Aesthetics, LED Technology, and Change

I'm sure you have seen a chandelier or sconce that attempts to look like a candle with a "flame shaped" bulb and a long stem that has faux wax drippings and maybe a little bowl shaped bottom to catch the faux wax. Similarly, there are lights that look like gas-lights. These are a kind of transitional objects that gets invented at the transition of technology generations. For some reason they remain as an aesthetic for much longer.

I am of the Frank Lloyd Wright school of materials: all materials are good but you should not try to turn one material into another (for example, plastic with wood grain). These transitional objects violate a similar principle: don't try to turn one technology into another. This is generally not possible when an older technology is deeply entrenched and you have to live with the form factor that it has created for itself. Still, it seems that true good design emerges when the old is abandoned completely and the new embraced for what it is - it's essence.

This transition is happening with LED lighting. The early uses of LED lighting will probably be in replacing incandescent and fluorescent lights while living within the constraints that these lights demand. In the case of incandescent, the form factor addresses the need to deal with the significant radiant heat generated by the bulbs; in the case of fluorescent lights, it is their space-filling nature. LED replacements provide few aesthetic benefits: an LED-based can occupies essentially the same footprint as a normal can - the selling point is the lifetime of the LED itself and the lower energy cost.

There are interesting and novel uses of high-intensity LED. One interesting use is when red, green, and blue LEDs are used to make the light and, as a result, it is possible to cover a wide spectrum of colors. I first saw this as a back light to a bar in Seattle - it was cool as the color would change periodically. This is a dramatic use so it is not particularly refined.

A more interesting, future use, will be when interior designers realize that they can tune the color of lights to match or contrast the colors of fabrics, carpets, etc. Interior designers have quite a sophisticated notion of color and the ability to control the color content of lighting should be an interesting and sublime development. This notion can be extended to changing the light with the change in illumination from sunlight. In our living room, the walls are green but the more sunlight there is, the more yellow the walls become. One can imagine adjusting the ambient lighting to either enhance or counteract this change. Achieving such effects will require photo-sensors that can monitor the light levels in parts of the room.

The dramatic power of lighting is particularly well demonstrated in movies. "The Red Shoes" is an excellent example or the lighting designer's art as are most of Vincente Minnelli's movies (he was a set designer before becoming a director). It is not clear that we would want to live in a "dramatic" environment, but who knows.

The most direct change that we should expect from LED lighting will be the change in lamps, ambient, and task lighting sources. High-intensity LEDs are very intense point sources of light and this produces a significant challenge if you want ambient light. Maintaining their efficiency will require clever diffusion technologies. Because of the low heat generated by the LED itself, one can imagine plastic lenses and reflectors. This is not something that is practical with incandescent bulbs because of the radiant heat. The form factor of an LED - even with it's heat sink - is very small: a common module is a single high-intensity LED mounted on a 3/4" radius PCB with an aluminum back that is screwed against a heat sink. CNC machining will allow heat sinks to be organic forms as opposed to the ordinary notion we have (rectangles with fins).

One comment for technical completeness is that high-intensity LEDs generally require heat sinks. This is not so much because they generate much heat but rather because an LED is a power semiconductor that has a very high heat density over a very small area. The semiconductor junction will not operate properly at temperatures above around 85 degrees centigrade. The heatsink is to keep the junction sufficiently cool.

It is an interesting thought experiment as to how LED lighting will alter our idea of the aesthetics of lamps, ambient, and task lighting. The possibility of "reactive lighting" that can alter color schemes and react to sunlight intensity levels will provide for a broad range of innovations.