No manufacturer should have the right to limit how lighting is created and used. Architects and lighting designers should demand better paintbrushes and better tools, including controls, for lighting effects and atmosphere. In the end, although new sources enable new visions, it is about the light.
NEW LIGHT This short essay is not a paean to LEDs. There are still advances needed in cost and performance, but the headroom for continued improvement is substantial. The development of LEDs is remarkable and the rapidity of improvement wholly astonishing. The potential power of LEDs to light our environments and spaces lies not in the specifications and technical developments but in their application and use. If constrained by the legacy of traditional sources, LEDs cannot grow and mature. With this new medium of light, architects and lighting designers have both the challenge and opportunity to light space in a new way, and to redefine how lighting and architecture interact and benefit those who inhabit and work in new and transcendent spaces.
Kevin Dowling is chairman of the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America subcommittee on solid-state lighting, chairman of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association Solid-State Lighting Committee, on the board of the Lighting Research Organization, and past chairman of the Next Generation Lighting Industry Alliance. He joined Color Kinetics in 1999 as head of engineering. In 2007, Color Kinetics was acquired by Philips, and Dowling is currently vice president of innovation at Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions in Burlington, Massachusetts.