing West 8 approaches in two scales (mid-scale and micro-scale) of lighting design.