Acuity Brands Lighting
I’ve worked at Acuity Brands Lighting since 2015 in a variety of roles, mostly specializing in leading an architectural “float” team on projects that pilot new technologies into production LED light fixtures across architectural brands including Peerless, Mark, Gotham, and Healthcare Lighting. We typically run projects with high configuration counts (100s of millions of orderable combinations) and new controls or electronics technologies that often have to be co-developed with the luminaire project, so balancing concurrent schedules and managing new-technology risks is a big part of the job.
Peerless Renna
Renna is a linear family of edge-lit luminaires in pendant, surface, and wall-mounted forms with cast “transitions” in 15+ geometries that allow intricate, continuous patterns in the ceiling. We developed a low-voltage DC power and controls system that allows every driver in the fixture to be individually addressed in the field allowing for field zoning from a single drop cord at the beginning of the run. This eliminated the hard-wiring and multiple controls wire drops that are required to zone traditional linear fixtures.
Raw castings of two of the Renna "transition" pieces that can connect lit runs. Transitions are hollow to allow wire pass-through and are manufactured by die casting or vacuum-assisted sand casting, depending on the part size and whether it bends in multiple planes.
Example installation of Renna with square corner transitions and separate wall-mount and surface-mount fixtures.
The first purchased-and-installed Renna luminaire at an office building in Atlanta. I took my then-3-month-old son Abe along to see it in action! This shows the "vertical wall wash" capability of Renna - the fixture turns up on its side and has a unique edge lit optic that creates a nice wall wash distribution. Runs can transition from pendant to vertical wall wash on the same power and control bus.
Healthcare Lighting HDM
222nm Pathogen Inactivation
HDM is a family of recessed downlights, pendant and surface cylinders that provide 222nm UV-C radiation in occupied spaces to reduce harmful pathogens. This project required us to navigate some very unique regulatory challenges around the use of UV-C radiation in occupied spaces while also building out a highly configurable family of luminaires with millions of orderable options.
HDM Recessed getting some electrical testing. The UV module pulses on for just a few seconds on a 12-minute cycle - this limits the dose for occupants of the room to levels established by regulatory agencies.
Several forms of HDM after a test installation. We developed stem- and cord-mounted cylinders in both tall and short sizes, as well as surface-mounted cylinders and recessed downlights.
Lovely purple glow from the 222nm excimer lamp. This remains the only non-LED project I've worked on at Acuity.
Mark Chisel
Chisel is a family of recessed rectangular fixtures that are designed to live together in clusters in the ceiling. The luminaire is lit around the outside edges and features vacuum-formed reflectors with a variety of 3D textures that create a sense of depth and contrast while providing a very effective volumetric distribution of high quality white light.
Vacuum-formed reflectors were tooled up with three patterns in five different sizes. They get retained and forced into shape by welded extruded aluminum frames that also hold the LED PCBs in the correct position relative to the reflectors.
Chisel was available with one, two, or four sides lit, sometimes with individual control of each edge and also variable color temperature per edge, so we needed a way for the factory to check the presence and color temperature of light coming off each edge separately. I designed these 3D printed color and luminance sensor fixtures that clip over the fixture frame and look at each edge individually to confirm that the output matches the ordered configuration and that each edge responds as expected to controls.
The optical design was tweaked to create enough gradient from edge to center to give a sense of the depth of the fixture.
Mark Rubik
Rubik is a family of recessed lighting that allows designers to create dynamic patterns in the ceiling that are also highly functional. We co-developed the luminaire family with the eldoLED electronics teams to create the multi-channel driver that translates customer controls protocols into internal dim levels for each cell in the fixture. There’s a “Color Accent” version that has a single controllable color cell surrounded by white light plus a “Grayscale” version (pictured) in which every cell constantly dims up and down but with an offset phase that keeps the total luminous output of the fixture constant.