Metro-North enlisted the help of New Jersey’s Design Plan team to recreate the old glory of the installation, this time with LED lights. The new-and-improved lighting installation was unveiled last week. In addition to significant energy savings for GCT management, the LED lights offer increased performance. Each individual fixture has its own glass diffuser that modulates intensity “to better capture the size and intensity of the actual star being depicted,” according to Metro-North.

Wherever your holiday travels take you, keep an eye out for the increase in uses for LED lights. However, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority encourages travelers to apply caution and safety. As chairman of the MTA Jay H Walder noted, “We hope people won’t run into one another as they crane their necks and peer skyward in admiration.”

From WorldArchitectureNews.com: “The San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge, built in 1969 in the spectacular context of the bay, has become a symbol of the San Diego area. The San Diego Bridge is characterised by its graceful 2.5 mile long curved deck supported by over 30 towers reaching a height of 200ft over the navigation channel. The shipping channels are spanned by the world’s longest continuous three-span box girder measuring 1,880ft. After an extensive period of evaluation, the Port Commissioners and Caltrans embraced a selection panel’s recommendation to choose the Peter Fink and Mark Major led team ahead of two other finalists, the Bideau Company of Ballan-Mire, France and Ned Kahn/Patrick McInerney Associates in association with ARUP.

The winning concept envisages illuminating the bridge with programmable LED lighting in an energy neutral manner using electricity generated by wind turbines. The lighting concept is designed to celebrate the spectacular Bay location of San Diego, and emphasise the bridge as an important gateway with programmable changing coloured light which expresses the movement of energy across and under the bridge. The variable rate of traffic flow over the bridge will be expressed by parapet lighting programmatically reflecting the direction, speed and intensity of vehicle movements on the deck.

The lighting of the navigation span will express the nautical gateway function of the bridge and will have the capability to respond to the movement of larger ships. A distinct secondary layer of lighting accentuating the bridge pillars will provide the sense of urban connection between the two shores and celebrate the strong ties across the water body linking the communities of San Diego and the City of Coronado.”

via Inhabitat

could lead to

!

As an added bonus, you can use these pieces as safety gear when jogging at night, as Instructables member Wcruz79 seems to have done.

“Leo Villareal is a pioneer in the use of LEDs and computer-driven imagery and known both for his light sculptures and architectural, site-specific works. This exhibition, his first major traveling museum survey, seeks to place Villareal’s body of work within the continuum of contemporary art. Born in Albuquerque, NM, in 1967 and raised in El Paso, TX, and in northern Mexico, Villareal began his studies in stage design and art at Yale University, New Haven, CT. He later pursued graduate studies at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, NY, and from 1994 to 1997, worked on cutting-edge virtual reality projects at Paul Allen’s Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto, California. In 1994, Villareal first attended the counterculture festival Burning Man, which inspired him to begin creating immersive experiences on a larger scale. In 1997, he programmed a 16-light strobe structure that he brought to Burning Man. Originally conceived as a nighttime way-finding device using pulsing light, the simple piece was well received and became the precursor to his work in the LED light medium.”

As part of Villareal’s exhibition, the San Jose Museum of Art is hosting an LED light art workshop this weekend. It’s free with admission, so if you’re into LED lighting and DIY art, you should definitely take advantage of this awesome program.

LED lighting is becoming practically synonymous with sustainable lighting, so it follows that LEDs and awareness-raising light festivals go together like cheese and macaroni. This is a fantastic new direction for global light festivals. I’d like to wish all the I Light Marina Bay collaborators a successful show!

OMG META LED LIGHTS!!!1 French designer Kei Yamamoto created these clever lamps that should appeal to any lighting afficionado’s inner nerd.

“These LED lighting fixtures are about twenty times a led bulb and there are 12 leds in the acrylic glass lens. As a bonus, it also creates interesting light patterns on the walls or ceiling.”

The most fantastic part of this piece is that energy-efficiency factored into the decision to go with LED lights. Says McClellan, “I believe that every designer needs to be aware of the ecological impact of their work. We can all make a difference by using new technology and with LEDs; you can still have all the glamour of designer lighting but use very little energy.” In an interview with Middle East Interiors about Reflective Flow, McClellan continues, “After realising the proportions we would have to use, the ecological impact was of a great concern to me. LED lighting for me is the true future of lighting. Manufacturing LED is non-toxic, there are huge reductions in the energy that is required to power them and they have an extremely long life. Therefore there is less packaging, less waste products, also the maintenance costs are low. But I am sure your readers already know the benefits of LED lights.”

“But for this project, I wanted to reduce the energy consumption to even lower than the normal. We did this by using hand-ground optical crystal, to magnify the light that was produced by the LEDs. The crystal also helps to diffuse the colour and spread the light. It is hard for me to tell you exactly what the cost in terms of the energy consumed. But what I can tell you is that if we turn on the chandelier on full white, which is the most energy consuming colour, as it takes all the other colours to produce it, it would be similar as turning on one hundred 60 W light bulbs, which considering its size, it is an extremely low energy consumption.”

Hooray for art AND environmental awareness!

The East Van Cross, as it is known by locals, captures much of the city’s playfulness. The graphic cross shape and the sheer scale – 20 meters high – conjures the flippant, casual attitude widespread in the growingly hip area. The use of LED lights gives the sculpture weight while still looking inherently modern.

The LED lights are also a (somewhat abstracted) nod to East Vancouver’s historic status as the “Neon Capital of Canada.” From a city planning point of view, it’s also great to have such visible landmarks; Boston’s Citgo sign illuminated by LED lights, for example, is such a handy tool for residents and visitors alike, few people today even equate it to an ad for gas.

via jaunted

via Inhabitat