LED the Way – Not your dad’s street lights

We have wrapped up the City Surfaces Course with Adam Greenfield and Mayo Nissen. I worked with Alix Gillet-Kirt on the final project and I think we are both really happy with the results.

After an investigation in to how sensors are being embedded all over modern cities, Alix and I decided to look into how one could make enhanced street lights function as something of a graphical user interface for the city. Alix and I did some desk research on the current state of affairs of lamp technology to make sure we were drafting a concept that could be incorporated into present day city planning. What we found was that the streetlights of the present to near future will be LED based (instant on, can change brightness on command) and individually addressed on the network so each one could be doing something different. Even without adding projectors or futuristic technology you can already think of some pretty interesting ways you could use this kind of technology to enhance a city.

We came up with a range of concepts but only illustrated the most pressing one: Enhancing emergency services. Though the film doesn’t do the best job of illustrating this (as usual at CIID, we were very pressed for time), emergency vehicles often have a very tough time navigating busy cities when civilians can not anticipate their moves. This video shows just how bad it can get, even when there aren’t any buildings in the way to obscure drivers view!

LEaD the Way is a concept that would use enhanced street lights to give civilians fair warning of the emergency vehicles route so that they can make intelligent decisions about how to give way. This could happen even before the emergency vehicle is in sight. First Responders would simply press a button indicating they were heading to an emergency or back to base. They system would plot the fastes route for them and change light behavior as they moved through the city.

We have imagined a range of solutions with this same technology. From cultural celebrations to city wide emergency evacuations we think this is a really interesting area to design for. I had a great time working with Alix!