News & Updates

May 2021

Inside the Museum

QuarkStar's revolutionary technology
​bridges the natural and artificial

QuarkStar’s Edge-X™ technology delivers something previously never before seen in the lighting world: evenly distributed sheets of light easily spanning 16-ft gallery walls and daylight matching color-tuning from a single row of LEDs, all from a footprint so small when the museum saw it placed in a ceiling mockup, they chose to redesign the cove to take advantage of the empty space that was left behind.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s recently completed Nancy and Rich
Kinder Building is not only an architectural marvel, but a supremely well-tuned instrument of light and lighting. It is top-to-bottom innovation of the luminous: the skylights above, the liminal glass cladding outside, the light-based installation art below in the underground tunnels, and QuarkStar innovations in the middle ... all in service of the ultimate innovations on display – the art itself.

[ Read more ... ]
April 2021

QuarkStar Nominated for New International Award

Ground-breaking optics debuts in £330m US art museum

A new international award celebrating and rewarding innovation

Build Back Better is a new international initiative to champion innovation in buildings. QuarkStar's technology and role in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's new Kinder building has been externally nominated for this groundbreaking award.

Read more about the innovative project and an in-depth look at the technology:

[ View PDF ]
[ Read on Build Back Better's site ]
March 2021

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.

[ View PDF ]
[ Read on LEDs Magazine site ]
January 2021

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 ...

[ View PDF ]
[ Read on Lux's site ]
January 2021

The Nancy and Rich Kinder Building

The architect Steven Holl thinks of "sculpting space with light”.

QuarkStar’s Edge-X technology allows one to
​sculpt light itself in space.
"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."

Read about how QuarkStar's Q-Wall asymmetric linear wall wash luminaires help to enable a museum and architect's vision of light as an architectural material starting page 17 ...
​
​[ Read the article ]
January 2021
Q-Wall’s diminutive size and best-in-class light distribution means curators can easily display art of multiple sizes and shapes throughout the galleries without worrying about hot spots or dark spots, while visitors are able to appreciate the collections from multiple viewpoints without distracting shadows or discomfort glare.
© Richard Barnes

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
opens the Kinder Building
featuring QuarkStar's luminaires
​based on Edge-X technology

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 as the primary exhibit illumination in nearly all galleries using artificial lighting as their primary illumination source.
 
The Q-Wall flawlessly performs in one of the most rigorous and challenging environments for man-made lighting: the galleries of a premier museum. In a world’s first from a commercial general lighting product, Q-Wall uniformly illuminates the expansive 16-ft walls while color-mixing and matching straight from a beam-forming optic that is less than 1-inch wide. Q-Wall’s footprint is so small that when the museum saw it placed in a ceiling mockup, they chose to redesign the cove to take advantage of the empty space that was otherwise unnecessary.
 
“This is what QuarkStar’s Edge-X enables,” CEO Louis Lerman says. “Rather than being forced to design around a fixture, an architectural vision such as the Kinder Building was able to integrate the fixture invisibly while delivering an experience nearly indistinguishable from standing near a window or under their innovative cloud-inspired skylights.

“As Steven Holl has said, he likes to think of his practice in architecture as sculpting space with light. Well, QuarkStar’s Edge-X technology allows us to sculpt light itself in space, creating these beautiful sheets of indirect lighting. We are extremely proud to have been selected for this landmark architectural project.”
Click on thumbnails to view full image
 “[U]ltimately it’s about the experience of viewing art together with other people,” Gary Tinterow, director of the MFAH has said. “It’s a building for the long run; the light and space must work 100 years from now.”
 
The Kinder building is the final component of 650,000 square feet of new construction to unify the campus into 14 walkable acres. It will be specially dedicated to installments from the important and rapidly growing MFAH collection of 20th- and 21st-century art and will open with an exhibition highlighting a trove of major collections never before presented in depth.

[ Download PDF ]
January 2021

QuarkStar patents hit 500 applications globally with over 250 core technology patents granted to date in the US, EU, China, and Japan

2020 granted patents of a fundamental nature include
 – Specific optics required for the 2020 MFAH museum project
 – Automotive applications: for headlights & in-cabin shaped lighting
 – New approaches to color control, maintainence, and enhancing CRI
 – Foundational & evolutionary approaches to LED filament ('Edison') bulbs
February 2020

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 in 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.
December 2019

(USA)

Materials and footprint options multiply in LED optics

SSL remains a multidisciplinary development effort and optics can be as important as LEDs in delivering quality of light. MAURY WRIGHT surveys some of the latest LED-centric optics options for general lighting and specialty applications.

