THE PILLARS OF
DYNAMIC LIGHTING By AMY D LUX
Dynamic Strategist at sixteen5hundred
CENTER GARAGE, BERKELEY, CA
Dynamic lighting has come into play in multiple arenas, no longer just concerts and theatre. While dynamic lighting has been alive and well in the entertainment industry for over 35 years, it is now spreading roots in the built environment in a number of ways. The term dynamic is characterized by “constant change, activity, or progress”. When paired with lighting, this “activity” is defined by color tuning, warm dimming, and saturated color shifts. These shifts can be fast and obvious, or imperceptibly slow and subtle. Naturally, the first step of bringing dynamic lighting to the built environment was to repeat what we saw in entertainment by bringing saturated light to facades, fountains, and feature
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designing lighting
pieces throughout a building. This is Pillar 1, the natural progression from stage to structure. Saturated light as a permanent installation has been embraced across the globe, but it doesn’t end there. As LED technology has progressed, it has allowed for advances in circadian lighting, or tunable white, as well. The functionality required for this is twofold. The first advancement came from LEDs being able to create multiple temperatures within a diode or diode set in order to create a spectrum of white that is as close to the black body curve as possible. At the early stages of LED, the market only offered “cool” or “warm” options in separate fixtures. As the technology progressed, diodes gained better
accuracy as well as decreasing in size, allowing different methods to achieve a specific color. Improved color rendering allowed white light to become virtually equal to classic incandescent sources. The next function that improved in LED technology was dimming. Steppiness was decreased so that the lighting would have a smooth fade that is unnoticeable to the eye. Without these two factors, it would not be possible to create circadian lighting. The second pillar is Circadian lighting, which goes by many names, is in essence the ability to mimic natural light. Humans are predisposed to natural light, and our biorhythms depend upon these patterns for health and wellness, as well as cues for sleeping and waking. As