Post Date: 02/01/21
Our newest product, fully recessed emergency downlights, custom designed for MoMA, are now available for everyone.
With the exception of decorative lighting, a light is an instrument for illumination. It can be used to greater or lesser effect based on the imagination, intention and talent of the individuals wielding it, but the importance does not reside in the light itself — rather, the importance is the effect.
In this respect, the goals of luminaire manufacturers who do not cater to the decorative market is to provide illumination technologies that either disappear into the architectural environment, or integrate into it in a way that complements the formal, spatial, and organizational vocabulary of the building or landscape.
This is even more true with respect to highly specialized lighting. For example, formally exuberant fixtures would be inappropriate for gallery lighting, and may even detract from the experience of viewing art. If this is true of gallery luminaires, it is even more true for emergency lighting, and service-oriented lighting of this type. While emergency lighting is indisputably important, it should not be used except in time of emergency, which in and of itself represents perhaps the best argument for concealing it.
Custom Designed for MoMA
For
the gallery spaces at MoMA, Litelab worked with Renfro Design Group to
develop three custom, totally concealed, fully recessed emergency
downlights. These downlights fit up inside our BusRun, and can be
interspersed throughout the space as needed to light paths of emergency
egress. Designed for use in ceiling heights between 14’ and 24’, with
wide distribution and high output, these luminaires have since been
implemented in a number of projects.
Coming in March 2021
We are pleased to announce that we are launching standard versions of this downlight in March. The standard emergency downlights can be mounted in recessed, surface-mounted, or hanging BusRun. They are suitable for application at heights between 10’ – 25’, and measure 4-1/2” in length x ¾” width, recessing fully inside any of our deep BusRun offerings. They may be the most important fixture that you don’t see.
