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Project brochure 
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LRC Concept Demonstration
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An LRC researcher "snaps" an LED panel into the electrical grid.
The panels can be rearranged simply and rapidly to cater to changing room layouts or personal preference.
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Electronic Walls and Ceilings Offer Adaptable Solid-State Lighting
What if building architecture and lighting could be seamlessly integrated to create illumination that is dynamic, personal and flexible? What would it look like?
Over the past 100 years, traditional lighting has acted as an add-on to spaces. Lighting fixtures are hung from ceilings, sit on floors, and rest on tables. Solid-state lighting, however, offers new ways to think about how we light our spaces. This rapidly evolving technology can be embedded into any type of architecture due to its small size, ruggedness, and long life. Its numerous color options and acceptance of dynamic control can create a personal lighting experience to meet any task or ambiance.
Working Toward an Infrastructure Change
In 2004, the Alliance for Solid-State Illumination Systems and Technologies (ASSIST) provided seed money to develop and demonstrate a flexible interior infrastructure that will integrate solid-state lighting with other building materials and systems. Such an infrastructure would allow for rapid reconfigurations of built-in lighting, making it as easy to redesign lighting as it to move furniture—no need to drill holes, patch drywall, call an electrician, or lay out the room according to where the electric sockets are installed.
Concept and Design
In 2005, LRC researchers designed and built a full-scale vignette of an executive office at the LRC to showcase the concept for adaptable lighting and to demonstrate the value in easily changing lighting design. The ceiling and walls consist of thin LED-lighted panels ("future tiles") that snap in and out of a modular electrical grid and provide different lighting distributions, including general, task, accent and decorative. The panels can be rearranged simply and rapidly to cater to changing room layouts or personal preference. For example, accent lighting built into a panel can move as easily as the artwork it highlights. The LED panels are controlled by a touch-screen monitor mounted on the wall.
System Components
Electrical grid and circuits
Light source integration
Panel attachment and hinges
Field Evaluation
In 2009, the California Energy Commission awarded project funding to the LRC to demonstrate this new infrastructure for SSL technology. The project is now in progress at a demonstration site in a conference room at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, Calif., with project partner OSRAM Sylvania. The project is scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2012.
Sponsors and Project Partners
ASSIST
California Energy Commission's PIER Building Energy Research Grant
OSRAM Sylvania
Paramount Pictures
Media Coverage
"Lights of the Future" Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science
"ASSIST group develops snap-in scheme for LED lighting" LEDs Magazine
"Modular LED Panels" — WRGB News Channel 6
"Electronic Walls and Ceilings" — LRC Newsletter
For More Information
N. Narendran, LRC Director of Research
518-687-7100
narenn2@rpi.edu
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