Light Fair International 2015, New York, Javits Convention Center, USA
32nd Annual IALD Awards, New York, Gotham Hall, USA
Leela Shanker attended Wednesday 6 May and Thursday 7 May, 2015
If stepping into a lighting tradeshow can make us feel like a kid in a toy store – eyes wide, strolling the aisles searching for the latest toy to add to our precious collection – then Xicato had their booth pitched just right: comic book superheroes delivering the message of new tech advances to overcome evil Light Destroyers ridding the world of poor lighting.
It won the award for Best Booth over 500 other exhibitors. Xicato Man, assisted by caped, “mere mortals”, presented the most distinctive display and “super clear” information about the new series, anti-flicker, color accuracy and deep dimming modules. It also provided a welcome dose of humor and rescue during days of wandering when stands began to blend into one, and occasionally blinded us with ill-conceived floodlight displays.
Meanwhile, in a SORAA booth just across the way, a real life lighting hero was battling a steady queue of excited fans. Professor Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the bright blue LED, SORAA’s co-founder and 2014 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, was patiently signing autographs and shaking hands with a stream of lighting professionals while they were giving him their one-line career synopsis and thanks for his inspiration.
As I stood by his Nobel Prize medallion, also on display nearby, I overheard one such fan playfully thanking the Professor for providing them with a job. I was prompted to consider how many of the companies participating in the Fair would not be here but for the technology pioneered by this man’s body of work.
Elsewhere across the floor it was all about tunable whites, apps allowing easy control of multiple devices and color temperature, and vintage bulbs presenting LED lookalikes for the old tungsten filament incandescent lamps.
From a consumer product perspective, it remains a hard task to shift people from wanting the look and feel of the bulbs and light they knew to embrace various new offerings that offer alternate shapes or applications.
Even when the efficiency and performance of new products provide logical reasons to change, it seems the majority are creatures of habit. It will take a more compelling and pervasive marketing campaign to educate people of the benefits of new technologies and convince the everyday user to switch to certain LED alternatives.
Apps could offer the very incentive for this evolution to gain momentum, with their potential to spark new patterns of behaviour and degrees of consumer engagement with light. The interfaces displayed by a number of companies’ apps, including Osram’s OmniPoint™, which was awarded Most Innovative Product of the Year, for the 2015 LFI Innovation Awards, were extremely intuitive to use and provided a degree of control that could be both exciting and novel with a meaningful degree of added functionality for the average user. While several remote systems are at least 10 months off being commercially available, it seems some apps, particularly those being offered for free, could provide a user experience that will be persuasive if offered for the right price.
Still, the role of certain former light sources may never be replaced. As we shared time and a meal around full tables in a packed Gotham Hall for the IALD Awards dinner on Wednesday night, it was candlelight that created ambience for the evening. On every table, tea lights danced (Of the wax variety, not LED) as anticipation grew for announcement of the 32nd Annual International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) International Lighting Design Awards. Fifteen award winners representing architectural lighting design projects from six countries were recognized.
The most prestigious award, the Radiance Award for Excellence in Lighting Design, was presented to the team from BUME Perfect Illumination and Design, led by Qiu Wei, for The Han Show Theatre in Wuhan City, Hubei, China. From a field of over 200 applicants worldwide, Bume’s submission, inspired by the structure and luminescence of Chinese red lanterns, received the highest points from judges across all categories. Accepting the award on behalf of the team, Ms Jin Wang, expressed her thanks and delight, declaring they’ll be back.
The spirit of collegiality and the warm glow in the room was further amplified as Barbara Horton, President of the IALD, came to the stage announcing a spontaneous donation of $100,000 in support of the IALD Education Trust. Gilbert and Suzanne Mathews of Lucifer Lighting were responsible for providing this generous boost to the Trust that provides scholarships and program support for architectural lighting design studies.
The following Thursday morning, undeterred by award after party reveling, strong attendance was registered for seminar sessions. Brad Koener, Amsterdam-based Venture Manager of Luminous Patterns at Phillips presented Embedded Lighting: The Future of Integrating Lighting into Architectural Systems.
Providing a concentrated and succinct overview of developments in the area, the highly engaged room of attendees explored the potential of integrated design manipulating light as a material and an interactive prompt to sculpt space, promote wellbeing and provide informative media surfaces.
In a session immediately following, Leni Schwendinger and Christoph Gisel, Arup Lighting Associate Principal and Lighting Designer respectively, presented A Roadmap for Illumination, Place Making and Community Building. Taking a room full of lighting designers to the streets, Leni and Christoph workshopped a proposal for a more vital night lighting strategy along the bus terminal strip running the 34th street length of the Javits Center. Participants enjoyed the hands on approach and opportunity to speed design with international collaborators (as well as the opportunity to escape the air-conditioned gloom of the Javits lower ground for New York’s warm, blue-sky day).
Overall, speaking with manufacturers, specifiers and designers, this year’s Fair was received positively, attracting the highest number of people in its history making it the largest industry event of its kind in the United States. Some newcomer exhibitors perhaps will weigh up the value of the cost of taking a booth against maintaining a strong online presence in which details of their products and custom orders can be just as effectively dealt with.
For now, until the next gathering of lighting professionals and light passionate people in San Diego for LFI 2016.
http://www.lightfair.com