The first bioluminescent plant, inspired by jellyfish and fireflies has been brought to life.
“Over time we have gradually removed ourselves from the natural world and repudiated the need for dependency on it. Science, which initially encouraged this separation process, is now proving that the consequences of this process can be harmful for us and for our biosphere. It is fundamental for our well-being that we recreate a connection with nature in all its sustainable aspects, bringing it to our cities and buildings in every way possible and at the same time increasing the sense of urbanity.”
(Peter Buchanan, Synchronizing with nature / DAmagazine, Autumn 2014).

If there is a designer who has brought this philosophy into his work, strongly believing in the value of light and the importance of illumination for our everyday life, it is Dean Roosegaarde.
He amazed everyone with his creation of a bicycle track illuminated with thousands of sparkling stones recalling Van Gough’s Starry Night, opened in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Roosegaarde’s homeland, for the “Van Gogh International Theme Year 2015”.
The concept that deeply inspires all his work is focused on the determination to conceive urban environments where nature and technology can coexist side by side thus creating a dimension where awareness and interaction are foremost.
Of course these themes bond perfectly with the ever increasing need for sustainable and ecological solutions in art, architecture and urban development (from a social aspect). From this point of view, technology is no longer just an automated tool but it is transformed from being a ‘means’ to becoming an ‘end’. The project roadmap is inverted so if previously ideas were perceived and then a way to materialize them was studied, now a new scenario is designed and inspired by the means that will make it possible. It is therefore necessary to invert the binomial civilization-environment. The stereotype of a city that grows on the margins of nature has become obsolete, reclaiming spaces and tackling the borders to create a concept of nature that undermines the material project.

This happens in an innovative dimension: nature is not only a source of ornamental inspiration (like in the Art Nouveau period for example), it bears systems, organisms and solutions which are biologically accessible. This is how biomimetics began, a type of study that observes scientific matter and tries to find a sustainable solution to the continuous challenges of innovation and development by copying models, forms and strategies that already exist in the world of nature.

It is in this area that Roosegaarde decided to go in depth into the study of the possibility of exploiting the natural ability of some animals, like jellyfish and fireflies, to produce light without any help from external electricity or ultraviolet light. The first result, brought about thanks to the close work with the designers in the New York State University and the research centre Bioglow Tech, has led to the creation of a bioluminescent plant. The effect is amazing, the stem and the leaves of the small plant, genetically modified by introducing the DNA of electroluminescent bacteria in the genome of a common plant, emit a faint luminescent glow. It goes without saying that further development of this project is destined to revolutionise the world of lighting design.

Glowing Nature Paint
There is also another project that the Dutch designer is developing called Glowing Nature Paint, it is evident that he is fascinated or even more so, obsessed with light in nature. This project refers to the creation of biological paint which when applied to the bark of a tree and its leaves, makes them luminescent. This biological paint which is harmless for the tree, charges during the day and then emits bioluminescent light during the night.

 -“Bioluminescent forest” work of Tarek Maward e  Friedrich van Schoor.-

He was inspired by a particular type of mushroom (for example Neonothopanus gardneri, one of the biggest and most luminous florescent mushrooms) that during the night glows to attract insects thus dispersing its spores effectively.
A part from these projects which can be more or less achievable, from this information we can see that there is a clear drive towards retrieving what is extraordinary in nature and applying it to well-being and sustainability, which is widespread among visionaries at the helm of urban planning. We all hope that we are far from the day when our plant will not be habitable but this is certainly the way forward for the realization of sensible projects and let’s not forget what Albert Einstein wrote: “Everything you can imagine, nature has already created.”

And if he said it…

The latest collection, Abissinia, was created in collaboration with local craftsmen of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. But there is more. Some very special moms joined the initiative. Their only “fault”? To have given birth to twins. In Ethiopia, twins are stigmatized as they are regarded as “not blessed by God”. After discovering the PET Lamp workshops in Colombia and Chile, Emily Cosentino, a North American lady and long-time resident in Addis Ababa, contacted the Spanish firm last May and invited it to develop a project with the locals. This was the birth of the collaboration with the group Mothers of Twins to help the mothers raise public awareness on this issue. The lamps are hand-made by weaving fabric to recycled water bottles.

