QuarkStar: A Brighter Idea
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A Brighter Idea

QuarkStar is a technology innovations company founded in the heart of Silicon Valley to advance the fundamentals of LED technology, and apply them in wonderful new ways to revolutionize light and lighting in the 21st century.

Composed of some of the best known luminaries in the field, QuarkStar's LITE
™​ team has developed multiple families of technologies – all protected by more than 500 global patent applications, with over 250 already granted.

QuarkStar Lights Up a Galaxy of Art

QuarkStar the primary lighting supplier ​for the centerpiece building
of the largest museum project in North America

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Rich and Nancy Kinder Building

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"Subtle LED lighting that achieves remarkably consistent illumination"
Wall Street Journal
Photo credits - Richard Barnes
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HOUSTON - QuarkStar, a developer of award-winning LED lighting technologies, announces that its Q-Wall asymmetric linear fixtures were installed in the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Designed by architect Steven Holl, the Kinder building is the centerpiece of an 8-year $450 million expansion and redevelopment project and is currently the largest museum expansion in North America. After an amazing effort to complete it during the covid-chaos of 2020, it is now officially open to the public.
 
Specified by L’Observatoire International and handpicked by the MFAH’s Chief Operating Officer, Willard Holmes, QuarkStar’s award-winning Edge-X™ technology is installed in nearly all galleries that use artificial lighting as their primary source of exhibit illumination.

Read more ...


QuarkStar's wall wash luminaires cover over 90% of the gallery walls
that use artificial lighting for their primary illumination



"QUARKSTAR: Building a bridge between the natural and the artificial" 
Premier Construction / January 2021

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QuarkStar's extraordinary uniformity of illumination mimics
the look, the feel, and the functionality
of the best of natural lighting.

For more on the Kinder building and QuarkStar's role
​in shaping light as an architectural material


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​Houston museum leverages QuarkStar optics to uniformly light art walls

Fixtures that hide within the building architecture and spectral tuning bring natural light effects into the exhibit spaces in the new Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Startup QuarkStar has announced that its Edge-X technology has been installed throughout the new Nancy and Rich Kinder Building at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). The relatively diminutive optical element can spread LED light uniformly over large areas such as walls while allowing the solid-state lighting (SSL) fixture to be essentially hidden in a room’s architectural features or recessed into the ceiling. Meanwhile, a multi-channel LED light engine enables the museum lighting to match the abundant natural light that the building design draws into the public spaces and galleries.

Read more ...

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from ​LUX Review, UK:

Ground-breaking optics debut in £330 million art gallery

INNOVATIVE lighting optics developed by technologists in the US are being used for the first time in new £330 million (US$450 million) art gallery.

QuarkStar’s radical Edge-X technology has been specified by top lighting design practice L’Observatoire for the newly opened Kinder Building, centrepiece of a massive expansion to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

The expansion was the largest fine art gallery project in North America in 2020, designed by US ‘starchitect’ Steven Holl.

​Read more ...

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The Nancy and Rich Kinder Building

Designed by Steven Holl Architects especially for the display of the important and rapidly growing MFAH collections of 20th and 21st-century art, to which it dedicates more than 100,000 square feet of gallery space, the Kinder Building is the final component in the museum’s eight-year $450 million project to expand and enhance its Susan and Fayez S. Sarofim Campus in the heart of Houston, the largest fine arts building development project of its time in North America ...

In all respects, the Kinder building stands as a monument to the luminous: The façade’s liminal glass cladding; the third floor skylights’ extraordinary meld of form and function; the playful light-based art installations that mask the pedestrian tunnels’ subterranean nature; even the incorporation of a brand new LED lighting technology that has never been in a public installation before, completing the triumvirate of innovation in architecture, engineering, and technology.

​Read more ...

 Awards and Accolades for QuarkStar Technology
​
​include
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 One of the Best Innovations of Light+Building
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Winner in
​DOE NGL Competition
Emerging Technology
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One of the
20 Hottest Lighting Companies
​in the World
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Winner in
​DOE NGL Competition
Asymmetric Lighting
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 One of Top 10 Products of LightFair International
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More Views on QuarkStar Technology


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from LUX, La Revue de L'eclairage (LUX, The Review of Lighting), Paris:

Technological breakthroughs: QuarkStar is 'completely changing the conceptual approach to lighting'

​The French publication Lux highlights QuarkStar's Edge-X technology as a completely new approach. 

"Holder of numerous patents, winner of many awards, the American start-up QuarkStar has completely rethought LED lighting in order to surpass current performances at all levels."

Read the article >>

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from ​LEDs Magazine:

"Taking Optics-Based Beam Distribution to a Whole New Level"

"At the end of the day, optics in SSL applications serve the primary task of controlling beam distribution. [QuarkStar] takes that task to a new level ...

"The company [QuarkStar] has developed some compelling demonstration optics, especially Edge-X for general illumination applications ... "

Read the article >>


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QuarkStar reinvents the downlight,
finessing the limitations of glare

Turning downlights on their heads:
A semi-revolutionary concept for recessed can lighting


Introducing what is being called the first fundamental innovation in downlights in their 75 year history, this is the brand new downlight concept that won the Light+Building 2018 Lux Innovation Award… and further developed to significantly decrease  problems of glare in the indoor environment. 
​
Presented by Wilson Dau at Strategies in Light

Watch recorded presentation >>
Download PowerPoint show >>

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QuarkStar's solution of the previously unsolved major problem of color shift prediction contributes to new industry standards

 from LEDS Magazine (Carrie Meadows):

Predicting Chromaticity Shift in LEDs and SSL Products
" ... [QuarkStar's model] has the potential to change how the solid-state lighting (SSL) industry utilizes test and measurement guidance, and effectively end the notion that the lumen is the only light characteristic that matters with regard to LED lifetime performance."

Watch webcast
(To skip registration, use this email: QS_color_shift_control@quarkstar.com)

Presented by: Dr. Eric Bretschneider, CTO QuarkStar 
Chair of the IES Solid-State Lighting Subcommittee

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QuarkStar presents the Integrated System of Lighting

The Integrated System of Lighting:
Paving a New Path to Profitability


Presented by QuarkStar at Strategies in Light February 2020
The inherent tendency to use familiar design means that the full potential of solid-state lighting technology has yet to be realized. LEDs offer a unique opportunity to develop a new class of fixtures of extraordinary design whereby the source and fixture are one-and-the-same. 

Manufacturers benefit from lower production costs and higher margins while simultaneously offering customers new form factors at lower price points that have superior performance and lifetime. Systems of this integrated nature reduce both cost and complexity, improve reliability and performance, and offer radically new opportunities for integration into the built environment.

​The endpoint is a true systems integration, where separate sources, optics, and fixtures are no longer needed while also offering brand new capabilities. The source and the fixture can become a single unit offering greater beam-shaping, enhanced color stability, and lower costs to manufacture.​

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QuarkStar presents two keynote talks 
at the
20th Anniversary  Strategies in Light


As a team composed of industry experts with decades of collective experience in the SSL industry as well as Silicon Valley entrepreneurial know-how, QuarkStar is uniquely positioned to provide perspectives on the development of the LED lighting industry and where its future is leading.

20 Years of Strategies in Light: Reflections on the Evolution of the LED Industry
presented by Dr. Robert Steele, QuarkStar's chief market analyst and founder and co-chair of Strategies in Light


​"From Black Death to White Light": The LED Revolution That Almost Didn't Happen
presented by Dr. Eric Bretschneider, QuarkStar CTO
​Chair of the IES Solid-State Lighting Subcommittee

More QuarkStar news >>

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