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TECHNOLOGY / LAMPS & GEAR
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4 Acuity Brands’ design uses OSRAM OLEDs. 5 At this year’s Lightfair, WAC Lighting exhibited an OLED Bath Bar Lighting Fixture prototype featuring transparent OLED panels from Novaled. 6 Light Photon was created by Philippe Starck for Flos, using Blackbody OLEDs 7 NovaLED’ Palm Frond ceiling and floor lamp 8 Osram’s Light + Building stand included special room designed by Andreas Schulz at LichtKunstLicht reflective panels that including Orbeos OLED by OSRAM Opto Semiconductors 9 Commissioned for Milan Furniture Fair 2010, Jason Bruges Studio used Lumiblade to create Mimosa a piece with petals that close in response to visitors
since inorganic LEDs are almost at this level now it may be that OLEDs will only capture a small area of this market. The only presentation by a mainstream luminaire manufacturer at the event was from Peter Ngai from Acuity Brands (Litho- nia), the largest luminaire manufacturer in North America. Peter is a keen advocate of OLEDs and presented a couple of concept OLED pendants at Lightfair in May this year using the Osram Orbeos panels. His view was that the technology was still immature but that the light quality was potentially it’s strongest selling point, feeling that the light had a noble quality, if the efficiency, cost and life could be improved dramatically. OLED manufacturers had a short window of opportunity to improve their products before alternative flat panel approaches based on inorganic LED would make OLEDs irrelevant for mainstream lighting. Ingo Maurer and his colleague Bernhard Dessecker who were very early adopters of OLED panels spoke about their experi- ences and showed their latest creations that combine inorganic LEDs with the OLED panels in an attempt to make the lighting effect more interesting. While they felt that OLED light had a more spiritual feeling than traditional light sources it also had no sex appeal as it was so flat.
The boringness of the OLED light quality was also echoed by Bruno Dussert - Vidalet from Blackbody, the French manufacturer of the Philippe Starck designed OLED task light marketed by Flos. Apparently Philippe Starck also finds the quality of light from OLED panels to be boring and the technol- ogy incomprehensible.
Jonathan Hodges from Jason Bruge studio and Hannes Kotch from Random both pre- sented interactive artworks that utilised the Philips Lumiblade panels. While fascinat- ing and attractive these highly expensive pieces were so far from the high volume
applications that the OLED manufactures are seeking.
The luminaire and OLED manufacturers who came to the conference hoping to gain specific product design ideas went home disappointed – perhaps some ideas did emerge during the conference but if so then they were being kept well under wraps by those creating them. Probably in 10 to 15 years time OLED panels will be large, flexible, efficient and cheap with a long working life but will we be using them to replace T5 linear fluorescent lamps for office lighting? This is the key market for OLEDs to capture but perhaps further developments of current inorganic LED technology will be a more cost effective solution.
The feedback from the lighting designers as to what to do with OLEDs was mixed. Several showed stills from Kubrick’s film 2001 of illuminated floors and ceilings as an ideal OLED application while others showed exactly the same images as being the kind of application to avoid at all costs. Those designers with the longest experience of working with OLEDs including Ingo Maurer and the Philips luminaire design team have started to combine OLED with inorganic LEDs in the same luminaire in order to make the light more interesting and modulated so this may be a clue to the shape of things to come.
David Morgan runs David Morgan Associ- ates, a London-based international design consultancy specialising in luminaire design and development.
Email:
david@dmadesign.co.uk Web:
www.dmadesign.co.uk Tel: +44 ( 0) 20 8340 4009 © David Morgan Associates 2010
For more on these and other OLED products, go to
www.mondoarc.com
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© John Sutton Photography
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