Lighting

So how do you show off the fact that you are Russia's largest private bank and at the same time curry a little favor with Moscow's ruling elite? You entertain 800,000 Muscovites with a world-record 25,500 square meter (275,000 sq. ft.) audio-visual projection show to celebrate Moscow City Day, of course.  Read More

It baffles me that some people enjoy shopping. There’s not much that I like about it, but I particularly dislike searching through the aisles, trying in vain to find the product that I’m looking for. While I’m not adverse to asking a store employee for assistance, it seems that in many big box retailers, employees are either non-existent or are already busy with other customers. A new system is in development, however, that would allow customers to find the locations of products via the store’s overhead LED lighting.  Read More

What if your car had roof panels that let you see the sky during the day, but that lit the interior of the vehicle at night? This is now a distinct possibility, thanks to work being done by BASF and Philips. As members of a consortium assembled by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the two companies have created OLED panels and installed them in the roof of a car. When switched on, the panels glow, lighting the cabin of the car – when switched off, they simply go transparent.  Read More

As a founding member of Desk Lamp Fetishists Anonymous, it was with great interest (read cold sweats) that I learned about the stainless steel Flaca desk lamp by Mexico's Masiosare Studio. Yes, the stainless steel is sexy, and the 6 W power consumption - courtesy of twelve LEDs - ticks the green boxes, but most exciting is the fact that the Flaca comes as a flat piece of laser-cut steel that the user then bends into shape. We at the DLFA are nuts for flat-pack tool-less assembly, you see.  Read More

The privilege of working under the open sky is reserved for just a few lucky professions. For the less fortunate majority, spending their working hours surrounded by gloomy office landscapes, the soothing sight of clouds drifting through the sky is unattainable. Setting up office cubicles in the open would do the trick but it's hardly a practical option, especially in places where the weather cannot be trusted. Fortunately, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO), based in Stuttgart, Germany, know what else can be done to bring a little outdoor comfort to the office-bound. They built a dynamic luminous ceiling which allows office dwellers to gaze at clouds without ever leaving their desks.  Read More

Although we have entered 2012 approximately 1.5 billion people around the globe remain without access to a stable or safe source of light. Commonly in some of the world's poorest regions, kerosene lanterns are the standard form of night time lighting, which leads to the possibility of fires, explosions, asphyxiation and toxic fumes. Cheap, accessible solar lighting presents an obvious solution to this problem and the latest tilt at making this a reality is WakaWaka - a solar LED lamp concept that can fit snuggly onto a soda bottle.  Read More

For people who want portable LED lighting that mounts just about anywhere, there are already devices such as the Joby Gorillatorch, most of which are variations on the tried-and-trusted flashlight form factor. Striker’s new FLEXiT Light takes a bit of a different approach, however. Instead of incorporating three or so LEDs within one lens, it utilizes a bendable array of 16 high-output bulbs.  Read More

By making colonies of bacteria periodically fluoresce, a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego may have hit upon a significant breakthrough in the field of bioluminescence. Though the development has the potential to unplug the neon sign, it may also usher in a new generation of hazard-detecting biological sensors.  Read More

The search for greener, more power-efficient lighting systems won't stop with compact fluorescents and LED systems if Dutch electronics giant Philips has anything to say about it. In an effort to embrace a truly natural approach to lighting, the company took a cue from fireflies and deep-sea creatures to create a (literally) green light powered not by electricity or sunlight, but by glowing bioluminescent bacteria.  Read More