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innovative design competition for street lighting

Team

Jeroen Ruijter

Jeroen.ruijter@hva.nl
Bauke Bakker

baukebakker@me.com
Alejandro Rodas

alexrdp90@gmail.com
Anna Triboli

anna.triboli@gmail.com
Niall MacKellar

niall.mac.kellar@hva.nl

Commissioner:

Description

By alejandrorodas March 28th, 2013

Masterclass in Terschelling

Last week we went to Terschelling for the two days masterclass “The value of darkness” in which – as in the rest of Light Challenge activities – all teams participated with their respective coaches.

We had a presentation of the famous Dutch astronaut André Kuipers. He explained us some interesting aspects of the daily life in the International Space Station (ISS), for example: how he had to learn to move without gravity an the importance of water in the station, due to the fact it is an expensive but basic good. He showed pictures of objects randomly floating around in the spaceship, and therefore very hard to find back when you’re not watching them. Most interesting for us – as designers of public lighting – were the pictures of the Earth taken from the space station. Kuipers showed us pictures of the northern- and southern light seen from space, and also the magnetic fields that form patterns around the globe. Furthermore he made a lot of pictures of islands, countries, deserts, mountains, lakes and forests. You could really see the effect of darkness in space and the light around the planet.

After the presentation, we had the opportunity to ask questions about his travel, his motivations to become an astronaut and the future of his career. He explained how difficult it is to be selected again since the european part of the ISS is relatively small (around 8%) and the age is an important factor.

Then we took the boat from the Waddenpromenade to Terschelling. When we arrived at the island, three presentations were given about darkness and light pollution. The mayor of Terschelling told about the plans that the island has about green energy, more effective light and the value of darkness on the island. Then the coach of one of the teams told about  historic inventions that were important for lighting in the Netherlands, and the last presentation was told by a project developper. He told about his idea of Dark Sky Parks. In this kind of park there is not any light pollution, so you can really see the dark sky, the stars and the moon. During the walk to the hostel where we would spend the night we could see the value of darkness on the island. There are many areas where  you can really see the sky without light pollution.

 

By wouterklaase March 14th, 2013

Visit to the Indal Industria factory in Emmen

To get an insight in the production of public lighting, our project supervisors took us to the Indal Industria factory in the city of Emmen. Klaas Faber, the account manager of the factory, shortly introduced the work of Indal in a presentation. He told that the factory had been taken over by Philips, but although this big company will have a lot of influence on the production, Indal still manages  to be very unique in the street lighting market: the production system that is used is very flexible and customer-orientated. This means that when receiving an order from a municipality or an investor, the factory will do their best to make the product as specific as possible. This flexibility is one of the key factors of the successful production of Indal. Furthermore he explained that the factory is currently switching to producing more LED light, which is called ‘ the light of the future’ because it is said to be more sustainable and effective than the older light systems.

While listening to the presentation, a lot of different street lights – with and without LED – were exposed in the same room, as you can see behind us.

In this picture you can see that the lamp in the middle of the whiteboard uses LED light. You can see it by the shape of the little light bulbs. Klaas Faber explained that you can reach different effects of LED light with color: you could for example use cool-, neutral- and warm white light. Deciding which color should be used depends on the wishes of the customers. Do you want the light to be nice and warm? Should it simply give more light then there is now in the area? Should it give the feeling of safety?

To compare, the street light at the right side can give a cosy feeling to a street: the design of this is a nostalgic one, but of course you can put modern LED light inside.

After the introduction we went to the working place, where we saw how the light product was crafted both by machines and human hands. Instead of being confronted with endless assembly lines, we saw people working intensively on creating the street lights out of raw material. Especially the very thin material of LED light panels requires a precise treatment. The different stadia of the production of a light and it’s armature were shown: the digital draft of the product, putting the LED lights together in the right spots, the aluminium shaping and cutting, powder coating of the aluminium to make the material resistant against the bad weather, implementing the light into the material, testing, putting the product into the packaging and then put them in the lorry to transport them.

In this picture you can see how the LED lights are put together to make them work effectively. The LEDs are delivered in strips, which looked a bit like film strips. The machines then put the tiny light sources in the right order, so they can be used in the specific products.

