Huge thanks to Nic Paton, editor of the Lighting Journal from the Institution of Lighting Professionals for including a piece I wrote urging lighting specifiers to rethink what “sustainability” in architectural lighting really means. Check out “Cleaning Up Our Act” in … Continue reading cleaning up our act
LUO-Light is a Helsinki-based lighting startup led by German architect Oliver Walter that has launched a modular, click-together linear lighting system using bamboo for the primary structural element. Exchangeable optics and LED engines. Thanks Panos Loannidis for the original post! Continue reading luo-light
During this past week’s Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, I visited the fantastic “Beyond Building” showhome. Created by Biobased Creations from Amsterdam, they’ve created a compelling construction materials library called The Exploded View with a nice survey of materials that … Continue reading the exploded view – biomaterials library
Stickbulb is a New York-based manufacturer with a beautiful line of wooden LED linear lighting fixtures that can be configured in a variety of creative arrangements. According to their site: It is every architect’s dream to build with light. The … Continue reading stickbulb
Barrisol, the perennial fabricator of architectural stretched fabric ceilings, just announced via social media a new product offering branded Ecolia by Barrisol. They don’t seem to have a website up yet, but below is the content from the original post: … Continue reading barrisol ecolia
I came across this very interesting startup organization called Materiom focused on documenting and measuring natural material recipes for construction and product development. According to their site: Materiom provides open source recipes and data on materials made from abundant sources … Continue reading materiom
Barcelona-based lighting manufacturer Lamp recently launched a pendant fixture called Stormbell 80 that offers sustainable material options for the conical reflector shade, providing 3 different style options for solving the problem of acoustic-absorption. They offer recycled cork, bio-fiber hemp and … Continue reading stormbell 80 by LAMP
ISOBIO was an EU-funded research project that proposes an innovative strategy to bring bio-based construction materials into the mainstream. A key innovation consists of the use of pre-treated bio-based aggregates for construction, which include insulation materials, hygrothermal and moisture buffering … Continue reading isobio
Copenhagen-based BurnBlock offers an environmentally safe flame retardant additive for wood materials. BurnBlock has achieved a Gold rating for the Cradle-to-Cradle standard and is the first fire retardant to receive a C2C rating. Cradle to Cradle CertifiedTM at the Gold … Continue reading burnblock
Please check out and support the Carbon Leadership Forum, a group focused on minimizing the overall carbon impacts of construction and the built environment. The Carbon Leadership Forum is accelerating the transformation of the building sector to radically reduce the … Continue reading carbon leadership forum
Some staggering statistics from the UN’s Resource Panel: The use of natural resources has more than tripled since 1970, and continues to grow. From 2000 to 2015, the climate change and health impacts from extraction and production of metals doubled. … Continue reading UN global resources outlook
Editors Note: This was an Op-Ed piece I wrote back in 2013 in LEDsMagazine. Sadly, it is still as relevant today as it was over 7 years ago. How do we get the lighting industry to embrace truly sustainable product … Continue reading R+D competitions for sustainable lighting manufacturing
Via Designboom is this beautiful art installation by Ling-Li Tseng and Serendipity Studio for the Taiwan lantern festival. I include this design on Lucept because it so elegantly showcases the dual revolutions of LED flex strips and high-efficacy LEDs. Let’s … Continue reading the search of the glow
I am thrilled to announce that Koerner Design has won a prestigious design competition hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy hosted a Manufacturing Innovator Challenge focused on the Sustainable … Continue reading koerner design wins US DOE sustainable luminaire design competition
Solar Visuals is a Dutch technology start-up that combines solar-PV arrays with printed overlay graphics to create electricity-generating cladding surfaces for architectural applications. The individual PV cells can be custom arranged for distinctive layouts and the panels are completely laminated/encapsulated … Continue reading solar visuals
I was in the cool Local Goods Market store in De Hallen in Amsterdam this weekend and saw this amazingly simple fixture by local Amsterdam design shop Waarmakers (who I posted about previously here). Talk about circular economy design at its finest!!! Why are … Continue reading waarmakers cardboard LED lamp
At the latest Apple media event, the company presented a robotic rig named “Liam” that they’ve developed for tearing apart iPhones at EOL for recycling. It’s definitely a step in the right direction towards a circular economy (and terrific to see … Continue reading apple’s recycling robot
The Next Evolution of Light: Introduction A View from the Year 2020 Let’s take a trip in our time machine 5-years ahead to the year 2020 and check out the evolution of the lighting industry. The lighting industry continues to face … Continue reading the next evolution of light: introduction
There is far more to sustainability in lighting technology then merely reducing energy consumption — so I’m thrilled to see that the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solid-State Lighting group has included a new section exploring the broader topic of sustainability in … Continue reading U.S. DOE includes sustainability in R+D roadmap
Ninebyfour is a beautiful, elegantly minimal linear pendant design that uses a unique material source: Felled urban trees gathered from within the city of Amsterdam . Designed by local design shop Waarmakers — they’ve tracked the location of where the tree originally … Continue reading ninebyfour by waarmakers
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