Lighting Design

Wow. This is terrible. Yesterday, I received an email from IALD about Texas HB2649/SB2414 (the House and Senate versions are identical), “An Act Relating to the Regulation and Practice of Engineering,” which requires professionals who do lighting design to be a licensed electrician, architect, interior designer, landscape architect or engineer. The bill passed the House [...]

Nineteen winning projects representing projects from 11 countries comprise the winners of the 26th Annual IALD International Lighting Design Awards, out of nearly 260 submissions. Of the 19 projects recognized, three entries earned Special Citations, 13 earned Awards of Merit and three earned Awards of Excellence. The highest point score winner across all categories, in [...]

Cooper Lighting, a division of Cooper Industries, Ltd., has announced a call for entries for its 33rd Annual SOURCE Awards national lighting design competition. The competition, which focuses on furthering the understanding, knowledge and function of lighting as a primary element in design, is open to all lighting designers, architects, engineers, professional designers and consultants [...]

The 2008 GE Edison Award was presented to James R. Benya of Benya Lighting Design, Michael Neils and Juan José Villatoro of M. Neils Engineering, Inc., and James E. Christensen of the City of Sacramento, for lighting the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento, California. GE Consumer & Industrial presented a personalized Steuben crystal award for [...]

Over the past two years, I had the pleasure of working with an extraordinary group of lighting professionals–Carol Jones, Naomi Miller, Leslie North, Peter Ngai, Dawn DeGrazio, Veda Clark and Yukiko Yoshida–on the development of Light + Design: A Guide to Designing Quality Lighting for People and Buildings. This 192-page document is a practical guide [...]

The International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) is promoting BUG, a classification system for outdoor luminaires (PDF file). Based on the TM-15–the upgrade of the roadway shielding classification system by the Illuminating Engineering Society and the Lighting Research Center–the BUG system addresses light emitted from the luminaire in all directions, not just up into the sky. Called [...]

I wrote the below column for the April issue of Illuminate, published by Architectural Products Magazine, about the Commercial Lighting Solutions program produced by DOE to support organizations seeking to generate energy savings beyond ASHRAE 90.1-2004 without sacrificing lighting quality. I was also honored to take part in a charrette in Washington, DC to contribute [...]

Traditionally, lighting design for office applications has focused on making sure that there are sufficient maintained light levels on horizontal surfaces such as desktops. But research suggests that office workers prefer some light on vertical surfaces, confirming the beliefs of many lighting designers. Designing lighting to create brightness on vertical surfaces in the field of [...]