CAPTIVATING DESIGN CAN BE GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT -- A Case Study

It is a story told all too often. A large developer in an environmentally conscious area has a huge project being held up. This time it is because of the exterior lighting. No matter what the lighting designer proposed, the planning board see it as offensive to the surrounding community. The costs of this delay mount, and the developer reaches out to his network in a panic. Who do you know who can help me?

I heard his tale as we met at the project site and immediately had a vision of how the project should be done. In this environmentally conscious age lighting design is creating beauty using the newest, energy efficient lighting technology. I described to him a lighting solution that would change to mimic the colors of the setting sun. This would be organic lighting that seeks to blend in seamlessly with its environment rather than creating its own artificial one. The developer loved the idea, but even more importantly, the planning board loved the vision we presented at their next board meeting. One board member even asked if she could be there for the design's first evening in operation!

The design process began in earnest at that point, and we worked feverishly to produce a true-to-life rendering of the proposed design for approval both by the client and the planning board. With approvals in hand, implementation began. I set upon integrating the series of sensors that sensed the changing color temperature its environment with state of the art LED light fixtures.

Opening night I relaxed chatting with the planning board members who came as promised, coffees in hand. As we watched the show, it occurred to me that this project perfectly demonstrated my design ideals. While it looked great, this design reduced the amount of consumed power specified by the previous design from 5000W to 500W. And the LED fixtures will last years longer than traditional bulbs. All that and the design is "Dark Sky" compliant so there is very little light pollution emanating into the night sky. It's the Lighting Chef's recipe for success: equal parts eco-friendly, energy efficient, and captivating.