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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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APRIL 1, 2003
This Designer Sees the Cool Light Architect Sheila Kennedy is at the forefront of weaving new flexible and efficient lighting technologies into structures Just in time, it turns out. By 2005, New York state agencies will be required to purchase at least 10% of all their power from renewable, "green" sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, or fuel cells. By 2010, according to a law signed by Governor George Pataki in 2001, the percentage will increase to 20%. "END OF BULB CULTURE." This trend is a boon for Sheila Kennedy. An architect and Harvard University professor, Kennedy is the woman in charge of New York's two-year, $20 million East River revitalization project, and she's at the forefront of finding practical uses for so-called cool light -- the type that will illuminate the river's shore. Unlike traditional light, which is created by heating an incandescent filament until it throws off light-producing photons, cool light is made by using natural light or electricity to "excite" molecular crystals embedded in luminescent pigments or special light-emitting diodes. One advantage of cool light is that it's much more efficient than the traditional man-made variety: Like a firefly, it gives off nearly 100% of its energy as visible light. By comparison, a light bulb gives off 10% light and 90% heat. And because cool light is, well, cool, it can be embedded into architectural materials such as fabric, glass, wood, acrylic, and plastic -- creating new interfaces between the physical world and digital technology. "Cool light represents a new paradigm in illumination," says Kennedy. "It's the end of bulb culture." Kennedy and her husband/partner Frano Violich are working on cool-light implementations for customers that include office-furniture maker Herman Miller, Dupont (DD ), the U.S. Energy Dept., and Harvard Law School. CHAMELEON CLOTH. Designing with cool light became possible only in 1996 when Japanese manufacturer Nichia announced that it would make commercially available a phosphor that would emit blue light. Until then, researchers had successfully recreated just red and green light. By combining blue with red and green, it was at last possible to create white light, which is far more useful for architectural and product design. In the intervening years, most cool-light applications have focused on electronic devices, such as laptops and mobile phones. Kennedy and Violich are the first architects to embrace the technology as an integral part of building design. In Kennedy's perfect world, lighting will no longer be confined to lamps or ceiling fixtures. Instead, it will be integrated into futuristic touch screens to control home lighting and heating systems, walls, even fabric. For example, Kennedy and her team of designers have developed a chameleon cloth that will change colors based on the daily cycle of natural light or adjust to reflect the type of music playing in the room. FIREFLIES AND JELLY FISH. The cloth is a mesh of metal and fabric fibers that has been impregnated with a mixture of luminescent pigments. When light or electricity is applied, the fabric glows. The color can be controlled by using specific combinations of phosphor, each with a different color signature and a unique rate of decay. Chameleon cloth has several architectural applications. It might be used by the military to create tents and other shelters that blend in with their surroundings -- a bright desert sky in Iraq or a rocky terrain in Afghanistan. It can also be used as a new type of moveable wall -- in a library, say, to create private study carrels in which students could adjust the color and brightness of surrounding light. As the daughter of a scientist at Woods Hole, a seaside scientific community on Cape Cod, Mass., Kennedy was surrounded by technology from an early age. "I grew up seeing fireflies and swimming in water filled with phosphorescent jelly fish that glowed when you touched them," she remembers. After studying theater at the Sorbonne in Paris, Kennedy realized that her real passion was for design and the creation of new forms out of incongruous parts. She got a masters in architecture from Harvard's school of design and, in 1988, launched Kennedy & Violich Architecture. "HIGHLY ANALYTIC." "People would say to me: This is interesting, but I'm not sure it's architecture," she says. "I got used to that and just kept on doing it. I'm not confined to buildings or [someone else's idea of] what is and isn't architecture." The ability to envision new ways that technology can be integrated into space is Kennedy's gift. Some colleagues call her "scary smart" -- a term that makes her uncomfortable. Others, like Toshiko Mori, the chairman of Harvard's Design School, where Kennedy is an associate professor, call her a "highly analytic mind: Most architects tend to use design as a way to hide technology," Mori says. "Sheila uses technology to create great design." Already, cool-light applications have made their way into everyday life. The latest generation of traffic lights is made from light-emitting diodes, as are the new, brighter brake lights on many Nissan (NSANY ) cars. Over the next five years, Kennedy believes, cool light will make its way into a wide array of products. Market-research outfit iSuppli/Stanford Resources based in San Jose, Calif., estimates that the market for one type of cool-light device, organic light-emitting diodes, will grow from $91 million in 2002 to $1.2 billion in 2006. Historically, architects have worked to design spaces that define and drive specific types of social interaction. With the flexibility and efficiency of cool light, Kennedy is trying to create spaces that morph based on the mood or needs of humans. "What's alluring about cool light is that it's not fixed," says Kennedy. "Instead, it's a sort of Sleeping Beauty that emerges at the appropriate time." For cool-light technologies, that time is about to arrive.  By Jane Black in New York Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. 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