Industrial Review

Inside the International law office of the Morgan Lewis

This post is about an industrial review of an industry which has taken steps to personally control damage to the environment. Well, not every company actually directly contributes to global pollution and all, but an a general office which features high energy consumption, bulk paper consumption and waste generation and disposal,

What It is:

So... many years ago as a kid.... I saw this documentary about saving energy in bulk amounts by targetting office spaces. The problem being, office buildings have almost no natural way of lighting. The deeper the rooms are, the more impossible it is even to get a window. Since work is generally carried on 24x7, the energy spent in just lighting seems to be biggest single expenditure of the corporation's office space and commodity budget.

They spoke of being able to bring light into the building with these "Light tubes". They're fiber optic cables which carry day light into rooms. They're installed on roof tops, these tubes carry the light downward, into rooms which are meant to be illuminataed by day light. This would probably be a public room or a room which is most certainly going to require lighting throughout the day/night.

What I think =)

The Problem at hand would be the unpredictable whether. The sun could just simply go behind clouds for a few minutes or even hours altogether. And there's the whole of the rainy season for the sun to just vanish for days.

This, was handled by having a dual lighting system. It featured each light tube ending, having a light sensitive florescent light which switched on automatically whenever the day light being brought in fell below a certain bare minimum level. It does seem like a solid idea but... I wonder how they'd make the switching on and off of the artificial light seem normal and not irritating when the lights keep switching.

A company that seemed to have taken to particular interest in cutting down office expenditure on lighting was a company called "Morgan Lewis". They're an international law firm based in Washington, USA.

The company features a light tube in the center of the building, providing light to a good part of the central building. I think this would also have a good mental impact on workers in the building. Imagining having a fairly creative play of sunlight and office A.C. I'd call that pretty much a cool combo.

I'm taking the hard facts from a description mentioned in a site:

The building was heightened by extra two floors to make the distribution of light equal in the 12 storey building. The tube that is installed in the office is created by the lighting designers James Carpenter and Davidson Norris. This tube is almost 36 meters long and it rises above 4.5 above the atrium roof that has the diameter of 175 cm to collect the light above the roof. This pipe contains glass prisms that are held in the steel frames. The outer side of this pipe is made of tensioned synthetic fiber. This pipe is held by radial rods and this pipe can project light in both natural and artificial ways

Summing up... I do believe that this could end of saving a relatively large percent of electricity being spent on lighting in office buildings. I specifically say office buildings because... That probably the only place where lighting in most constantly used in such large amounts.

However... The exact efficiencies wouldn't exactly be world saving unless it is implemented as an office standard. I don't see the point in having a building or two with light pipes just for the show of it.