., a national leader in light fixtures and household hardware, was recently acquired by . Immediate plans include launching a new website, opening a few new storefronts, and increased revenues as Rejuvenation’s market visibility increases.

The $30 million Portland-based hardware business joins the Williams-Sonoma family of Pottery Barn and West Elm. The transaction represents a growth for the Portland-based company, which boasts a manufacturing facility in Northwest Industrial that is 87,000 square feet, where dozens of new light fixtures and hardware products are developed each year.

The acquisition is going to mean new jobs for hardware customization professionals in and around Portland, as Rejuvenation specializes in period-specific fixtures. The transaction was officially announced on Nov. 4, and through Rejuvenation’s in-house recruiting system.

Williams-Sonoma has more than 580 stores across the nation, including a few in Canada, and Rejuvenation currently has close to 200 employees. Nicole Curcio, media contact for Rejuvenation, said the financials have yet to be disclosed but that the acquisition spells growth for the company.

“We’re to remain largely autonomous, and we aim to expand our brand with them (Williams-Sonoma),” Curcio said.

Rejuvenation remains true to its local market, regularly working with Portland-based remodeling groups such as and . Similarly, Portland’s helped to develop its highly effective business and inventory management system.

Read the or visit the website to learn more.

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After 18 months of testing, Dutch electronics company Philips on Wednesday won the U.S. Department of Energy‘s Bright Lighting Tomorrow Prize of $10 million for developing a more efficient 60-watt light bulb. Its LED bulb matches the brightness of a 60-watt incandescent bulb, but uses a mere versus the 60-watts of the more traditional light source, according to The New York Times. Whereas an incandescent bulb lasts 1,000 to 5,000 hours on average, the LED bulb stays humming for 25,000 hours.

The end result? Huge energy savings – if you can afford the darned thing. According to the , if all incandescents in the country were replaced with the LED bulb, the country would save $3.9 billion each year in energy costs. But with a price tag hovering above $40 when it’s expected to come out early next year, property developers and managers may side with naysayers of the more efficient bulbs over the cost to light up their buildings.

In addition to the $10 million, Philips will also get marketing help from 31 utilities and energy-efficiency programs that will market the product to more than 100 million customers.

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Imagine forking over $20 to $50 for a light bulb, turning it on, going off to grad school to get a masters, and coming back to see that it’s still on. Well, that’s what an LED light bulb can do. They can stay on for over two years.

Lightbulb manufacturers were mandated in 2007 to produce more efficient lightbulbs, a move some saw as a boon to investment in LED technology. Others saw the mandate, spelled out in the , as onerous and something that removes choice from the consumer. Regardless, economies of scale and improvements in construction are making long-lasting bulbs cheaper in the long term for the consumer. In light of all of this (heh), a recent bill that aimed to get rid of these lightbulb regulations was voted down Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives.

As today by Umair Irfan for The New York Times, the so-called , proposed by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, failed on Tuesday to repeal the lighting standards of the EISA.

Those who praise efficiency mandates were elated with the news. Jeffrey Harris, senior vice president for programs at the energy efficiency non-profit Alliance to Save Energy, said in the Times article that efficiency mandates “take away from the market the cheapest to buy, but most expensive to use [light source]. That is the incandescent bulb.”

Others disagreed. Brett Sharenow is the chief strategy officer and chief financial officer of Switch Lighting, a venture capital-funded start-up that produces American-made LED light bulbs. Speaking to regulation, he said “We don’t need it, and we don’t want it.”

– Peter Beland

Photo by via Flickr

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Portland State University professor Jeffrey Schnabel wants to change the way Portland looks in the dark.

“Portland’s not a particularly well-lit city,” he said. “It’s safely lit (and) there’s an adequate amount of lighting, but the things that we value by day, like artwork and architecture, are almost invisible at night.”

Schnabel spearheaded the creation of a symposium to address this issue. At “Illuminated City: A Light with Content” on April 9, presenters from around the globe will show new designs in urban lighting. Schnabel has invited architects, landscape architects, Portland Development Commission staffers and the makers of InFocus projectors to check out the latest lighting technologies. He said attendees may be surprised at what they find.

Innovative technologies in projection and software have changed what light, and art, can look like. A process called architectural mapping lets artists capture a detailed map of a surface – such as an interior wall, a building’s exterior or an entire room – and project onto every part of that surface. Each 3-D architectural feature becomes another surface for art. No pop-up projection screens necessary.

Joel Jackson, Joseph Lesher and Andrew Wade Smith of Portland-based have worked with this technology for some time. For corporate events and parties, Spitball Media can transform any room into the inside of a kaleidoscope.

Jackson would like the business to transition to more permanent and large-scale installations, like artwork and commercial signs. He cited the film “Minority Report,” in which interactive digital displays were used to advertise products and spread information. Jackson hopes the Illuminated City symposium will kick-start a conversation about what Portland might do with the technology.

“When we sit down with the city (officials) and show them the possibilities, it will be eye-opening, but it might also raise a few eyebrows,” Jackson said.

Jackson has seen demand increase for outdoor video mapping and architectural mapping, and he would like to capitalize on it. But he has concerns.

