3.1.11 | New Windsor, NY | Proving it has an eye for GOOD DESIGN, leading commercial and residential lighting manufacturer USAI Lighting was recently recognized by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design for its NanoLumen™ lighting solution. A recessed fixture that marries impressive optics and performance features with the smallest aperture on the market for metal halide lamp sources, NanoLumen was honored with a 2010 GOOD DESIGN™ award, one of just 500 product designs and graphics selected from a record number of submitted nominees. In its 60th year, the GOOD DESIGN award program is the world's oldest and most celebrated international awards program that bestows recognition upon designers and manufacturers for advancing new and innovative products.

“Despite the continuing economic crisis and still more bleak predictions for the near future, the 2010 GOOD DESIGN program is the strongest program ever, with the largest-ever amount of corporate participation and the best and most substantial design awarded. The trend signals the start that corporations and designers are changing their direction toward more sustainable and cost-effective design and less the use of flash and extravagance and a new understanding that the global market for consumer products is highly competitive and that only the strong and the best-designed will survive and succeed," stated Museum President and CEO Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine of The Chicago Athenaeum.

As a recipient of this prestigious honor, NanoLumen will be on display at The Chicago Athenaeum in the GOOD DESIGN Show in Chicago in June.

“Receiving a GOOD DESIGN award for NanoLumen is validation that we’re doing things right, and are succeeding in delivering on our =91beauty and brains” philosophy,” said Bonnie Littman, president of USAI Lighting. “We are pushing the envelope beyond standard product design and translating our customers” needs for high-performing lighting solutions that are also high-style. We are thrilled to receive this award alongside companies like Apple, BMW and Coca Cola Co. that are known for incorporating their advanced technology into daring design focused on both form and function.”

Small in Size, Big on Performance

NanoLumen is a first-of-its-kind lighting solution, designed around a T-4 ceramic metal halide lamp source featuring a barely-there aperture (2.5-inches) that fuses seamlessly and discreetly with interiors” ceiling planes. Proving “less is more,” the NanoLumen product line is also available for metal halide, MR-16, and low-voltage halogen MR-16 lamps with round, square, trimmed and barely there trimless options.

Recently the company introduced the next evolution of the offering, NanoLED™, an innovative light source that marries impressive optics with a small 2.5” aperture for LED (light emitting diode) sources. Bringing sophistication to sustainability both industry-first offerings allow for precise yet flexible point-source lighting in any installation as well as the ability to replace inefficient incandescent point source and even large aperture compact florescent fixtures.

USAI Lighting’s NanoLumen and NanoLED products meet the industry’s most stringent standards for energy efficiency providing new options for designers to meet LEED certification criteria and energy codes requiring ASHRAE 90.1-2001 standards or later.

About Good Design

Founded in Chicago in 1950 by architects Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., GOOD DESIGN bestows international recognition upon the world's most prominent designers and manufacturers for advancing new, visionary, and innovative product concepts, invention and originality, and for stretching the envelope beyond what is considered ordinary product and consumer design. All winning designs for GOOD DESIGN 2010 can be viewed at the Museum's website: www.chi-athenaeum.org.

About USAI Lighting

A lighting industry leader, USAI” Lighting is helping to shine an entirely new light on the way commercial and residential properties address lighting design solutions. Driven by its IllumiVation” philosophy, USAI Lighting’s versatile yet robust selection of products fuse together brains and beauty, providing fresh and energy-saving solutions for general illumination and accent lighting. From compact fluorescents and metal halides to its new generation of LED solid state lighting technology, all USAI Lighting products maintain the smallest physical and carbon footprint possible while meeting the strictest standards for innovation and design to ensure seamless specification, simple installation and easy ongoing maintenance. For additional information about USAI Lighting and its high-performance offerings, visit www.usailighting.com or call 845-565-8500.