Philips Design has an interesting demonstration project called the “Microbial Home” that explores the use of methane gas and other natural end-to-end processes throughout the home. As one part of the project, Philips proposes a lighting fixture that uses methane gas to … Continue reading philips microbial home + biolight project
SolidSmack has an interesting article about the “Chrysalis Project” on Kickstarter, an effort by architect/programming experimenter Chris Chalmers. To summarize the article, Chris is developing an export function from Rhino’s Grasshopper add-on, to allow designers to export parametric models — and their … Continue reading chrysalis project
Windscreen was a temporary installation at MIT by Howeler+Yoon Architects from Boston. Straight from their site: “Windscreen creates an exterior screeen composed of an array of small-scale, vertical axis wind turbines. The spinning of these turbines self-powers their integral lighting, providing … Continue reading windscreen
Via Inhabitat, here is an interesting design thesis concept from Meidad Marzan, who proposes a solar shading system consisting of servo-controlled rotating panels with photovoltaic panels on one side and OLED panels on the other. They charge during the day, … Continue reading student concept: urban tiles
I love this street-front entrance to the below-grade Sephora store at the Rue de Rivoli in Paris. The pendants are made out of translucent red plastic with a frosted texture. Coupled with the cool white luminous walls, it totally looks … Continue reading sephora’s laser blasters
At the Quai Branly Museum in Paris (itself in a very cool building by Jean Nouvel), I saw this awesome luminous wall in the temporary Maori exhibit. It is a simple design, a stick-framed box faced with 1/4″ MDF panels that were … Continue reading quai branly museum — maori exhibition lighting wall
Even though Microsoft goes and kills off the one product that actually looked like something from the future, at least they keep releasing awesome concept videos from their “Future Vision” series, offering a peak at what “technology may look like in 5-10 … Continue reading microsoft’s awesome vision of the future…again
Via Cool Hunter, I stumbled across Ango, a small company in Thailand that uses unique materials to great effect, including raw silk cocoons, rattan, hand soldered wire cages, and hand built-up polymer substrates. Sounds labor intensive, but the end results … Continue reading ango
Check out this stylish glowing acrylic chair. Sexy design…LEDs concealed in the outer bezel firing back into etched acrylic. From the UK design company Rosseau. via TrendHunter Continue reading glowing bubble chair
I found these very cool ’80s retro style graphics with lots of luminosity from a Russian artist called Hypnosky: via trendhunter Continue reading lighting inspiration: hypnosky
Math and I don’t get along all that well, even on simple formulas. So that is why I love this “rule of thumb” from Wikipedia: “Doubling the distance reduces illumination to one quarter” Continue reading inverse square law (so you can remember it!)
Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light by Jane Brox, is absolutely…well, uh, I just can’t resist…must not type this pun….brilliant! I highly recommend reading this book to anyone…super-mega-lighting-dork or not. Brilliant really goes beyond just lighting: It looks at the evolution of human history as filtered by the powerful effect that man-made light has had on our civilizations. The research that the author did is amazing; you will continually be blown away by the detailed historic tidbits sprinkled throughout. It’s a terrific, fast -reading book…really fun. Continue reading brilliant: the evolution of artificial light
I had to go to Gap today to return some baby clothes, and what did I see???? Light Bulb Boxers! So of course I had to pick a pair up! Nice variety of lamps, too…you got the A, R, T, plus some CFL screw-ins and even a metal halide profile. Buy one for your favorite lighting fanatic today! Continue reading Light Bulb Boxers
I’m certainly not trying to be on a paper lantern kick on purpose, but I found this image from the Wall Street Journal. This shrine for war victims in Japan is a beautifully unique take on “luminous walls”. Another great … Continue reading paper lanterns at Japan’s Mitama festival
Another dazzling image of a sky lantern festival. The Cool Hunter website says this is Taiwan, but the image is labeled Thailand. Wouldn’t this make an awesome ceiling for a restaurant or bar? Continue reading sky lantern festival
I love the ceiling system of this airport departure lounge from Space International architects. Not much technical info, but they say: “This space consumes around 50% of the energy that other similar spaces commonly consume, by means of openings in … Continue reading airport departure lounge, mexico city
I would like a ceiling system that looks this beautiful…especially with the soft, gentle motion of these floating into the sky. “Citizens of Poznan in Poland celebrated the first official day of summer by releasing over 11,000 paper lanterns into … Continue reading Summer Solstice in Poland
I propose that successful Product Management/Marketing employs three key functions: listening, synthesis, and advocacy. Listen. Listen to your customers, your sales team, your management, popular culture, your heart. Listen to industries outside your own; that is where the “cool stuff” usually appears from. Organize. Build an institutional memory system that everyone can openly access. Synthesize the tremendous volume of inputs. Recognize the “white space” opportunities outside of existing product categories. Blend innovation risks. Determine priorities (“focus” is the ability to NOT do the other 101 good ideas on the list). Be willing to pause and think, to recognize incomplete information. … Continue reading being a good product manager = listening, synthesis, advocacy
For my small but loyal reader base, you know that I have comments turned off. No evil plot here; I just got tired of all the spam, trackbacks and other silly comments I got. I had very, very few “intelligent” comments. However, someone from Acuity saw my post about their OLED lights, and was nice enough to track me down and send this in: Hi Brad, Just saw your write up on Acuity OLED, I ‘m on the OLED team at Acuity, and you can consider this product LAUNCHED! It can be specified now, and will be available for delivery … Continue reading Acuity Responds: OLED is available 2012 Q1
Above is a rendering I made to help explain a basic way to categorize light sources. Lighting can be broken down into three fundamental geometric categories: point sources, linear sources, and planar sources.
Now, we don’t live in a conceptually perfect Euclidean world, and the perception of relative scale of course matters in how one defines a certain light source. What is approximating a skinny “line” of light at a far distance resembles a rectangular plane of light at a near distance, so context is essential in these categorizations.
A direct result of this relative scale perception issue is that when points, lines and planes are aggregated together in clusters, they create visual textures across a meta surface. Let’s call these the “3+1” fundamental geometries of lighting.
Lucept 