Lighting Design and Sustainability

Your recent “Electric Lighting” article (Vol. 11, No. 6, June 2002) did an accurate and thorough job of summarizing the complex technical and environmental issues regarding lamps. As a professional lighting designer and LEED™-accredited consultant, I appreciated your valuable point that while the article focused on technology and not design, “the two are inextricably linked.”

I thought

EBN readers might be interested to know that the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD) has recently established a Sustainability Committee. I’m glad that you sought input from Dave Nelson of Clanton & Associates—he and that firm are active participants in our committee work.

IALD is a 33-year-old organization of more than 700 professional lighting designers worldwide. It has been deeply involved for many years in the development of energy codes and metrics for evaluating the quality of the visual environment. The Sustainability Committee is a natural step in that advocacy work. This group has taken the lead on defining how lighting designers and manufacturers can best integrate these design, technology, and environmental considerations. The Lighting Industry Research Council (LIRC), an IALD-affiliate organization of lighting manufacturers, for which I am the IALD co-chair, is working with the IALD Sustainability Committee on these initiatives.

One of our first steps was to develop the working definition: “Sustainable lighting design meets the needs of the visual environment with the least impact on the physical environment.” The attributes of this approach are described in an article I recently wrote for

Architectural Lighting (“Sustainable Design: Getting the Green Light,” January/February 2002).

Building owners, facility managers, architects, and engineers should be aware that IALD members are ready, willing, and able to help navigate these lighting design and technology issues. For further reference, readers can check the IALD Web site (https://www.iald.org/) or contact Sustainability Committee chairperson Samantha Hollomon with Hayden McKay Lighting Design, Inc. in New York (samantha@hmldi.com) or me (MLoeffler@retec.com).

Mark Loeffler, IALD

Lighting and Sustainable

Design Leader

The RETEC Group, Inc.

New Haven, Connecticut