lumenomics, a natural daylighting company from Seattle, Washington, is proud to announce an international partnership with Swedish company Parans Solar Lighting. lumenomics is now a US distributor and installer of Parans’ daylighting systems, leading natural light up to 30 stories into a building through fiber optic cables. “It’s a cutting-edge product,” said lumenomics CEO Marti Hoffer. “The integration of daylight is a critical piece of a building’s success not just in sustainability or lowered-operating costs but for the health and wellness of the occupants. With Parans, we’re now able to deliver daylight to historically unreachable spaces both deep within the interior of a building and underground.”
This render illustrates Parans ability to funnel multiple streams of daylight into a tower and subterranean parking garage. Image courtesy of lumenomics
The Daylight Connection
As a free and renewable material, daylight is a key design feature used to offset electricity in buildings, helping them meet stringent sustainability goals and lower operating costs for owners. Additionally, daylight is proven to improve occupants’ health and well-being, increasing workers’ productivity in offices, and increasing sales in retail spaces by up to 40%. However, the use of natural daylight as a lighting source has always required access to openings at the top or sides of a building. For interior spaces centered in tall buildings or subterranean spaces underground where openings are completely inaccessible, the only lighting option available has been electric lighting systems. An average person in the U.S. spends 95% of their days indoors, often with no access to natural light. This phenomenon has cost the health and wellness of the modern population, especially for the urban populations with increase in building towers. Now though, with Parans, buildings can lead natural daylight up to 30 stories deep into the spaces where window or roof openings aren’t possible. Best of all, it provides all the benefits of natural daylight without any of the added heat gain or solar glare that comes with traditional window openings.
A meeting 6,970 miles in the making: lumenomics and Parans examine the SP4 solar collector on the roof in Tucson, Arizona. Photo courtesy of lumenomics
How It Works
Parans’ incredible ability to deliver sunlight begins with its patented solar roof collectors. These modular collectors are placed on the roof and calibrated to track and follow the sun’s movement throughout the day, allowing them to capture the maximum amount of sunlight. The light captured through the Parans’ collectors is then piped down into spaces via fiber-optic cables, where it is dispersed through diffusers that can illuminate spaces in various ways such as point lighting luminaire, ambient lighting luminaire, and 2×2 luminaire. Parans’ hybrid luminaires also offer electric light when the sun sets, allowing illumination to continue into the evening and leaving ceilings uncluttered with multiple light sources. Currently on its fourth iteration, their SP4 product has been put to the test in buildings and spaces worldwide.
10 floors below, Parans disperses daylight into the basement offices. Photo courtesy of lumenomics
Applications
The need for renewable daylight in designed spaces is what makes Parans the ultimate solution for large and complex buildings. In healthcare facilities like the NICU at Denver’s Presbyterian St. Lukes Medical Center, Parans illuminates the space with gentle, natural daylight, which studies show helps lower stress and pain in recovering patients. For office spaces, where the use of daylight is shown to increase productivity and boost morale, Parans systems like the one at the University of Arizona’s Innovative Health Sciences Building bring daylight over 300 feet into the basement offices. Parans’ utility doesn’t just fall into commercial building design, but large infrastructure projects like the Rijnlands Tunnel in The Netherlands. Here, Parans is used to illuminate the transition into the entrance and exits of the tunnel—the spaces where accidents are most likely to occur. By softening the shift in lighting between the inside and outside of the tunnel with natural daylight, Parans improves the visibility for drivers, making transit safer.
Like a sunflower, Parans’ collectors follow the path of the sun to collect the maximum amount of daylight. Photo courtesy of lumenomics
The Future of Daylight
For both companies, the partnership is an exciting development for advancing the future of maximizing daylight. “We are really glad to welcome lumenomics to our Team of Partners. In lumenomics, we are getting a very capable sales partner for the American market, but also a partner from whom we could learn in an inspiring way.” said Frederick Johansson.
For lumenomics CEO Marti Hoffer, the addition of Parans to lumenomics’ ever-expanding line of daylighting products means more opportunities to push the limits of daylighting design. “We’re passionate about looking for new ways to maximize daylight. It’s not very often a new product comes along that completely opens a new door like Parans. With this product, we find more ways to bring in natural light. Our favorite renewable source of illumination can go further than ever before.”
lumenomics CEO Marti Hoffer. Photo courtesy of lumenomics
About
lumenomics was founded in 2009 with the mission to maximize natural daylight in designed spaces. The company has since assisted Building Owners, REIT’s, General Contractors, Architects, and Engineers with maximizing the use of natural light in designed spaces through Performance Illumination Systems. Its systems integrate automated window treatment, tubular daylighting devices, fiber-optic daylighting, and tunable, dimmable PoE lighting through networked lighting controls to meet the most stringent energy codes, green building standards, and occupants’ needs.
