Lightwell Friso Kramer LED

The Lightwell Friso Kramer LED, the Lightwell for short, offers cities a tool for the creation of sustainable public lighting. The devises, produced in Almere, the Netherlands, are comprised of aluminum, plastic, a LED light, and electronics that enable illumination and an internet-connected system. The aluminum forms the base and pole, upon which the LED lighting devise rests. It is this LED technology that drastically reduces the amount of energy required to produce light over an extended period: the bright light uses 50% less energy than traditional bulbs and has a lifespan of approximately 100,000 hours. The plastic lamp cover, manufactured by the Dutch company Omefa, protects the light from impact while remaining 90% to allow for sufficient light diffusion. Reducing energy across all human actions marks a critical step in our effort to live more gently with the rest of nature and decrease our proportion to human extinction.

While the Lightwell first appeared in 2013, it contains shapes first designed over 70 years ago. The visual design of the fixtures originates with the furniture designer Friso Kramer (1922-2019), who created a similar lamp in 1960. The designer discusses this development in a 2013 interview and explains that the shape that allows the light to reach the ground while helping it to blend into the background, where it should be forgotten. He intends that people focus on the activity or object highlighted by the fixture rather than the fixture itself.

Users have employed the connection capabilities of the Lightwells in a myriad of ways. The area of Marineterrein, for example, maintains 42 Lightwells that integrate in a modular and transparent way into the Smart City applications that control other aspects of the public space, a system developed with its technology partner Ziut.

Additional resources

·  "Friso Kramer LED Direct | Dutch Efficiency," Lightwell

·  "Friso Framer LED," OMEFA

·  "Het liefst zou Friso Kramer lucht ontwerpen. Omdat dat niet ging," ontwierp hij de Revolt-stoel

·  "LoRa Smart Lighting," Amsterdam Smart City