“We are foreseeing more adventures in different countries in 2016” declares the company. “PET Lamp is already a self-sustaining project and our team is working hard to meet the expectations generated by the initiative and help it grow even further.”

www.greenme.it

Currently, public lighting sector has such characteristics to enable the implementation of energy efficiency measures, aimed at achieving a substantial saving of electricity, with resulting benefits in economic and environmental terms. All regeneration and improvement measures have to be evaluated not only in terms of energy efficiency and cost, but also in terms of quality offered to citizens.

TECHNICAL NOTE

LED is an English acronym for “Light Emitting Diode”. LED devices can replace any traditional incandescent lamp, low consumption lamp, fluorescent lamp, etc. As for consumption, there are many differences between the different lamps. If we take into consideration a 100W incandescent lamp, a low consumption lamp having the same light power uses 22W, while a LED lamp uses between 6 and 8 W. As for their lifespan, incandescent lamps have a lifespan ranging from 1000 to 1500 hours, a low consumption lamp has a lifespan of about 5000 hours while a LED lump has a lifespan of 50000 hours.

The 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Isamu Akasaki (Meijo University, Japan), Hiroshi Amano (Nagoya University, Japan) and Shuji Nakamura (University of California, USA). The Blue Light Emitting Diode has been defined “the light revolution in the twenty-first century”. The Nobel Foundation considered the invention as consistent with “the spirit of Alfred Nobel”, who recognized the value of discoveries that bring real benefits to humanity.

From Media.inaif.it: the first announcement was made on Twitter, while the video was broadcast live on YouTube: “With the advent of leds, increasingly widespread, today we have more lasting alternatives compared to the old sources of light”. The winners of the Nobel Prize were surprised and honored: “I am very honored to receive the Nobel Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the invention of LEDs,” said Nakamura. “It is very rewarding to see that the dream of LED lighting has become a reality. I hope that the energy-saving LED bulbs can help reduce energy consumption and lighting costs worldwide“, he added.

The LED bulbs have been developed between 1989 and 1993 and have actually improved our daily lives, because they are not only more efficient than the old incandescent bulbs, but they are also more efficient than the newer halogen lamps or low consumption lamps. Think that the duration of LED bulbs is 50.000 hours, compared to the 1000 hours of the incandescent lamps and 10.000 hours of the fluorescent ones. How do LEDs work? Simply, these devices, which can be found almost everywhere, are able to use all electricity they consume only to emit light, without loss of heat as the bulbs still in use do. Just for this reason, the used energy is optimized without wasting heat.

media.inaf.it

“Bergamo town council decided to replace about 15.000 light points in the city with new LED devices within 2016. Thus, Bergamo conforms to the choices made by major cities, such as Milan, Turin and Brescia, which have already started the work of replacement of public lighting with new LED light devices for a long time. The work concerns the whole town public lighting, except for Upper Bergamo, since they have to carry out a preliminary study and a careful consultation with the Superintendence. By using the new system, the municipality will save 350 thousand euro per year for the next 10 years. The cost of the work, which is equal to 5.6 million euro, will be allocated like that: 2 million euro at the municipality’s expense and 3,6 million euro at A2A’s expense, halving the cost of energy and minimizing the cost of ordinary maintenance of the system. During the replacement phase, A2A will carry out a verification on the stability of lampposts and any criticality will be reported to the Municipality, which will act to ensure the safety of its citizens.”

Administrations are increasingly welcoming the call to sustainability and saving as a common good. In this sense, LED technology has a crucial role. Even Rossini has been working in this sense for a long time, creating products equipped with a LED technology for consumption control… thanks to the advice by Rossini’s staff, you can provide your house with a totally LED lighting system.

