Bonus: Taman Reverses Street Lighting -Design the Need Before the Fixture

Taman, street lighting, and why “just right” matters Martin Klaasen speaks with Dean Skira about the long road from early lighting practice to Taman, a web-based tool that flips street lighting design on its head. Instead of choosing a luminaire first and calculating around it, Taman starts with the environment, the lighting requirements, and the real impact on the surrounding city. Dean explains the origin of the software, how it uses machine learning, and why he believes street lighting should be designed to reduce waste, glare, spill light, and light pollution without sacrificing performance. Key topics Dean shares how a programming career in ex-Yugoslavia led him to New York, FIT, and eventually lighting design. He recounts early landmark projects in Pula, including a church tower and the famous lit cranes that drew 15,000 people to the port. In this episode, Dean argues that conventional street lighting design is backwards because it starts with a product instead of the site. He explains how Taman was prompted by Croatia’s light-pollution legislation and the realisation that existing tools only calculate the road surface, not the full urban environment. Dean describes Taman’s workflow: import a site image, draw and name layers, assign road and pedestrian categories, auto-position poles, and optimise the result. The software generates photometric curves and compares them with a database of manufacturer products to find the closest market match. He says the goal is to reduce required luminous flux by 40 to 45 percent in real projects, while also cutting spill light and light trespass. Dean discusses AI in Taman as machine learning that improves through use, rather than a system that replaces design judgment. He argues that future street lighting should move toward modular, mass-customised fixtures instead of fixed luminaire products. He says the best lighting decisions still belong to humans when there is a clear contextual reason to override the software. Request Early Access to Taman: https://taman.tech/