South Korean designer Jongoh Lee is putting the tree back in streetlight.

A new trend in solar lighting shows designers striving to mimic the natural world. Their work symbolizes that solar electricity is in many ways the man-made manifestation of the natural process of photosynthesis. Jongoh Lee’s Invisible Streetlight is no exception.

The Invisible Streetlight is made to look like a tree branch. It has four “leaves” that are actually LED lights and a slender, flexible body reminiscent of a tree branch. Amazingly, the light can be directly wrapped around a branch where it almost completely blends in. 

The idea is to design a low-key streetlight that provides safe, effective and grid-free lighting of pathways, bike trails, streets and sidewalks that see a lot of nighttime pedestrians. Lee is onto something here, but I see some definite snags, especially on a municipal scale. Safety and reliability are issues, perhaps not so much in terms of light performance, but certainly in the lack of true support. Wrapping a light fixture around a small tree branch is nice for a backyard or garden path, but tree branches succumb to wind, rain, snow, and the elements all the time. It will be hard to convince a city council to adopt such a lighting concept given the high possibility of  repair or replacement after every rain or wind storm.

Furthermore, all of the photographs and renderings of the Invisible Streetlight in action are taken in the dead of winter. What happens when the tree blossoms and leaves sprout up in all directions? Shade will inevitably be a problem at some point. Finally, trees grow. What happens in 20 years when the light is potentially still working (although the battery would likely have died) but the tree is several feet taller and wider? This would mean that workers would have to move the lights depending on how fast the tree grows.

Overall, I really like Lee’s concept and design. But I think his ambitions for its use may be a bit lofty. I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong on this one because I can only imagine how neat a walk through the park at night would be under “invisible streetlights.” And don’t count out the invisible garden or landscape light.

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Posted on September 18th in Solar Products by Dan.