Hasta La Ideas

Design Indaba 2013: glow-in-the-dark roads and responsive street lamps were among the concepts to make highways safer while saving money and energy presented by Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town earlier this month.

The Smart Highways project by Studio Roosegaarde proposes five energy-efficient concepts that will be tested on a stretch of highway in the Brabant province of the Netherlands from the middle of this year.

The first of the concepts developed by studio head Daan Roosegaarde and infrastructure firm Heijmans is a glow-in-the-dark road that uses photo-luminescent paint to mark out traffic lanes. The paint absorbs energy from sunlight during the day the lights the road at night for up to 10 hours.

Temperature-responsive road paint would show images of snowflakes when the temperature drops below zero, warning drivers to take care on icy roads.

There are two ideas for roadside lighting: interactive street lamps that come on as vehicles approach then dim as they pass by, thereby saving energy when there is no traffic, and “wind lights” that use energy generated by pinwheels as drafts of air from passing vehicles cause them to spin round.

Finally, an induction priority lane would incorporate induction coils under the tarmac to recharge electric cars as they drive.

Roosegaarde presented the Smart Highways concept at the Design Indaba conference in South Africa earlier this month, where he received a standing ovation from rapt guests – see more from Design Indaba as part of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour.

Last year the studio built a dome of metallic flowers that appear to come to life as they sense the presence of visitors, while their earlier projects include a dress that becomes see-through when the wearer gets excited or embarrassed – see all design by Studio Roosegaarde.

Other street lighting we’ve reported on includes Ross Lovegrove’s solar-powered lights shaped like trees and a sharply faceted LED street lamp – see all street lighting.

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Studio Roosegaarde appeared first on Dezeen.

Dezeen Wire: Spanish lighting brand Santa & Cole has launched a lawsuit accusing the state of Qatar of copying street lighting devised for Barcelona by Catalan designer Beth Galí in 1996.

920 lights have been installed by the Ashghal public authority along Al Waab Street in Doha (top and above), which Santa & Cole claim are counterfeits of their Latina street lamps designed by Galí (below). They also claim the designs incude low-quality light sources that dazzle drivers and thin steel that represents a structural safety hazard.

Read more on the campaign website, Facebook page or Twitter.

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Here are some more details from Santa & Cole:

Lawsuit against Qatar due to counterfeiting 1,000 streetlamps and threatening the intellectual property of their designer

The public company Ashghal from Qatar forged the “Latina” streetlamp, designed by the architect Beth Galí, and manufactured and marketed by the company Santa & Cole. Nearly 1,000 forged units were installed on Al Waab Street, the main street in Doha.

Beth Galí has lodged a lawsuit in the Courts of Barcelona to report the case, in which she expressed her “full confidence in justice to resolve a large-scale forgery case that is threatening the creativity of professionals and European companies”.

BCD and Santa & Cole, as well as several personalities working in architecture and design in Barcelona, went to the courts to show their support and to make the facts public.

Javier Nieto, Chairman of Santa & Cole: “It is unbelievable that a country such as Qatar could commit such a serious case of forgery”
Pau Herrera, Chairman of BCD: “Protecting design as a factor of innovation is essential to create economic and social value in Europe”

One of the biggest cases of public counterfeiting in the history of Design

The architect Beth Galí, the Chairman of Santa & Cole, Javier Nieto Santa, and the Chairman of BCD (Barcelona Design Centre), Pau Herrera, invited the media to Courts of Law in Barcelona to publicly announce the large-scale forgery committed by Qatar.

The meeting, carried out at the doors of the Courts of Law in Barcelona, was held due to the lawsuit for pain and suffering lodged on June 29 by Beth Galí against Qatar, which forged the “Latina” streetlamp via the public company Ashghal in 2006, designed by her and manufactured and marketed by the company Santa & Cole.

This case of large-scale forgery is especially relevant as the offender is a sovereign state, in addition to the case being particularly large and the development of events.
The crime committed by Qatar can be seen along the 10 kilometres of Al Waab Street, the main street in the capital of Qatar, Doha, where the public company Ashghal installed approximately 900 forgeries of the “Latina” streetlamp.

Although the case is being made public now, the facts go back to April 2005, when Ashghal requested Santa & Cole to complete an entire lighting project for Al Waab Street for the 14th Asian Games (Doha, 2006). After the Qatari authorities chose the “Latina” streetlamp, which was adapted beforehand to meet the needs of the project, and having submitted five different projects with models and technical specifications, Ashghal requested a local company to make nearly 1,000 copies of the “Latina” streetlamp in 2006.

After six years of trying to reach an amicable agreement, and after the Qatari government refused the arbitration of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the case is now in the hands of the Courts of Barcelona and one of the largest acts of piracy in the history of design committed by a sovereign state is now being made public.

In this context, the claimant, Beth Galí, expressed her “full confidence in the Spanish legal system to resolve a blatant case of large-scale forgery” at the courts.
Supporting the business sector and design BCD (Barcelona Design Centre) and Santa & Cole, as well as other personalities working in the design and architecture sector in Barcelona, were with Beth Galí during the submission of the first lawsuit to show their support and to make the facts public.

Javier Nieto Santa, the Chairman of Santa & Cole, stated to the media that the “Latina” streetlamp case perplexed him, ensuring that “it is unbelievable that Qatar, a sovereign nation and member of the WIPO and the WTO, bound by the Paris Convention and the TRIPS Agreement, could commit such a large case of forgery, which undoubtedly shows a complete disregard for copyright”.

In this regard, Pau Herrera, Chairman of BCD, ensured that “protecting design as a factor of innovation is essential to create economic and social value, and represents one of the most important assets of professionals and European companies”. Herrera added that cases such as this one “do not only damage our business, but also the city model Barcelona wants to project”.

The post Qatar accused of “counterfeiting
1000 street lamps” appeared first on Dezeen.

Architects Plasma Studio of London, Beijing and Bolzano have designed this LED street lamp in collaboration with lighting company ewo.

Called Tagliente (‘sharp’ in Italian), the lamp has a faceted surface, twisting from the vertical pole to horizontal light source.

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The information below is from Plasma Studio:

PLASMA STUDIO and ewo present ‘Tagliente’

With the advent of LED lighting units suitable for outdoor lighting, ewo, the Bolzano-based, international manufacturer of high quality lighting systems asked Plasma Studio to develop a new type of street light for this radically new technology.

Starting from the conceptual diagram of the street lamp as a combination of vertical shaft and horizontal light-emitting beam and looking at birds and flowers for reference, Plasma developed Tagliente as a fluid transition between the vertical and horizontal directions.

Challenging the omnipresent and generic status of street lamps, this angular multi-facetted sculpture appears different from every angle and invites the casual passer-by to wander around it in order to grasp its form. By being ambiguously between industrial and natural form, we experienced that the object’s relationship to context has been surprisingly versatile.

The light was first exhibited at Plasma Studio’s Nodal Landscapes exhibition at the DAZ Berlin where it formed a dynamic extension to the orthogonal grids of a typical Berlin “Hinterhof” around it. It is now displayed in front of ewo’s headquarter building, a contemporary context that enables it to articulate the link between the natural rocky backdrop and the man-made orthogonal structures.

See also:

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Solar Tree by Ross Lovegrove	Alphabet City Lights by JDS Architects	Luz Interruptus by Luzinterruptus