Among endless lists of projects featured by the RISD-Brown student-run conference “A Better World by Design”, I found Kennedy & Violich Architecture (KVA MATx)’s Portable Light Project very inspiring and hopeful. The project aims to help more than 2 billion people over the world, those in extreme poverty and absence of electricity.
As I recall my memory back in high school, I remember having the worst weekend right before my final exams when the electricity went down for the whole school including dormitories, due to a heavy rainstorm. We had to hang our flash lights on the ceiling with the tape to shine our textbooks and read them, put on every single battery-powered heaters to bring some temperature up in our rooms, and gathered as many friends as possible in a small blanket to keep each other warm. It was the worst environment to study, sleep, or eat. It was simply a disaster.
With my one weekend experience without electricity resulting in a significant decrease in ability and access to gain knowledge or physical immunity, I can’t imagine how 2 billion others without an access to electricity would have survived through their entire life.
As I recall my memory back in high school, I remember having the worst weekend right before my final exams when the electricity went down for the whole school including dormitories, due to a heavy rainstorm. We had to hang our flash lights on the ceiling with the tape to shine our textbooks and read them, put on every single battery-powered heaters to bring some temperature up in our rooms, and gathered as many friends as possible in a small blanket to keep each other warm. It was the worst environment to study, sleep, or eat. It was simply a disaster.
With my one weekend experience without electricity resulting in a significant decrease in ability and access to gain knowledge or physical immunity, I can’t imagine how 2 billion others without an access to electricity would have survived through their entire life.
Portable Light woven into a textile base
Portable Light by KVA MATx makes eco-friendly and efficient use of renewable resource to create renewable power. A flexible photovoltaic (solar cell) within the textile allows charging up the high brightness solid state lighting (HBLED) and rechargeable battery, once exposed to sunlight during the day. These technological features can simply be woven as a textile base into blankets, bags, and clothing. The textile medium weighs less than 8 ounces, and is easily transportable and adaptable to anywhere and for anyone. The efficiency of the Portable Light is quite amazing as well; 5 hours of charging will produce 12 Volts of DC electrical power and 160 lumens of light for about 8 hours.
South Africa is one of the countries where Portable Light Project is making an active approach to creating a healthy environment for the user groups in serious poverty. While multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) and HIV are leading many South Africans to death, most of the rural patients are not in the right condition for home medical treatment. Portable Light implanted into a blanket keeps the patients warm, and enables them to charge medical devices used for the treatment.
According to KVA, “Portable Light is based upon the principle that global needs for technology development are inevitably interconnected. Knowledge, techniques, market solutions and data produced by the project benefit the “third” world and the “first” world where the need to imagine, design and develop energy efficient alternatives to the centralized and increasingly costly electrical grid is becoming ever more important.”
For people who have never lived their entire lives with electricity, Portable Light will not only provide them with a source of knowledge and healthy living, but also become a hope for brighter tomorrow.
According to KVA, “Portable Light is based upon the principle that global needs for technology development are inevitably interconnected. Knowledge, techniques, market solutions and data produced by the project benefit the “third” world and the “first” world where the need to imagine, design and develop energy efficient alternatives to the centralized and increasingly costly electrical grid is becoming ever more important.”
For people who have never lived their entire lives with electricity, Portable Light will not only provide them with a source of knowledge and healthy living, but also become a hope for brighter tomorrow.
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