Luce&Design

The circular groove etched in sand from each participant responded to the ratio between these two measures that, magically, resulted in a circle composed of 24 steps.
The prints were the accommodation for a paper bag containing a candle, lit at the end of the work. For two nights, the beach has transformed into a charming luminous landscape, capable of creating a dialogue between the individual and the environment and between the individual and the community.

Again, light and art lend themselves to try to redeem – at least symbolically — our often irresponsible behaviour toward the planet. We should always remember the close bond between our mother earth and us, between man and the elements that allow life, between the way we live and what we leave to those who come after us.

SkyArte

This year Denmark has produced so much electricity from renewable sources that it has managed to sell it to its neighbours, giving a big hand to the whole European continent with the aim to reduce to zero CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. The fact, nothing short of remarkable, took place in a particularly windy day for Scandinavia (Thursday, 9 July), when Denmark was able to produce 116% of national electricity needs thanks to the wind, the wind energy. At night, when energy demand of the Danes declined further, as much as 140% was touched. So the country was able to sell the surplus to Germany, Norway and Sweden, also thanks to an efficient connection and distribution electricity system. “This shows that a world fed 100% by renewable energy is not fantasy”, said Joy Oliver, spokesman for the European wind energy association. The Danish operator Energinet has even announced that wind farms in the country had not even reached their maximum production, totalling an installed capacity of 4.8 gigawatts (GW). All this shows that an increase in the number of wind farms as well as photovoltaic plants could bring Denmark to cover half of its energy needs with renewable sources only well before 2020, the year that Copenhagen has set as a deadline.

Source: LIFEGATE/Tommaso Perrone

RossiniGroup supports Orti d’azienda: in Milan during Fuori Salone (14-19 April) you will discover an original Lambrate Green Line. Mobile gardens limited edition, green spots scattered around the streets of Ventura Lambrate zone, interpreted by us in Rossini Illuminazione together with other member companies. Wednesday 15^th night special opening, from 20 to 22, we are waiting for you!

INFO >
Please note: Orti d’azienda created a little company garden for us too, OverOrto! You can see it in our Overlite showroom in via Feltre 32 Milan.

The light can affect the learning capacity and disturb the mood by acting on specific retinal cells, the ganglion cells. It was demonstrated  by Tara LeGates of the Department of biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and her colleagues of a wide international collaboration, that at this proposal signed an article in the magazine “Nature”. It is a fact that the variations of light can negatively affect mood and cognitive functions: for example, the small length of day during the winter, particularly in northern countries, can lead to depressive syndromes. It is also experimentally verified that study in daylight conditions is more profitable than studying at night with a lamp.

However, up to now the neuronal circuits through which this influence of lighting conditions is exerted were not known, nor was it clear the function of such circuits. The prevailing hypothesis was that changes in the sun exposure provoked an alteration to the circadian rhythms (the processes that control our “biological clock” with 24-hour cycle). Another indirect factor about brain function, so far considered crucial, was sleep deprivation. To test these hypotheses, LeGates and colleagues subjected laboratory mice to an aberrant light/dark cycle defined ultradiano (3.5 hours of light followed by 3.5 of darkness, so avoiding to make exposure to light or vice versa to darkness prevail) controlling that it had no effect either on the rhythm of sleep or on circadian rhythms. The isolation of several factors involved made it possible to demonstrate that light directly rules the behaviours linked to mood and cognitive functions.

The animals showed an increase in depressive-like behaviours and clear learning deficits. In particular, the results of the test show that mood problems precede those of learning, since the administration of antidepressants like desipramine and fluoxetine allowed to re-establish the correct learning rhythms and sleep in mice exposed to the aberrant light/dark cycle. With a second test, researchers have identified the neural pathway that mediates this process: they are photosensitive retinals ganglion cells. Mice lacking these specific retinal cells, in fact, have not expressed any learning deficits or alterations in mood.

http://www.lescienze.it/news/2012/11/16/news/luce_apprendimento_disturbo_umore-1368399/