A vital part of the Lightfair experience is education. This year's show staged 72 courses over a five-day period, and topics included everything from the basics of lighting to in-depth energy efficiency practices. Also included in the 220 credit hours were two new conference tracks: the Design Symposium, design-related courses presented by architects; and Building Integration, which had a companion pavilion on the trade show floor. “The goal is diversity,” explains lighting designer Chip Israel, who served on the 2010 conference advisory committee. “We're trying to provide educational content that will appeal to the beginning and seasoned lighting designer alike, as well as a range of technical and design discussions.” To that end, Lightfair is also working hard to create content that will appeal to not only lighting designers, but the broader community of architects, landscape architects, and interior designers.
SEMINAR: Changing the Orientation by 180 Degrees at 6500K
SPEAKER: Ken Lewis, president, AC Martin, Los Angeles
Lewis discussed his firm's design/build collaboration that devised a technique to bring additional daylighting into a new four-level, 265,000-square-foot open office. Designed and built on a two-year, fast-track schedule, a precast concrete beam and column system was used to meet the tight deadline and allow for the open atrium design. With ceiling heights at 15 feet, partitions were arranged so that workers could see to the outside or to the atrium. Lewis's team balanced the sun's 6500K with electric illumination calibrated at 3500K by using south-facing clerestory windows and a system of charcoal gray louvers. He said that glazing products now on the market are 67 percent transparent with only a 27 percent heat gain. This made it possible to position the building on a southern orientation to take advantage of more abundant daylight and bring daylight into the atrium. The project was awarded LEED Silver.
SEMINAR: Better, Brighter, Smarter on a Strict LPD Diet
SPEAKER: Bernard Bauer, principal, Integrated Lighting Concepts, Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Bauer, a retail lighting design specialist and long-time advocate of cost-efficient illumination, emphasized that design, technology, and codes are driving retail lighting today. Successful designs, he pointed out, will strike a thoughtful balance among the three. With the increased complexity of today's retail lighting projects, close interaction between the lighting design practitioner with the client and other disciplines, such as audio/visual components, is essential from the outset. “A full palette of new technologies and stringent energy codes are coming on line at the same time,” Bauer said. By maximizing the allowed power under code combined with the best-use lighting equipment—including controls—lighting designers can create the illumination framework to meet the merchant's operations objectives.
SEMINAR: Transforming New York City Streetscapes, A public-private collaboration tackles the future illumination of the city's streets, highways, and byways
SPEAKERS: Margaret Newman, chief of staff, City of New York, Dept. of Transportation, New York; Marc Ledbetter, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Portland, Ore.; and Philip Jessup, Climate Group, Toronto
PlaNYC calls for a 30 percent reduction in New York City's greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Included are standards and guidelines for sustainable lighting—a NYC lighting master plan—and finding the right technology to make it happen in all five boroughs.
Under consideration is the use of LEDs for streets, parks, cemeteries, and other open spaces; vacant land; and buildings and parking lots. Full-cutoff lighting and Dark Sky preserves will also be evaluated. One of the current test areas is Central Park, where five variations of LED post-top luminaires for pedestrian use are currently under assessment. Researchers noted that the test luminaires, which will be in place for one year, utilize approximately 46 percent less energy than the park's current metal halide fixtures. A second pilot project, evaluating another four luminaire designs, is under way on a section of the FDR Drive. Future test areas include the Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn and the Belt Parkway to Long Island.
SEMINAR: Task-Ambient Office Lighting, How layered lighting saves energy and improves quality
SPEAKERS: Owen Howlett, senior research project manager, Heschong Mahone Group, Fair Oaks, Calif.; Michael Mutmansky, principal, Clanton & Associates, Boulder, Co.; Thor Scordelis, senior program manager, emerging technologies, PG&E, San Francisco; and Michael Seaman, California Lighting Technology Center, UC Davis, Davis, Calif.
This group's message was that uniform lighting from the ceiling wastes energy; layered lighting not only saves energy, but improves the quality of light for the user. They referred to calculations that showed that a typical office uses from 1.5W to 3W per square foot, while California's Title 24 and LEED levels indicated that from 0.9W to 1.1W per square foot are allowable. They favored task-ambient lighting at 0.5W to 0.65W as the most use-efficient and the highest in quality. They made the following points: light from the ceiling is inefficient for office tasks; cubicle tasklighting alone will not meet ambient needs; tasklighting should be balanced with ambient lighting to function as a system; and control systems are recommended to add flexibility and comfort.