Designers glowing over LED lighting
LED lighting is no longer just the earth-friendly choice. It’s fast becoming top choice for designers.
Large retail chains such as Ikea have gone “all in with LED lighting,” switching to selling “only LED (light-emitting diode) light solutions, bulbs and integrated lighting” about a year ago. They found that LED lights use “85 per cent less energy than incandescents,” with bulbs lasting up to 25,000 hours longer.
Leading lighting design companies, like Italy’s Flos, are headed in the same direction.
In the late 1950s, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni designed Flos’s iconic Taccia table lamp — famous for its perfect bowl shape and achieved using advanced moulding technologies. Originally, the brothers wanted to make the reflective bowl out of plastic, but the incandescent lighting available at the time melted the plastic, so they switched to glass. Technology has caught up with the Castiglioni’s vision and this year Flos released the Taccia 2016, made true to the brothers’ original design.
“Thanks to the use of a low heat-emitting COB (chip-on-board) LED light source, with very high efficiency and a colour rendering index, Flos has finally been able to edit a new version of Taccia with a transparent plastic diffuser that is accurately faithful to the original concept envisioned by the Castiglioni brothers,” says Jack Schreur, CEO for Flos USA.
“The key is the reduced heat emission, originally introduced with an incandescent light source. Glass was the best option for the bowl; plastic melted with the high heat. Now, with LEDs, the heat is not an issue and we were able to use the most advanced injection moulding technologies and laser cutting techniques to achieve a perfect bowl shape …”
Flos has achieved success with two other LED lights: their kelvin LED and Arco lamp (considered the company’s most iconic design, created in 1962 and released with an LED source in 2012). But there are some challenges they’ve had to overcome, Schreur says.
“The main limitation we encounter working with LEDs is that consumers are still skeptical,” he says. “The top-quality light-emitting diodes that Flos uses aren’t ones that people are used to yet; therefore, many are more comfortable with screwing in incandescent bulbs.
“At the same time, LEDs are improving even more. Right now, there aren’t really dimmable LEDs that produce a warmer glow, but that technology is currently being worked on. In order to manufacture a dimmable LED with a warmer glow, a mix of a red and white LEDs will be used together.”
Lighting design star Matthew McCormick is achieving great success with two of his lights — Dodeca and Dawn — that use high efficiency, warm LEDs.
Similarly sculptural and functional is the Giraffa desk light, designed by John August for San Francisco’s Pablo Designs, available in “brushed copper, black anodized aluminum and gloss white lacquer” and gives a warm “fully dimmable LED light source” that promises 50,000 hours of life.
“Giraffa was born from the playful experimentation of intersecting and cardboard tubes,” August says. “Even though the initial exploration was about the geometric relationships between the tubes and the interesting way the tubes “mitred” together and positioned the light source, a distinct personality began to develop.
“The subtle changes in angle created corresponding changes in attitude and persona and finally Giraffa emerged.”