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LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, have been touted as the future of lighting, and for good reason: they use a fraction of the energy of traditional lightbulbs and, unlike fluorescents, don’t contain mercury, a toxin. But a couple of hurdles have stood in the way of their widespread use: price (LEDs cost considerably more than other bulbs) and light quality (they tend to produce a ghastly bluish glow).

Until recently, designers like Mark McKenna, despite being intrigued by the technology, held off from embracing it. “As far back as 2002, we were doing prototypes with LEDs, but once we got them turned on, the light just looked so horrible,” Mc-Kenna says. “Then, a couple of years ago, things started to get interesting.” That’s when he discovered the power LED, which not only offers a warmer, whiter light but is bright enough to be used on its own. (Previously, manufacturers had to cluster several smaller chips together to generate the same intensity.)

His latest project for Humanscale packages a high-performance 7-watt LED in a task lamp called the Element, which the company hopes, at $399, is priced competitively enough to attract clients who are aiming for LEED certification. Though the LED is the most expensive component of the lamp, McKenna stresses that ergonomic principles weren’t sacrificed to keep production costs down. A tilting head and adjustable arm—it can even fold completely when not in use—allow for optimum maneuverability. And since the light comes from a single source, the Element avoids the distracting shadows generated by multi-LED lamps. Here McKenna illuminates the best features of his design, which will make its debut next month at NeoCon.

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Product dimensions
Maximum reach: 28.5 in.
Base diameter: 7.8 in.

The small size of the cord is appropriate for the amount of electricity that’s flowing through here—about a tenth of what a sixty-watt incandescent bulb would pull.

LEDs of this size and performance produce a lot of heat in a small area,
so heat dissipation becomes one of the primary issues. This die-cast aluminum heat sink has been extensively tested and very carefully designed to shed all of the heat that the LED will produce. At the same time, the head will never get hot enough to burn a person.

No adhesives are used, and everything, aside from the circuit board and the LED, is recyclable. Since there are so few parts, I could very easily take this
apart in two minutes and have piles of plastic, aluminum, and stainless steel.

With most other lamps, if something breaks you have to throw the whole lamp away, because everything is integrated. But with this one, you can actually just replace the head or one of the components inside the head. So in five minutes, you’ll be able to replace the whole circuit board.

The color choices will be white with silver (what you see here) and an all-silver model. Down the line, we’re thinking all black and maybe some traditional colors.

We designed nineteen different mounts to fit every major manufacturer’s cubical systems.

Compact fluorescents have to run on AC power, which requires different models for different countries. But this lamp has a DC power supply and will come with replaceable blades to fit any outlet worldwide.