A hierarchy of light, fourteen acres wide

Presidio Tunnel Tops is a 14-acre park in the Presidio, a national park site in San Francisco¹. It has picnic sites, barbecues and fire pits on its upper level, artificial-turf lawns in the middle, and a large outdoor play area, the Outpost, at the bottom¹. HLB Lighting was commissioned to light it¹.

One rule, applied everywhere

The designers organised the whole scheme around what BEGA’s project page calls the principle of hierarchy of light¹. Pole-top luminaires with frosted lenses light the paths and gathering areas on the upper level. Deeper into the park, the connecting paths get bollards instead, including the Cliff Walk to three overlooks facing the Golden Gate Bridge, Angel Island and Alcatraz¹.

On the way down to the Outpost, a smaller version of the same bollard continues the language at a lower scale¹. That is the hierarchy in practice: one family of fittings, getting smaller and dimmer as the paths get quieter.

Curfew controls, to indicate the nightly closure of the playground, and to limit light pollution into the adjacent marsh.

BEGA project page, on Presidio Tunnel Tops

The curfew

The detail worth copying is the switch. The lower-level lights are on curfew controls. They signal that the playground has closed for the night, and they limit the light spilling into Crissy Marsh across the street¹. The park does not stay lit just because it can.

From the project

The lower level sits next to the Crissy Field Center and its Learning Labs, across the street from Crissy Marsh¹. Two routes lead down to it: the Bluff Walk, a slow path lit by bollards, and the Presidio Steps, terraces built into the hillside facing the Golden Gate Bridge¹.

Look at the photographs again with the hierarchy in mind. In each one, the brightest thing is never a light fitting. It is the plaza people are crossing, the surface of the path, or the bridge in the distance.