LED light - Inspiration and Function

LED light - Inspiration and Function, a lecture by Umberto Giraudo, a program leader of Product Design course at the British Higher School of Art & Design (Moscow) and director of Design Zavod group (Italy-Russia). Held on 10th of October at the "Tsvetnoy" department store as part of the Sretenka Design Week 2011 festival.


The lecture was aimed at showing the development of LED lighting, presenting the new technologies, as well as exploring the possibilities of creative uses in architectural, interior and product design fields.

Mr. Giraudo started his presentation with an overview of the general principles of light and how LED lightning compares to different other types of light. A notable point in the history of LED was that the first light-emitting diode was built by a Russian scientist, Oleg Losev in 1927. It took many decades for LED technology to develop into a practical industrial solution used in electronics and other applications. The general advantages and disadvantages of using the LED lights versus the traditional "light bulb" and other types of light were later discussed.

Advantages:

• Narrow wavelength (no infrared emission), therefore energy efficient
• Cool operation
  
• Compact
• Long lifespan (5000-30,000 hrs)

Disadvantages:

• Low illuminating power from a single unit
• Susceptible to heat damage
• Susceptible to damage by instability of electrical current
  
  

It was noted that LED technology is fully used as a medium of expression by architects and interior designers while product designers tend to focus on technological and financial factors of LEDs. Mr. Giraudo stressed the importance of investigating and further untapping the potential of this technology in product design field. A lot could be learned from architectural and interior design fields where this technology is used to its fuller potential.

Interesting advantages were pointed out which could be especially beneficial to Product Design; flat, compact (no reflectors used), high number of colors available, "touchable", programmable (custom, dynamic). Such customizable attributes as intensity and dimming could further extend the creative possibilities.

To end his lecture Mr. Giraudo presented his project which was done exclusively for the Sretenka Design Week 2011 event. The integrated technological package was provided by Philips Color Kinetics and included a 16M colors LED array, hardware controller/router unit and Color Play 3 software for lighting pattern customization. The outer structure was first created as a 3D model in Rhinoceros and then cut and assembled by Giraudo and his associates from BHSAD. The project took 5 days to develop from a concept to the physical installation.



It was beautiful.