Concrete Progress DAVID MORGAN
David Morgan runs David Morgan Associates, a London-based international design consultancy specialising in luminaire design and development and is also MD of Radiant Architectural Lighting. Email: david@dmadesign.co.uk www.dmadesign.co.uk
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FortaCast, the latest in-ground linear lighting system from Organic Lighting, incorporates several innovative and patented design features. Keen to find out more, David Morgan takes a closer look.
There are many points of entry for people working in the lighting industry, from the purely artistic to the highly scientific. In the case of Laurence St. Ives, the founder of both Organic Lighting and Orgatech Lighting, his way into the market was as an importer of German and Italian office furniture designed for use with desktop PCs in the 1970s. As the use of PCs became widespread, minimising glare on computer screens from overhead fluorescent lighting was a major concern. To address this issue Laurence developed the first freestanding high lumen output office up-lights, helped by some lighting design and optical development from Stanley Lyons at Thorn Lighting, whose company manufactured the metal halide lamps. Orgatech in the UK was founded in 1976 to sell these up-lights, quickly followed in 1979 by the launch of a USA company, which is still running today. Laurence moved to the US in the 1980s, first to New York and then to California. Organic Lighting was created in 2002 as a sister company to Orgatech Lighting to focus on colour changing LED lighting and, in 2009, with the advent of white LEDs, it is claimed that Orgatech became the first in the USA to introduce professionalquality flexible lighting strips. The latest luminaire development from Organic Lighting is the FortaCast in-ground linear lighting system, which incorporates several innovative and patented design features.
In-ground linear lighting systems have become a popular tool for creating lines of light for exterior and interior lighting applications, but they have proved problematic for electrical contractors to install and to maintain. To overcome these issues, the FortaCast bodies are made from glass reinforced concrete (GRC) and are designed to be installed by paving, general contractors, and landscaping contractors rather than electrical contractors. The IP68-rated flexible Aqueon LED light engines used in the FortaCast system are a separate element from the GRP housing and are installed and removed via the last section in the run, with the help of miniature nylon rollers built into the housing. FortaCast GRC bodies can support a drive overload of up to 4,500kg and are available in a variety of colours and surface textures to coordinate with other paving and landscape materials. It is understood that the GRC materials used have a lower carbon footprint than cast concrete due to the higher percentage of glass and aggregate in the mix. The FortaCast system includes four standard profile sizes, offering various lengths in each size, standard radiused sections, corner sections, angled-joint sections and end sections, which act as the insertion point for the LED light engines. In addition to the standard shapes and sizes, Organic Lighting can develop custom-shaped housings