A Huichol woman and a portable textile light created by a team led by architects Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich.

Nikola Tesla, at the end of the 19th century, invented a new means to transfer electricity via alternating current power transmission. Utilizing this technology, Buffalo, as a part of the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, transferred power from Niagara Falls to become the first city in the country to have electric streetlights. Buffalo, a modern marvel, was dubbed the “City of Lights.”

Today, there are more than two billion people in the world who are not connected to electric power and consequently do not have a electricity-generated light source. In response, Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich, principal architects of Kennedy and Violich Architecture, are investigating new technologies and approaches to lighting. With a design group of 13 graduate students from the University of Michigan, Kennedy and Violich traveled into the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico to meet the semi-nomadic Huichol people. In 2005 they developed Portable Light, a new light source that is pragmatic, portable and efficient.

The Huichol people are an indigenous groups in Mexico that has continued Mesoamerican traditions of textile weaving, thatching and wood braiding. They make seasonal, annual pilgrimages of 400 miles from the Pacific to the Sierra Oriental and to the Sierra farmlands. This way of life, however, has been threatened in the past three decades by the encroaching development of roadways and airstrips. The Huichol household is transforming, as many Huichol men travel to work as day laborers and women are often left alone to tend to children and elders.

The implementation of a traditional grid system for lighting in the Huichol community would be extremely expensive. In addition, the electrical grid system, implemented by the Mexican government, constitutes another form of external encroachment on the Huichol way of life. The government looked at other alternatives, including solar power technology. Kennedy and the design team offer Portable Light as another alternative solution.

All the materials needed for Portable Light already existed. The design team collaborated with MATx, the Kennedy and Violich Architecture’s pioneering materials research unit, to reconfigure individual parts of stoplights, dishwashers, cell phones and photovoltaic cells (solar panels) in a process that Kennedy describes as “hacking,” or altering current technologies according to new ways of thinking and making. Designers use HBLEDs, or high brightness solid-state lighting, which are capable of creating 100 lumens per watt, enough for both reading and working. The power source is generated by flexible photovoltaic cells with a running lifetime of approximately 10 hours of use for every 2.5 hours of charge. Both HBLEDs and photovoltaic cells are then interwoven into a textile medium that is durable, lightweight and adaptable.

The textile nature of Portable Light is both flexible and adaptable. The several prototypes—which include a light bag, a stool and a portable storefront—demonstrate the versatility of the textile fabric. In addition, each unit can be connected, which helps the units to charge more effectively. The efficiency of Portable Light contrasts the large, cumbersome and often improperly maintained photovoltaic panels. The textile medium also allows flexibility in shipping. Other larger lithium or photovoltaic devices, due to safety issues, are not shippable.

Prototypes are now being tested in the Huichol community, which goes to show that the application of advanced technology is not limited to “first” world countries but can also be imagined and adapted to the needs of a traditional societies. In this project, the Huichol people can continue to maintain a certain amount of independence from governmental or developer encroachments. Portable Light is effective because it is subtle, yet profoundly influential. Another possibility for Portable Light is disaster relief, where, in many cases, conventional power grids are rendered useless.

Kennedy has established a practice that pioneers integrating technology and architecture. She participated in the Architecture and Situated Technologies Symposium of 2006 in New York City, hosted by Omar Khan and Mark Shepard, assistant professors at the University at Buffalo, and also recently presented her work as a Louise Bethune lecturer at UB. In this larger discussion, Portable Light, as a situated technology, presents an in-depth look into possibilities for thinking about portability, efficiency, and new applications in a very different and challenging cultural context. This investigation pioneers a new look at lighting systems, and presents the Huichol village as the new, contemporary “City of Lights.”

Lectures and Exhibitions

Monday, April 9: Saskia Sassen, a distinguished sociologist and economist, will be speaking at UB as the Jammal Lecturer. She is known for coining the term “the global city” in investigating the complexities of globalization. Recently she has been investigating the influence of communication technology on governance.

She is a prolific author with numerous publications, including her most recent book, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. She is a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and the Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.

Wednesday, April 11: Walter Nan’s exquisite photo exhibition, China’s Sacred Sites: Architecture of Heaven and Earth, at the UB Anderson Gallery, investigates his particular interest in Chinese mountainscape architecture, which merges architecture and the environment and presents the philosophical idea of heaven, earth and man as one. Nan has traveled extensively throughout China and visited many remote and relatively unknown sites that have been of significance in Chinese history.

He is currently a professor at the Beijing Institute for Civil Engineering and Architecture and has written many articles and books, including the recent Earth Architecture in Northwest China. He has traveled extensively throughout China and visited many remote and relatively unknown sites of significance.

The exhibition was organized by the School of Architecture and Planning and the Asian Studies Program and will be open at the Anderson Gallery until April 15.

Both lectures are hosted by the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning and will be at 5:30pm on UB South Campus in Crosby Hall Room 301.

Design Matters is presented in association with the UB School of Architecture and Planning and supported by a fellowship endowed by Polis Realty.