TECHNOLOGY
Technology: Friend or Foe?
Architects were the first lighting designers, and the first daylighting experts. The sun was once the only thing we had to illuminate the interiors of our architecture. We understood its character, its movement, its color and changeability. Until about seventy years ago or so, daylighting was still the primary source of energy used for... »
Dispatches from Lightfair
Every year, many of us here at Lam attend Lightfair® International, an annual lighting trade show and conference, allowing us to keep up to date with products from hundreds of lighting manufacturers, as well as design tools and technologies, standards and practices, and industry-wide trends and innovations. The following are some of our impressions... »
The Tortoise and the Hare: Linear Fluorescent Lamps and LEDs
The dazzle of new LED technology is grabbing most of the headlines in today’s energy efficiency stories, but, in reality, good ol’ linear fluorescent lighting systems are delivering consistent light output with terrific energy savings at very competitive prices on most of today’s LEED projects. While LED technology has been the darling of fixture... »
A DALI Checklist: Things to Keep in Mind
DALI is one of the latest buzz words in the lighting industry. Widely used in Europe, DALI is still in its infancy in the U.S., even though it was first introduced in the late ’90s. DALI stands for “digital addressable lighting interface”, a control protocol based on digital commands that are sent between ballasts... »
The Color of Light
Despite some of their current shortcomings, we are all enamored with the hope and promise of LEDs. When we begin a design session with a client these days, it’s a matter of minutes until someone asks “can we use LEDs for that?!” We respond with the usual overview that there are some very good... »
By the Time You Read This, Your Compact Fluorescent Lamps Will Have Come up to Full Brightness
Ever walk into a room, turn on the lights, and think, “This is really not as bright as I would like it to be,” then walk out and come back later to find the lighting is actually just fine? The reason for this lag in full brightness is the same whether for a commercial... »
Drinking the LED Kool-Aid
I love LEDs. Really, I do! They offer so many possibilities for new ways to light our world with less negative environmental impact. And besides, they’re cool! What I can’t stomach is the continuing hype. Frustration with LED hype is old news for lighting designers and for readers of this blog, but I thought... »
The Rise of DALI – again?
More often than not, if you ask a lighting designer or engineer what DALI is and if they specify it, you’ll get a puzzled look or a chuckle. Some designers are dipping their toes in the pond, but most are waiting to see what the other guys are doing, not wanting to be the... »
Lite-Brite ™
Remember when you would assemble those little translucent pegs in any configuration possible to create a luminous image of your wildest imagination? There were no limits to how the pieces could be arranged within the board boundary; each glowing pixel of plastic contributed to the overall illumination from an assembled light source. Some manufacturers... »
LED HypeBusting
Our clients often wonder why we haven’t switched to specifying LED lighting altogether for all our projects, especially when they see the steady stream of glowing LED hype being produced by the popular media. For both interior and exterior projects, we are taking a cautious approach to adopting LED products into our stable of... »