“If I go to Nordstrom, for example, and pitch them on the idea of a large-scale digital media display, our concern is that, in a year or so, will there be an ordinance that doesn’t allow it?” he said. “We need to have some sort of clear idea about what we can and can’t do with this technology.”

The city has separate regulations for projected light and signs, according to Ross Caron, spokesman for the Bureau of Development Services. A video projection would probably fall under both categories, and require a permit for the projector’s electrical needs and another for the sign’s content-based images. According to the code that has been in place for nearly 10 years, signs are limited to 20 square feet per site and no single sign may have more than 10 square feet of “changing images,” unless the moving portion accounts for less than 60 percent of the sign. So if the picture is moving, it must be small.

City Council would need to approve any proposed code changes to allow new technologies, Caron said.

The other option for projected signs would be an “art installation,” according to Eloise Damrosch, executive director of the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Painted murals go through RACC, and are legally distinct from commercial signs because they are created, individually, by an artist, she said.

If a permanent video sign or interactive exhibit were put in place, Damrosch said her organization could look at it through their mural process. Temporary installations would be easier to process, she said.

“We’d probably have to look more at the impact on the surrounding site,” with the increased problems of distracting traffic and shining lights into windows, Damrosch said.

If this kind of installation could happen, architects could use the technology to bring a new perspective to existing spaces, or incorporate the technology into their designs.

“It’s a whole new way of looking at the urban environment,” said Dull Olson Weekes Architects’ Dan Hess, who was introduced to the technology when Schnabel gave a lunchtime presentation at his office. “It shows buildings in a new way.”

Chris Brown, a designer with Skylab Architecture, experienced the results of a Spitball Media project at the Doug Fir lounge, designed by Skylab.

“(Projection technology) frees up a lot of opportunity to make surfaces that are quickly changing,” Brown said. “You can articulate a wall, a ceiling, or a floor for that matter, in a lot of different ways. They can change by program or season, or whatever need be.”

The Doug Fir project was a smaller, interior design. Larger, exterior installations have taken place mostly overseas, in Europe and Australia. And, Jackson said, “it’s not so cost effective that it’s going to pop up overnight.”

One local landscape architect is installing LEDs into paving, and another local company is using digital projection to improve way-finding inside museums. Schnabel hopes the next step will be creation of a light festival to showcase lighting and technology with temporary installations.

“We could light downtown buildings in an extraordinary way, like fireworks – but it lasts all week,” Schnabel said. “We are just at the beginning of what’s possible with this technology. I’d like to see Portland at the front end, not the back.”

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Ryan Thorpe, director of operations at the Oregon Convention Center, noted a strange phenomenon as he approached the entrance to Exhibit Hall C last week.

“See the glow under those doors?” Thorpe said, pointing to a strip of white light flashing onto the carpet. “It didn’t used to do that.”

The brighter lights in the exhibit hall use less power, yet pack a bigger wallop than their predecessors, Thorpe said. They were replaced, along with more than 2,000 other lights in the massive building, as part of a $760,000 project that wrapped up on Friday.

“This will save us about $130,000 a year – that’s what we’re hoping, anyway; that’s what the estimates say,” Thorpe said.

Beyond the energy and related cost savings, the project also will save the center 1,034 tons worth of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

“For us it’s a triple bottom line of job creation, carbon savings and fiscal savings,” Thorpe said.

Unfortunately, though, the fiscal savings won’t go as far as initially planned, because Pacific Power increased its rates by 16 percent on Jan. 1, Thorpe added.

“It’s going to be a wash with that 16 percent increase, but that said, I’d be paying a lot more if we didn’t do this,” he said.

The Oregon Convention Center opened in 1990 and expanded in 2003. At 1 million square feet, it is the largest convention center in the Pacific Northwest.

Workers from Salem-based Cherry City Electric started changing the lights and fixtures in the building – and across its high ceilings – in mid-January.

In some places, such as the exhibition halls, 1,000-watt lights and fixtures were replaced with 100-watt ones – yet the result is that rooms are as bright or brighter than they were before, said Paul Worman, a journeyman electrician who’s been with the company for 11 years.

“It’s a better quality light, it’s brighter and it’s a different type of light – the new lights are whiter, where the old ones were kind of yellowish,” Worman said.

In several hallways, 250-watt halogen bulbs and fixtures were replaced with 70-watt ones, and with 39-watt ones in other places.

“What they had here before was all the same,” Worman said, as he straightened out wires on a set of fixtures. “Some of these new ones are metal halide. They’re all super long lasting and very efficient.”

Other lights in the project include induction, compact fluorescent and LED lighting. Overall, the project is estimated to save the Oregon Convention Center about 2.7 million kilowatt-hours of power per year, Thorpe said.

“It took a while to get the funding together, but the result is noticeably different,” Thorpe said. “It looks better. It’s a cooler (colored) sort of light.”

Funding for the project came from a combination of sources, including the federal government, the Energy Trust of Oregon, the Oregon Department of Energy and the Oregon Convention Center, which kicked in about $125,000.

Oregon Convention Center officials have been planning for the project since August 2009, when they began applying for grants, Thorpe added.

Part of the process also focused on maintaining the look of the former lighting fixtures, including a metal, bell-shaped shell, in the exhibit rooms.

“The new fixtures – they’re all sealed, but they look the same,” Thorpe said. “That was the important part to me.”

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