Have you seen the Light? At the tail end of last year, after a bumper season of design shows; we were bathed in the soft glow of an old, but new, friend at the BDC – a reincarnation of the popular light show ‘arc’, now going by the name of LiGHT 22 .
.
This wasn’t the soulless well of despair where variants of grey boxes, circular downlights and boring projectors caught the eye (by literally burning a hole in your retina). This was an event that brought back all that is good about our industry; quality products with lighting design and specification at its heart.
.
Architainment is a specialist project LED lighting company working in the architectural and entertainment industry, Paul Vallis, (a trusted fountain of knowledge in lighting, controls and all round good egg) was more than happy to take me through the product on show, a luminaire so new that it is yet to be released, with a date planned for some time in the first quarter of this year.
“We are exhibiting our new IP67 exterior Linear uplight, ECO Sense Trov 2, available in 1ft and 4ft(NB 30cm or 1.2m for those of us this side of the pond) designed, as you can guess, in the US. It comes with mains input to allow nice long cable lengths, but the real design innovation is the autosensing element, meaning that the product will operate with trailing edge, dali, dmx and 1-10 volt from the same fixture using the same connections. Whatever control system you use, it will sense it and operate accordingly, giving you smooth 0 -100% dimming. They are also developing tunable white and rgbw solutions “.
Wow: enough said! This is what we have been looking for, freedom from control system nightmares, and perfect for retrofitting where there is already some kind of control system in place, I have worked on prestigious 10 year-old projects where they had already lost and forgotten the specification of the control systems (as well as the electronic cad drawings) so this must be the future, if it works as Paul told me it will!
.
forma lighting were showing their Moto Venus product, an innovative adjustable recessed downlight. These type of motorised luminaires are, for me, a little like video doorbells. You know you’ve lived your life perfectly well without them, but when you use or specify one you realise they are actually quite handy, and you probably won’t go back to just a door knocker. As Piero De Marchis on behalf of Forma Lighting explained to me –
“Moto Venus is a residential scale product, also perfect for small commercial restaurants and hospitality. The Moto Venus is fully motorised with 350 degree rotation and a 30 Degree tilt, but all on a human scale, not too big or clunky. CRI is 95 +, and normally controlled by a Casambi program which has been adapted by forma lighting. There are no other products we believe on the market that have this small diameter, giving you the illusion of a standard downlighter but concealing what is a much more intelligent product. “
The product on show was concave, but it is also available in three different bezel sizes; trimless and square versions. Intensity and colour tuning of the light are also controlled by Casambi, with a beam angles of Narrow / Medium / Wide, all designed for install in plasterboard ceilings.
.
The product that caught my eye on ‘Precision by Luminii’s’ stand was their linear recessed downlight named Stenos. Everyone will have seen similar products in the market, so what made this product different from other linear led solutions? Matthew Nourse, technical sales manager, gave me the lowdown.
“Luminii wanted to create not just an ambient module, but something that had direction and adjustability. We didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of others and produce yet another ‘laser blade’ copy, but still wanted something that could create wide, medium and narrow beams. We invest heavily in R&D, so starting with the light source seemed to be the most logical approach, creating with Samsung a tiny LED chip with a titanium phosphor coating which acts as a reflector, to trap and bounce the light in the desired way. A normal LED will have an emission of between 150 and 180 degrees, whereas these emit at120 degrees, with all the light energy being focussed forward. The result is that you can make smaller optics, therefore smaller products“
Perfect for offices and high end residential projects, the Stenos product also comes with a wall-wash version which is great in galleries if you require an even illumination, with minimal visual impact. Matthew utilised the small version in a recent project for a display cabinet in a high-end gallery where positive comments were made on the light cut off.
.
The fact that louvres are interchangeable, for 15°, 30° and 60° beam angles make this a flexible option. ONce the product has been installed, you can simply pop out the baffle with a screwdriver (although I can imagine the small size could make this a little fiddly if you needed to change a good number). It comes with high CRI and impressive light outputs given its size. The product is adjustable by 30 degrees (narrow 15°), and will be available in the EU (and here I presume!) from the first quarter of 2023.
.
