I think you’ll agree that any product boasting a roster of designers beginning with “Dr.” is worthy of notice, if only for the novelty, since MDs and PhDs are scarce commodities in the A&D world. Now, I can’t answer for sure as to the specific disciplines of Dr. Lin Hui-Hsiung, Huang Shao-Wei, Yang Wen-Hsun & Chiang Chung-Kai, but I’d guess they’d be somewhere in the realm of systems/materials science and industrial technology, since the quartet’s red dot design award winning Starry Night lamp forecasts a new technological approach to the systematic dissemination of light.

Starry Night. Designed by Dr. Lin Hui-Hsiung, Huang Shao-Wei, Yang Wen-Hsun & Chiang Chung-Kai for the Industrial Technology Research Institute.

A Self-Powered Light for Day and Night

And before I go waxing all nostalgic about that triumphal work by Vincent van Gogh, the straight-up goods on Starry Night are that it uses a “transparent light-collecting module” as a lampshade, in addition to an integrated photovoltaic layer, in order to charge up the battery that powers the nightlight. The piece is thus a self-sustaining/dual-purpose pendant lamp that saves copious amounts of energy while providing the environs with just the right amount of alluring azure illumination. In its daytime function, the big, beautiful blue bulb lights up to full capacity, but at night the stars come out, signified by Starry Night’s haphazard distribution of tiny pinpoints of light—every bit the rival of those distant glowing spheroids in the clear night sky.

Via Yanko.

About the Manufacturer: The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is a Taiwanese research facility dedicated to the development of new industrial technology. ITRI has over 6,000 employees working in multiple disciplines including Communication, Electronics and Optoelectronics, Nanotechnology, Medical Devices and Biomedical Technologies, Mechanical and Systems Technologies, and Green Energy and Environment Technologies. ITRI is a pioneering institution (they average over two thousand patent applications per year in Taiwan), whose insights help to improve technology across the globe. The Red Dot Award winning Starry Night represents an auspicious example of the ways in which high tech industrial research can influence A&D.