Architect David Bergman calls it "transparent green."
That's his term for sustainable or green designs that don't have that granola look.
"It just has to be good lighting - in my case good contemporary lighting - so it can appeal to both the general market and people who are looking for eco products," he explains.
Bergman has been developing lighting fixture designs based on this concept for more than 10 years. "We work to ensure energy efficiency, while using materials in our fixtures that are environmentally sensitive. As far as I know, we're the only company focusing on both energy efficiency and materials," he explains.
"I'd been involved in the ecology movement since the '70s but hadn't been bringing it into my architectural world. I saw the lighting world as a way to do that," Bergman says.
His firm, Fire & Water, has produced several lines of light fixtures and furniture with sustainability and energy efficiency at the cellular level - while shooting for that "transparent green" look in the macro form.
"The market [for these lighting fixtures] has been small, but lately it is growing rapidly. One reason is LEED, which is driving a demand for products that can gain LEED points," explains Bergman, who is a LEED accredited professional. (LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a rating system for "green buildings.")
His first designs could only be as eco-minded as the technology that was available in 1992-'93. "The earliest fixtures I made were an outgrowth of designs I did for candelabra out of copper plumbing pipes," he explains. "As an architect, seeing all this cool copper tubing getting buried in walls, I thought, "this stuff shouldn't be hidden."
He researched the environmental qualities of copper and discovered that, while it is heavily recycled, it wasn't really "green." "I did try to temper that by finding a low-VOC water base finish instead of the usual noxious lacquer," Bergman explains. One of the outgrowths of his study and design is the Calla Lily series, which features calla lily-shaped mesh diffusers on copper stems. But this popular series, still in production after its launch over a decade ago, predates newer light source technology and relies on incandescent and MR16 halogens as its light sources.
Bergman's designs have evolved as lighting and dimming control manufacturers have provided increasingly energy-efficient solutions, and he has incorporated their advances in his designs.
'Green' Fixtures Evolved
As Bergman's continued to work with recycled and reclaimed materials and new lighting technologies, his designs evolved.
"When Lutron dimming ballasts for CFLs came out, I designed a series, called Energia, using them for the inner electronics. It was still copper-based, but using the dimming ballasts and compact fluorescents," Bergman says.
"When Philips came out with their dimmable screw-based CFLs, I incorporated them into two new series, using eco-materials that were just coming out," he recalls.
The Lulu series uses screw-based CFLs as a light source, and a fixture made from combination of recycled glass created by a Midwest artist. "I was experimenting with diffusion and the color qualities of glass to make them work with CFLs. We spent quite a few months developing the right glass for that," he says.
The next series, called Frankie Goes Fluorescent, uses a material that looks like granite, but that is made from recycled newspaper and soy flour. Today, he also uses the same granite-look material in the bases of many of his table and floor lamps, since it has the same qualities of wood.
"But there's an inherent problem with screw-based CFLs: you can't control whether the customer will continue to use them. The end user can take a CFL lamp out and replace it with an incandescent," he explains.
"This restricted me in the design, because I had to anticipate the possibility that somebody would put that incandescent lamp in, which would make it hotter. Furthermore, the Energy Star program does not recognize fixtures made for those lamps for that reason: they can be defeated," Bergman says. The next frontier, he hopes, is a dedicated CFL with the same profile - but one that cannot be switched out in favor of an incandescent.
"A year or two ago, I started talking with companies making versions of this. Some were screw-based CFLs, but you could leave the ballast behind. I started cajoling other companies out there to do a version where the ballast is not screw-based, which would be a true fluorescent set-up - not one that is interchangeable with incandescent," he says.
At the same time, Energy Star is coming up with new standards. Pin-based CFLs are about to become standardized - so that you can more readily buy a replacement for the lamp when it eventually burns out and you can even easily replace the ballast.
"We're at the front of the line and will have our new fixtures on the new standard as soon as they [the new lamp-ballast CFL combo] are in production," Bergman says.
Meanwhile, his two new series will be using two different eco materials: one uses reclaimed wood and process-free chlorine paper. It capitalizes on the fact that CFLs are cooler, and with the new technology it will be impossible to substitute incandescents for them. Called the Fibonacci series, the shades are designed in the classic spiral named after the mathematician who defined the golden rectangle.
Selected by Energy Star and the California Energy Commission to participate in a program to develop energy efficient residential lighting, "Fibonacci" also received an Honorable Mention in the recent Lighting For Tomorrow competition, sponsored by the American Lighting Association, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Consortium for Energy Efficiency.
The other new series, Flipster, uses hinged "flap-like" panels that can be flipped open to give more options in the amount and direction of light that emanates from the fixture. The translucent panels, with a rice paper-like pattern, are a "cleanly produced" resin with a high recycled content.
The one drawback of the new CFL lamp-ballast platforms, Bergman noted, is that they are not dimmable. He looks forward to the day - hopefully later in 2005 - when the dimmable versions become available, so Fire & Water can incorporate them in its ever-evolving series of fixtures.
About David Bergman
Besides his work with lighting, David Bergman is an architect and educator.
His firm, David Bergman Architect, focuses on a variety of projects with an increasingly "transparent green" emphasis as well. His "Field of Lights: Illuminated Memory" submission for the World Trade Center Memorial was worthy of mention in the New York Times.
Bergman teaches at the Parsons School of Design where he has developed core sustainable design courses for three design departments.
Bergman is an executive board member of Designers Lighting Forum of New York. He received a master's in architecture from Princeton University and a bachelor's degree in architecture and economics from Yale University.