So many cool new products; so little time! The BDC is a great space as balconies give a birds eye view to see what’s what across the show. It’s also peppered with more manufacturers! This product stopped me in my espresso-driven tracks because I couldn’t help but think, either I’m hallucinating, or the scale is all wrong. ‘Why the oversized desk light?’ I had to ask, is that a small desk or a really big light? All was not as it seemed, as Jon Estell head of Spectral (the architectural arm of RIDI Group) explained.
.
.
“Ocara is typical of Spectral’s design innovation, and certainly not something that you might expect. The height is necessary for two reasons, the luminaire provides 75% uplighting to create glare-free diffused indirect light; this height also avoids people looking directly into the top of the luminaire. The remaining 25% of downlight is at a height required to achieve a desired 500 lux on the desk area, without glare, but – more importantly – it delivers 250lux from the diagonal above the eye, which is melanopically the most effective for influencing our circadian response. The task light, with its very specific criteria was driven by three professors of light who were involved in its design over two decades. The light comes first, and product form has come about because of a particular need for the task“.
.
.
Ocara provides a cycle of circadian light, regulated by an atomic clock, with the spectral distribution changing automatically, according to the spectral composition of daylight, mimicking it. It also has an added element which Spectral calls a ‘sunspot’, due to ‘a discovery made that we prefer our skin tones to look more human ( No! Really? ), hence a task area that’s warmer than the rest of the room.
Jon Estell pointed out that the product provides room illumination and is not just a desk light. This simple looking light certainly is more than meets the eye, especially when you consider the ground breaking use of 250 melanopic lux. Watch future additions for a deep dive piece on this light and research that drove it, there is simply too much to cover here!
.
.
Looking for a subtle way to highlight those window reveals? Linea Light’s recessed Xenia Blade luminaire could be for you. Andrew Dransfield UK Sales Director gave me the lowdown.
“We have always had a surface-mounted window reveal fixture called Arcada, this new version is a recessed, IP rated luminaire called the Xenia blade. The product can be ceiling, ground mounted, and it gives a very narrow blade of light, with a spread of up to 2m (Nb obviously this depends on the ambient light conditions) . Colour temperature of the product is 2200 Kelvin“.
On sustainability, Andrew tells me that the product can be refurbished with LEDs back at the factory in order to retain its IP rating. What most impressed me was the light control on the window frame itself which was homogenous from a product that was only 205mm long by 40mm width. And although the product is so hot off the press that images and some details are still TBC, we at least know that the recess depth is about 62mm.
.
.
Finally, tucked away in one corner of Light22 was a gem of a company for linear led strip, Atea Architectural Lighting, displaying their Pure CRI 99.
It is a question of horses for courses for this type of product, but I certainly like to know where I can go to get the best colour rendition, given that residential clients, high end retailers and galleries – wherever accurate colour is paramount – are certainly going to benefit from this. Maria Carolina Wichert told me all about the products on show.
“Atea is a French manufacturer, who have been working in this market for many years on high quality led. Our main product is the PURE CRI led strip where we can feature up to CRI 99, and R9 up to 97, reproducing the high light quality close to natural light. Because of this we are very much in demand from high end retail brands such as Dior, Balenciaga, Burberry etc, who demand good colour reproduction on their products. You can combine these strips with any aluminium profile that you want and you can choose the optics, we have a wide range to choose from, coming from 15°, 30, 60°, 120°, asymmetric, this flexibility is one of the reasons designers work with us. We have our tiny profiles shown here that are 8mm x 8mm, that can be integrated into furniture with the same high CRI.’
.
.
The show itself was a great success for networking, measured by how long it took for me to make it beyond the entrance (1.5 hours) and for the quality of product on offer. Feedback from many attendees was that they enjoyed the size of the venue, and more than one person commented on the fact that they hoped the event could stay here. It’s to be hoped that the organisers will resist the temptation to go large and swamp the show with more and more companies. -which would suggest a bigger venue. Many felt that LIGHT22 had created a unique vibe, in and of the design community.
Hats off to darc media managing director Paul James and his team for curating such a sterling event.
.
(thanks to [d]arc media ltd for the header image)
.