Parans Brings Daylight to the Dungeon
This is a product that’s got me jumping up and down. It’s so innovative and has so many uses that it makes me wish I were a lighting designer. There are so many ways you can play with light and so many new products, it’s too bad that lighting is often the last thing to be considered when it should be the first. It also seems to be the first thing to get cut from the budget. But I digress.
A little diagram of Parans at workParans was developed in Sweden by engineers at the Chalmers University in Gothenburg. They created panels that, when tilted upwards, collect sunlight as it hits. The light is channeled through fiber optic cables into any part of a building which would otherwise never see the light of day. The technology uses prisms in each room to scatter the sunlight. The only downside (if there is one) is that the light can’t be stored, so on cloudy days, or of course at night, artificial light is still needed.
Let there be light!However, the design capabilities with this technology are endless. For example, I designed lighting for a retail store which filtered light through gobos (a sort of lighting stencil) that created the effect of sunlight filtered through trees creating a leafy pattern on the floor. The effect was beautiful, but we had to use fluorescent lamps. It looked great, but real daylight would have been so much better and more realistic.
Fiber optic cablesMore obviously, anyone who spends their work day in an office building with veal-fattening pens or an open office plan knows how grim things get the farther you are from the windows – if, in fact, there are any. There are lots of studies that support the emotional effects of daylight.
Currently, there are no distributors of the Parans system in the US, so I have no information on the added cost per square foot. But I’d say whatever it is, it’s well worth the cost once certain factors are weighed in. By this I mean employee health, which relates to work output, and the energy savings. Anyone interested in lighting design and new technologies should check out Parans site here.
One Response to “Parans Brings Daylight to the Dungeon”
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the first US dealer is now available from HUVCO in maryland (http://www.huvco.com/). i’m thinking of using the linear L4 for a residential remodel project. i hope it will not be voted off first from the budget, as the article mentioned.