This reminds me of those dreadful initiation stories where the master asks the apprentice to go and get some sky hooks or a long weight.  Now the apprentice electrician might be asked to go and get a tin of light switch paint. The apprentice will say “pull the other one mate, I wasn’t born yesterday, in fact I could sue you for bullying” (our apprentice was a Gen Y-er, after all).  But it would be a legitimate request if this story is to be believed – you can now, apparently, get paint with can be brushed which will operate exactly like a light switch.

How does it work?  According to the inventor Quark Design there is an ‘electronic mechanism’ which connects somehow to the paint making it possible to touch any part of the wall and for the lights to be switched on or off.  Sounds amazing, but would it actually work?  Don’t know – let us know if you see it in action…

Look mum, no switch

Photo by James Newton

A column chandelier developed by Spiers and Major, and LDN Architects has presented an attractive solution to provide both aesthetic and functional light to this spiral staircase in Usher Hall, Edinburgh.

The new stair is a part of a heritage refurbishment to the original building and links it to a modern extension.

The chandelier is approximately 14m long, and uses fluorescent tubes encased within double acrylic cylinders. The inner cylinder is frosted, so as to diffuse the light, and the outer cylinder is etched with a ring pattern, which picks up the light. The tubular sections are separated with shorter sections of acrylic rings, up-lit using leds.

The form of the luminaire has also resolved issues regarding installation within a heritage site, and reduces the need for mounting and cable routing.

The beauty of this solution lies not only in the column of light itself, but also in the way that the light paints the edge of the spiral stair, highlighting the architecture and creating a strong graphic impression, whilst integrating well into the framework of the building itself.

http://www.speirsandmajor.com/work/product/usher_hall_chandelier/

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/12282/speirs-major-usher-hall-edinburgh.html

Giant lasers, clouds that mysteriously glow – all the hallmarks of an intriguing lighting story I picked up over the weekend on the ABC website.

Luminous clouds are being measured by a giant laser to assess the extent of climate change on high altitude cloud formations.

The lasers are being pointed at the sky above Davis Station in Antarctica to measure clouds up to 100km above earth.  Scientists say those clouds are more easily seen as the world warms up.

Researchers say “Our atmospheric dynamics are such that as we’ve got a warming troposphere – which is where we live – as that warms that in fact is interlinked with a phenomenon called global cooling up in the mesosphere above 50 kilometres”.

“And so we expect that with a cooler mesosphere we’ll see an increased occurrence of these clouds.”

The clouds are a bright blue colour and their common name is luminous clouds.

I checked out the NASA web site and found not only a cool picture of what these clouds look like but also a handy diagram explaining how they are formed.  To the lighting geeks out there, enjoy…

Luminous clouds (image courtesy NASA)

And how they are formed (again, thanks NASA)