Lighting Surfaces With The Lighting Quotient
People have often said to me "lighting is so important." Of course they don't mean lighting. They mean pretty light fixtures. The most amazing light you've ever seen probably came from a theatrical instrument that looks rather ugly. My point is that people who really care about lighting care about the light itself. How it's created, shaped and projected. What color it is and how well it renders color. More than anything how we use a light source is critical to the final look and feel of a space.
This brings be to The Lighting Quotient. Comprised of its sub-brands, Elliptipar, Tambient and Fraqtir, TLQ is a company full of lighting people. Real lighting people, the kinds of designers and engineers who are obsessed with how to shape light and use it to illuminate surfaces. That's not to say they make ugly fixtures. It's to say that they care about making instruments that put light exactly where you need it.
A Different Way of Looking at Light
When most of us think about light we think in terms of ceiling mounted fixtures. Whether they are decorative or functional we tend to imagine light being cast down upon a space from above. That's not based on nothing. Most of our lighting is indeed created in this way. But TLQ thinks differently , and they have ever since their founder Sy Shemitz started creating Elliptipar fixtures in 1977. Sy was passionate about light and casting light on surfaces. In fact, he started the Elliptipar line of fixtures after he patented a new kind of reflector technology but couldn't find a manufacturer willing to build it.
That reflector is the basis for numerous iterations of asymmetric surface lighting and it's the backbone technology behind Elliptipar today. Whether you're lighting the facade walls of a museum or the stacks of a library the asymmetric distribution of Elliptipar is a critical tool for the lighting designer to have in her arsenal.
Elliptipar is based on a reflector technology meant to hone the light cast by an omni-directional source light a metal halide or fluorescent lamp. So when the LED revolution started many asked how Elliptipar would adapt to solid state lighting. Rather than trying force LED technology into an existing form factor, the company rebranded (becoming The Lighting Quotient) and launched a new line of products called Fraqtir. Fraqtir is based on the concept of refraction. Since LED is a point source, the most effective way to make it an asymmetric wash light is to refract the light within a lens. This gives you even more control of the light than the original Elliptipar reflector.
Tambient - A Different Way To Light The Office
Most people hate their office lighting. While I've written many times about different ways to fix this problem, like giving office areas access to daylight and better lighting controls Tambient comes a this problem in a whole other way. By creating an uplight/down fixture combination, Tambient puts light where we need it in an office, by putting the majority f the light on the work surface and allowing some to escape as ambient bounce light off the ceiling, Tambient creates a whole new office environment.
Tambient allows for flexible modular lighting design that bridges the gap between furniture and lighting design, creating enormous energy savings and a very different, soft lighting environment.
When it comes to lighting and sustainability, most manufacturers proclaim that they are creating more sustainable lighting by using LED and reducing power density. TLQ takes it one huge step further and has multiple Elliptipar and Fraqtir products Cradle-to-Cradle certified. It's this commitments to sustainability that a better future that makes The Lighting Quotient a leader in sustainability.
So if you need to know more about the Lighting Quotient just head to their site and connect with your local representative.
