Aesthetical Perspectives in Street Lighting : A Study of Future Potentials in LED Lighting

Sammanfattning: As of today, around 19% of all electricity that is produced around the world goes toward lighting roads and cities. The light is also produced in a wasteful manner, creating disturbances in nature as well as for people. Recent developments in light emitting diodes offers remedy to these problems but the technology needs a proper revision of street lighting’s purposes. Light emitting diodes use a fraction of the energy needed for previous lighting methods. They offer unique implementation opportunities in physical construction as well as being highly controllable which makes them highly adaptable. The thesis looks at how aesthetics can be used to optimally introduce the upcoming worldwide installation of the new technology. Its unique characteristics were looked at and used to create a Korean styled luminaire and an interactive street lighting system in two separate design processes. The results of the developments were firstly, a modular luminaire which combines Korean architectural aesthetics with a cost effective construction. The second result was an interactive urban street lighting system which suggests a dimmable lighting that through an adaptable computer control responds to pedestrians’ presences. This is a master’s thesis (D7014A) is a project in product design at the education of industrial design engineering at Luleå University of Technology and is worth 30 credits. The project spanned 20 weeks during the spring semester of 2016. The project was conducted in collaboration with Pukyong National University’s industrial design department, in Busan, South Korea.