QuarkStar Edge-X
by Maury Wright

At the end of the day, optics in SSL applications serve the primary task of controlling beam distribution. Our final company in this article takes that task to a new level. QuarkStar is a late-stage startup company with a business plan focused on licensing optics technology to luminaire makers. The company, however, has developed some compelling demonstration optics, especially Edge-X for general illumination applications. The Edge-X optics combine light guide functionality that serves as a way for photons to travel from an LED light engine to the edge of the optic, where the company’s patented technology then forms the desired beam pattern delivering light just where it is needed. The nearby image shows the transparent planar light guide between the light engine and the beam-forming edge optics. Feilo Sylvania became the first SSL manufacturer to license the QuarkStar technology earlier this year.

[ Read on LEDs Magazine ]
March 2019

Lux: La revue de l'eclairage
      (France)

Light and Innovation
The new entrants  who are transforming lighting

Will lighting be taking a new course? 

The arrival of the LED and digital lighting, which are completely redesigning our approach to lighting, is an obvious step in the revolution occurring in this sector. And the power of electronics, coupled with the creative human imagination, keeps pushing back the limits of the possible with completely new solutions - some of which are akin to technological breakthroughs. Indeed, some of the solutions presented in this selection completely change the conceptual approach to lighting or the infrastructure of lighting like, for example, a direct/indirect light downlight (QuarkStar), street lighting powered by kinetic energy (Engoplanet), an infrastructure for interior lighting that is free of drivers (Illuma-Drive). 

Designed by actors (many of whom do not come from the lighting sector) who think about light in new ways, these innovations compete with established ways of doing things via a common idea: to improve offerings by reducing energy consumption and environmental footprint.  

And technology has obviously not reached its limits: from start-ups to global electronics and communication giants, and including the more legacy industrial companies, many are interested in the potential of digital light and are investing in it. 
QUARKSTAR: NEW GENERATION DISTRIBUTIONS

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. Their technology Edge-X technology, notably seen at Light + Building 2018, revolutionizes light distribution, using refraction rather than reflection, opening the way to designs that were up to now unimaginable, like this semi-recessed downlight to direct / indirect lighting. 
March 2019

(London)

FEILO Sylvania has licensed a ground-breaking lens technology which it plans to include in its next generation luminaires

The company has signed a deal to get access to the radical Edge-X technology from innovative US start-up QuarkStar.

It’s understood the company will initially use the ‘light shaping’ lens development in its downlight and linear lighting ranges under the Concord brand.

​The Edge-X optics essentially guide the output from LEDs and sculpt the distribution of light in a space. One of the benefits to clients is that fewer luminaires are needed in a space to get the same effect as traditional optics.

‘Seeing the capability of Edge-X optics was a significant moment for us,’ Sylvania’s technology chief Richard Turner told Lux. ‘We knew immediately that incorporating the optical technology into our product lines would be a major win. This was confirmed by our jointly winning Lux’s Top 20 Innovations Award at the 2018 Light + Building for the first major revolutionary advance in downlights in 75 years.’

‘Sylvania’s ability to incorporate the Edge-X technology into a full product line will enable it to significantly increase its position in the market,’ QuarkStar Louis Lerman told Lux. ‘This agreement brings together QuarkStar’s globally patented, award-winning technologies with the power and presence of the Sylvania brand.

‘QuarkStar’s unique combination of novel functions and radically new designs will provide significant market differentiation across multiple product families.’

[ Read on LuxReview.com ]

March 2019

QuarkStar reinvents the downlight,
further 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 funadamental 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 2019

Watch recorded presentation >>
Download PowerPoint show >>
March 2019

QuarkStar CTO Eric Bretschneider presents a Grand Unified Theory of SSL reliability and predictive measurements

Chasing the Rainbow - Developing a Single Predictive Model for LED Metrics

Presented at the 2019 Strategies in Light conference by 
​Dr. Eric Bretschneider, QuarkStar CTO
Chair of the IES Solid-State Lighting Subcommittee

Watch recorded presentation >>
Download PowerPoint show >>
March 2019

QuarkStar presents two keynote talks at Strategies in Light 2019

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, CTO QuarkStar 
Chair of the IES Solid-State Lighting Subcommittee
​
February 2019

QuarkStar CTO's solution of the 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

" ... [The 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."

Article based on Interview:
https://www.ledsmagazine.com/blogs/article/16701575/focus-shifts-from-lumens-to-color

This webcast will provide an overview of how the SSL design process can be enhanced by predicting chromaticity shift. Product developers and lighting specifiers will learn how such a data-driven method might be employed to help them choose products carefully and to confidently deploy SSL technology in color-critical applications. (Webcast no longer available)

Presented by: Dr. Eric Bretschneider, CTO QuarkStar 
Chair of the IES Solid-State Lighting Subcommittee
February 2019

QuarkStar patents reach 450 applications globally with 170+ core technology patents granted to date in the US, EU, China, and Japan
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