A new lighting product, the Lighting Surface sign, has been developed as a direct result of a workshop held by the Luce in Veneto cluster in June 2015.
The workshop discussed ways in which the night-time appearance of the City of Bassano could be enhanced by using LED technology. As a result, three companies co-operated with the Municipality to develop an illuminated sign which could be used in the heritage and architecturally important parts of the city.
Design requirements
The sign had to be almost “invisible” by day but display information at night. It would be preferable that the sign also provided some illumination in the immediate area.
The function would be to increase the visibility and “readability” of landmarks such as monuments, museums, parks, areas of interest etc. This would also increase the number of tourists.
You can see from the images that in daytime, the sign is almost invisible but at night-time, it can display advertising or city information.
Co-operation
Three companies were involved: Heliv Group is a manufacture of nanotechnology optical materials and supplies the LIT deposition and printing technology. It allows transparent materials such as glass or plastic to be transformed into graphic displays which can be instantly switched on or off. Hikari is a specialist manufacturer of LED products. Finally, Metalco make quality street furniture such as bus shelters, seating, cycle racks and litter bins.
These three companies co-operated with the Municipality to develop the “Lighting Surface” sign. The Municipality did research in terms of the needs and expectations of new urban furniture. This information was fed back to the three companies so that they could improve the design of the sign.
This co-operation and exchange of ideas means that all the parties involved benefitted from feedback and increased knowledge of what was required. It is hoped that this will revitalise and improve the usability and safety of public spaces.
Luce in Veneto sent an abstract of this experiment to other regional clusters involved in the SSLerate project. The aim is to stimulate new uses of this technology to suit their local needs. This is part of an ongoing exercise in business development in Bassano.