LA Lights the Way – a global competition to design and create a new standard streetlight for the city of Los Angeles – has announced Project Room as the winner. The Mayor’s Office and the Bureau of Street Lighting (BSL) created the challenge to consider how streetlights can incorporate new technology.
“Los Angeles is a place where the world comes to inspire and innovate, where we infuse everything with our trademark creativity, and where we always seek to invent new ways for government to be a force for good in people’s lives,” said LA Mayor, Eric Garcetti. “Project Room’s design illuminates a future that does more than brighten public spaces – it brings smarter design to our neighbourhoods, helps us combat climate change, and promotes equity across our city.”
Project Room’s winning entry – Superbloom – re-imagines the traditional lamp post as a bouquet-like system composed of a bundle of tubes where each service – roadway light, pedestrian light, and telecommunications equipment – is assigned a dedicated tube fabricated from steel or aluminum. Extra tubes are built into the design to enable the addition of future uses, such as 5G equipment, electric vehicle chargers, smart city sensors and shade fixtures.
The city plans to gradually replace the roughly 180,000 standard streetlights currently dispersed citywide with the new design. Historic street lights from the 1920s and ’30s will not be replaced.
“The streetlight’s bouquet speaks to the diversity of the City of Los Angeles—a single entity made up of an ever-growing variety of cultural positions,” Project Room’s design description states. “At a time of great cultural and civic transformation, the streetlight is an ever-changeable monument to and ever-changing city.”