For many years, emergency lighting in all kinds of facilities was accomplished with a familiar battery-powered device, known as “unit equipment.” Architects and designers gritted their teeth and dialed down their aesthetic expectations, since there was not much choice in code-compliant emergency lighting solutions except ugly, uglier, and ugliest.
2 comments:
I find it really fascinating that the US National Electrical Code and UL standards are only just now allowing for what seems to be a straightforward solution to what often feels like a game of tug-of-war between safety and aesthetic. I often find emergency unit equipment to be distracting, and have for years wondered if that was really the best way to implement safety equipment. After all, who what architect or designer would really want to break their structure's aesthetic for a gross-looking box with big glowing bits? Evidently, the US National Electrical Code and UL standards have come to the conclusion that this is in fact not the only way to implement safety procedures in buildings. What surprised me though was that ETC's new LED parcans in their ColorSource line conform to the new standards. I'd never considered them for such an application before, but it's pretty cool that the option exists. I can't wait to see what emergency lighting equipment looks like moving forward!
This is such a strange article to me. I understand the dilemma with emergency lighting fixtures and signs being aesthetically displeasing and just plain ugly. But I don't understand the new regulations in terms of how they still stay "emergency lighting" it seems to me that any light reaching the correct standards could be used in this manner. For me the reason these things were always so ugly was because they stood out in almost every space that they were in and made it easily found. But hey if they want to encourage people to use them and use them more often in spaces to make them safer then I'm all for it. It's really interesting that a company like ETC is jumping in on this as will the Par lineup isn't something that I would have ever traditionally associated with being used as an emergency light fixture but who knows what applications and uses ETC has planned for their fixtures going forward and really the rest of the industry for that matter I guess.
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