The week that was…5-9th March 2018

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The week that was…5-9th March 2018

Singapore
Weekend 10-11th March 2018

Another busy week, no let-up in sight and with the team flying off to Europe next week to attend Light & Build and do some factory visits in conjunction, there was a lot of pressure to get as much done as possible before we leave as the office will be in a virtual close down for nearly 10 days with just a skeleton team in attendance. This meant a lot of project meetings and rushing to complete design packages for submission to clients before we leave.

PLDC update
This week was busy too with visiting a few more potential venues for the Gala Dinner. One in particular is our favourite, a unique and totally unexpected venue, even for Singaporeans! Fingers crossed we can make that work. We confirmed the lighting designer for the gala dinner and had initial communications/ discussions with the Singapore government agencies to explore cooperation in pre-convention events. It’s a slow process as we mill through the bureaucratic layers, we are getting there. One of the key opportunities we are exploring is to make the convention eligible for CPD points and for that we had our discussions with the Singapore Institute of Architects…I have to say I did not realise the intensity of my involvement when I agreed to be the local steering committee member…but I am enjoying the challenge!
IoT Clients
As we are moving our services towards the Lighting Design of Things with IoT becoming a key factor in many client’s decision making, we have now a few projects that offer genuine prospects to put our knowledge and expertise in lighting and the IoT to the test. Through partnerships and cooperation with IoT leaders in the lighting industry we are now genuinely working on our first IoT project, a big multi-level corporate office. We are keen to see what can be offered and which of the options the client will want to incorporate. It is an educational process for all involved, us, the client and the lighting systems provider.

Philips IoT Leader
One of the market leaders in lighting and the IoT is Philips. A recent research by Navigant Research put Philips at the top of the leader board (see graph below). Not surprisingly our team went for an educational and inspirational trip to Philips brand new headquarters in Toa Payoh this week to get ourselves updated on the latest state of the art lighting IoT progress as well as visits their lighting application centre showing the latest smart products and systems. Seeing is believing, so this trip allowed us to physically see it for ourselves. A follow up will be done at the Philips stand in Frankfurt at L&B. We had live demonstrations of the Luminous Walls, Patterns and Carpets and got ourselves updated with the latest smart systems in outdoor sports, the public realm, façade lighting and lighting for hospitality. In a conference room environment, we experienced the demonstration of smart IoT functions integrated in light fixtures. It is clear that IoT is no longer a dream or concept but a reality that can already been proposed to clients. While many IoT challengers are still in pilot project stage, Philips has moved into the real lighting market with commercially available solutions.

LiFI a reality
We were privileged to experience as one of the very first lighting design practices to get a life demonstration by Philips of LiFi in action. While it is still confidential it will be revealed at Light and Build so I am not breaching much confidentiality by sharing the news…we experienced first-hand how lighting points provide a seamless internet connection. There is still much to be developed as now the data transfer still occurs in the visible light spectrum. It is not a secret that those active in this field of LiFi are researching ways to move the data transfer to the invisible part of light (infra-red) so that visible light can be switched off without interrupting the LiFi transmissions. One of the LiFi producers already manages its data uploads in this spectrum. We saw it in action and there is no doubt that it is not a matter of if but when that LiFi will be the common way to transfer internet and cloud data in interior spaces. I think it adds a really exciting new prospect to our lighting designs…

Have a great weekend!