We learned a lot about the way street lights are crafted. Although we have to come up with our own concept, we can use our new knowledge as inspiration. We have seen the technologies to make common lights, but also the way that Indal experiments with technology and design. In the lighting industry, it’s always necessary to think about the future, because public lighting is a landscape that is changing very rapidly. In this picture you can see a design that we don’t see that much in the streets, but maybe we will see them appear more in the future, or maybe a light that is only based on this design. Light is never a finished product, because it can always be inspiration for new ideas.

Via the link  indal-lighting.nl you can find more information about the Philips Indal factory.

 

By wouterklaase March 7th, 2013

Brainstorming with Charlie Mulholland

Charlie Mulholland came to the MediaLAB to teach about brainstorming. He told that, according to the creative process-model of Tassoul, you are dealing with divergent and convergent thinking during the development of a project: in the first phase you are exploring a lot of information and theories, and in the second phase you will have to select the best ones to come to one clear point again. Un important aspect of brainstorming is that in most cases you are dealing with a ‘wicked problem’: a problem that is ill-defined. Therefore the first step is to know exactly what the problem is. While redefining the problem in your own words you can also look at the answers that don’t help. By this you can make your vision broader and see the problem from a different perspective. The next step is to decide who the stakeholders are. Come up with as much stakeholders as possible. Don’t be critical, just write them down!

So let’s use this model for our project, the Agavestraat. According to the Light Challenge 2013 the problem is that the lighting is not sustainable and innovative enough, and it never included any participation with the residents. If you take this problem in consideration once more, a logical question is: are these also the problems of the residents or do they have different issues? During our first meeting in Almere the residents told us that they do not always have a save feeling in the street, and for some people the street light is shining too powerful into their houses. When taking all this information together (convergent thinking), maybe we can come up with a better definition of the problem, for example: how can we renew the streetlight in the Agavestraat to be more sustainable and meaningful for the residents? In that way we captured the term ‘innovation’ in ‘renew’, sustainable is in this definition and in ‘meaningful’ the elements of savety and light-effectivity for the residents are included.

What are the negative ideas that won’t give a solution? Using a lot of light will certainly not be the right answer, because that doesn’t automatically make the street saver, and people will have too much light shining into their houses. Also we can’t use too much energy, because the government will have to spend too much money.

Who are our stakeholders? The most important ones are of course the residents, the Light Challenge and the municipality. But besides these three we can come up with more parties: ourselves, MediaLAB, companies that make material for street lights, investors, light artists, other visitors of the Agavestraat, people who leave nearby, animals, police and journalists.

 

 

By wouterklaase March 1st, 2013

Masterclass University of Twente, Brainstorming Video

Brainstorming with Marnix, Rob, Geurt and André.

 

 

By wouterklaase February 22nd, 2013

Meeting with Marcel Bolten

How can we create participation of users in our project? We decided to make our blog interactive, so the residents of the Agavestraat can comment on our work or give advise to improve it. To gather information about them we also created an online survey that the residents can fill out. It contains questions about the current light in their street, how they would like to improve it and some personal facts (gender, age).

Marcel Bolten, an urban and public designer, told us that there are more ways to get information from users. For a design concept in public space it’s necessary to know exactly how the users think, what kind of assocations they make and what their daily routines are. Useful techniques to discover this are context mapping, intervening in peoples rituals, observing, and focus groups. Context mapping is a method of contextual research with users, to discover the context of our concept and what its use will be. Focus groups are like surveys (it has the goal of questioning the user), but than in an interactive way. This way you can really get an in-depth conversation with the users and you can discover their daily routines.

Marcel Bolten also gave some advice to brainstorm about a possible design for our light concept. Techniques like making collages and the ‘Wiebertjesmodel’ can help to stimulate and organize thinking on a design. The concept really has to fit to the needs of the users but we must also think for ourselves and come up with creative out-of-the-box ideas for a design concept. One thing we can really use is the problem of the dark alleys in the Agavestraat. In the night time this place is so dark that you can’t see anything. How to come up with a design for this? We have to generate a lot of ideas, and must not be afraid to throw older ideas away. Decision making is the key to the succes of a design concept. In this link you can find more information about urban and public design projects of Marcel Bolten: omgeef.nl