The two-decade run of LEDsMagazine is sadly coming to an end. Editor Carrie Meadows announced recently that the magazine and the website will be completely shuttered.

Anyone who reads Lucept certainly followed LEDsMagazine, as it was the primary industry voice covering the LED revolution in architectural lighting since the year 2000. Since I was personally on the front lines of the LED revolution, over the years I worked often with Editors Maury Wright and Carrie Meadows. I spoke several times at Strategies in Light; I was published several times in LEDsMagazine; and I was a Sapphire Awards judge for many years.

Having watched firsthand and participated in the LED revolution from the late ’90s, the end of LEDs Magazine really signifies the end of the architectural LED revolution. It was amazing to be part of a profound technical revolution – the excitement of the early days was a joy. The massive investment that LEDs drew into the stagnant architectural lighting industry catalyzed a slew of new upstarts that disrupted a cushy, musty industry that frankly, didn’t want any innovation.

But alas, I see the industry has fallen right back into stagnation, perhaps even worse now than before. LEDs won, are totally commodified and ubiquitous. But the level of R+D investment and external investment in architectural lighting has collapsed and the overall level of industry innovation has collapsed back down to minor feature changes on stagnant product categories. I can see why a media site like LEDs Magazine has struggled to find advertising dollars in such a climate.

The next wave of innovation in architecture will come from the integration of digital media, DC power and radical sustainability in product development. LEDs are a bedrock to those changes, but no longer the catalyst of change.

I enjoyed being on the disruptive side of an industry revolution…it was fun while it lasted! I took the time to archive as PDFs some of the pieces I was most proud of from LEDsMagazine. Here’s a trip down memory lane!

2008 – Custom House Tower – World’s largest white-light LED lighting installation

Although neither Philips nor Lam Partners wanted to take the legal risk of such an absolute proclamation, I’m 99% certain that this was the world’s largest white-LED lighting installation in 2008, covering over 10 stories on all 4 sides of Boston’s magnificent Custom House in beautiful 3000K warm white LED floodlighting. I had fought hard in my final year at Color Kinetics to add white-LED floodlights to our roadmap, against a head of product development that was fervently against it. When I left to join Lam Partners, I used those very same products to light the Custom House. And 3 years later, those same eW Blasts, eW Grazes and eW Reach fixtures were still cutting edge – I used them to light the exterior of the massive Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

2013 – US DOE R&D Workshop – sustainability in LED lighting

Maury Wright eagerly covered my presentations at both Strategies in Light and at the US DOE R&D Workshops (which were AMAZING conferences where the SIL and DOE teams pulled together the brightest and most-forward thinking industry innovators). At the 2013 SIL Conference, I explored how BIM, LED and digital manufacturing technologies will come together. At the 2013 SSL R&D Workshop, I called upon the DOE to sponsor R&D competitions with the intent of discovering new sustainable materials and fabrication methods. Ultimately, the DOE listened and added sustainability in the R&D funding roadmap and steered the later L-prize to focus on sustainability.

2015, 2017 – Luminous Patterns

Maury and Carrie both eagerly covered Luminous Patterns, my corporate venture project at Philips Lighting, exploring embedded lighting in architectural surfaces, plus my learnings on how parametric design and digital fabrication will change the nature of “architectural lighting systems”.

2020 – Koerner Design wins US DOE Sustainable Design Award

7 years after my DOE R+D workshop presentation on sustainability, I was incredibly frustrated at the lack of adoption in sustainable approaches in LED lighting from the industry. The China-driven race-to-the-bottom on quality and pricing consumed the industry. So when I had a narrow window of opportunity of not being employed by anyone else, I used the time to make a competition entry for the US Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Innovator Challenge. I won Grand Prize. But more importantly, I had countless industry professionals looking to this as an example of real innovation, wishing they too could launch such a product. The “bamboo pendant” concept in fact stirred Sean Darras, Founder of Luxtech, to recruit me to help him launch Lightly, an entirely new brand focused on truly sustainable, biomaterial-based linear lighting, which itself has gone onto winning the US DOE’s L-Prize and other acclaim.

2023 – Profiles in Lighting

Most recently, Carrie was gracious enough to help me when I was looking for a new role by running a profile on my impact in the architectural lighting industry.

2022 – DC Power

Although this fantastic piece on the growth and opportunities for DC power in commercial building was written by Erin Kelly, I spoke often with Carrie Meadows about the importance of DC power as a foundational innovation needed to further other innovations in the built environment. I’m so glad she put focus on the topic!

I wish Carrie the best of luck in her new role leading I&S!