Bold Lighting Eclipse
Replicating the lunar phenomenon, the light source in the Eclipse is hidden, offering a completely glare-free, indirect illumination. The LED is located in the static blade of the fixture body, shining up on the reflector. The reflector orbits omnidirectionally around the light source, allowing maximum vertical beam adjustability, up to 45° tilt in a 360° horizontal span. The reflector is regressed around 8mm from the face of the bezel and maintains the same horizontal position regardless of beam tilt, allowing the luminaire to maintain high efficiency with a discreet and unobtrusive aesthetic.
Acclaim Lighting Line One DMX
Linear One DMX is a high-output, energy-efficient interior and exterior modular linear LED fixture, available in a wide range of dynamic colour options and beam angles. It utilises an end-to-end modular design, making it an incredibly adaptive, efficient and versatile light system, designed for linear, multi-colour, high-output LED fixtures, ideal for creative capabilities for wall grazing and cove applications to meet design criteria. Available in one and four-foot sections, Linear One is available in RGBW (3000-6000K) and RGBA and DW (2200-5000K).
Orbit Urban Office Campus, Greece
With bold façade illumination from Danilof light + visual perception studio, the newly-opened Orbit Urban Office Campus is the latest marvel in modern workspace design.
Opened in August of this year, the Orbit Urban Office Campus in Athens, Greece, exemplifies modern workspace design. With its glowing, undulating façade drawing you in, the clean, organic design is complemented by a crisp, homogenous lighting scheme that acts as a celebration of the architectural form.
Commissioned by Noval Property, project managers and directors for the project, and designed by Lianou Chalvatzis Architects and Vikelas Architects, the low-rise building stands nine storeys tall, with six additional basement levels. Local lighting designer Thanos Danilof, Studio Director of Danilof light + visual perception studio, was tasked with illuminating the new building. Danilof explained further how his studio was selected for this particular project: “As an Athens-based lighting design consultancy, we have worked with the same client in other smaller projects at various stages in the past.
“Since this project was aiming for a unique nocturnal image, and at the same time for a LEED certificate, the developers decided early on that they have to appoint a dedicated lighting designer that will work creatively and technically with all management, design and construction teams. We were involved from the concept design stage, all the way through to technical design, tender stage and construction support.”
Once brought on board, Danilof was given a clear brief from the clients to create “a nocturnal city landmark that at the same time achieves LEED certification and will be completed within a reasonable lighting budget for a project of this scale”.
“The architects were concerned on how the characteristic shape of the façade they designed, the continuity of its form, the sharpness and the curvilinearity are going to be perceptible at night,” Danilof added.
As such, he and his design studio decided that its lighting design concept would be to make the façade appear “self-luminous: homogenous and clear”, with a pure white illumination that would allow the structural form of the building to “shimmer” over the dark, reflective glazing. “A continuous band of cool white light picks out the distinctive shape of the building, wraps around it and dissolves into darkness and ambient luminance,” Danilof explained.
As the concept grew and evolved, Danilof decided that the interior lift lobby areas – the visible “spine” of the building – would be revealed in a welcoming, warmer tone. “At ground level, warm light would delineate the sculptural qualities of the landscape, while cool white light would accentuate the olive trees,” he continued.
“A subtle note would also be introduced by the delicate shadows cast by façade plants on each level, that would move gently as they get caught in the night breeze.”
Danilof decided very early on to specify lighting at 4000K MacAdam step 2 for the façade illumination, for a strict, pure white consistency, while all interior areas were kept at 3000K or less in order to have a colour contrast at all times. Further to this, interior office lighting has been set to automatically switch off after business hours, and the dark reflective glazing contributes to an even higher contrast while allowing for visually interesting reflections. Because of these measures, with CCT contrast, the lighting designers didn’t need to use higher lighting levels in order to bring out the form of the façade and visually separate the interior volume and the glazing.
However, as the studio approached the detailed design stage, it faced some challenges, as Danilof explained: “Ideally, as a design principle, in order to have an even, homogenous wash on the façade, we wanted to keep the same projection geometry throughout the building. Obviously this was not feasible everywhere, therefore at level 0 we asked for a bespoke luminaire housing structure of detailed dimensions attached to the glazing. This would illuminate the first white cladding at the same projection distance as at all other levels. Other areas necessitated custom long throw, short throw or in-ground fixtures that would match the visual result of the standard projection.
“At this point, we did a lot of testing at the studio. We started with detailed photometric calculations and 3D models, and then we decided to do a bit of bricolage. We built a 1:1 section detail out of cardboard and double-checked the standard projection geometry optics with various luminaire samples. At the same time, we had to constantly collaborate with the sustainability consultants in order to keep everything in check with LEED criteria, and the electrical engineers to conclude on feasible wiring solutions.”
By harmonising aesthetics, functionality and sustainability into one coherent lighting solution, Danilof Studio aimed to seamlessly integrate lighting within the architectural fabric of the building, while creating an environment with high levels of visual comfort that prevents light spill and light pollution. Towards that end, the studio developed architectural lighting details and lighting design specifications for bespoke luminaires with special optics, housing and light chromaticity characteristics.
In doing so, during the construction stage, Danilof Studio worked with Illumination Physics and its Greek partner Luce Ataliotis, who engineered and delivered the bespoke lighting systems to meet these specifications.
Peter Kemp, Co-Founding Partner of Illumination Physics, explained further how the manufacturer developed these bespoke systems: “Consistency of the quality of the white light was of paramount importance to Danilof.
“The horizontal strata were to be illuminated from below: curved white surfaces lit in neutral white at 4000K. This created a set of critical parameters requiring extreme level of care in binning. Neutral white is the most sensitive colour temperature to work with, because the slightest variation in colour temperature or hue is obvious, and illuminating a perfectly white surface is a sure way to reveal any inconsistencies.”
In order to create an even illumination around the curved façade, Illumination Physics developed a new family of linear light fixtures, based on a six-LED, 300mm version of its Linear Graze Mono, DC, CV and DMX.
“The linear light fixtures that would be used were to be as physically small as possible for aesthetic reasons. They could not be continuous due to the curves, and therefore the overlapping beams must be perfectly overlaid to produce a homogenous result,” Kemp explained.
The manufacturers developed numerous prototypes for factory mock-ups, while tests were conducted simulating the precise distances and projection surfaces that would be encountered on-site. They then took these prototypes on-site for final testing, after which three custom variants of the new fixtures – each with different lengths and wattages – were specified, alongside an in-ground version.
These custom-developed fixtures cast an even wash of light on the façade, which, when combined with the attention to detail of Danilof Studio that saw detailed photometric calculations in 3D models, and a consistent use of mock-ups all the way from concept design to construction, create a crisp, homogenous illumination along the Orbit’s curving façade.
Alongside the striking façade lighting, there were numerous other considerations for the lighting designers – notably in carefully illuminating the abundant plant life.
Each stratum of the façade contains a continuous planter for flowers and other organics that are partly illuminated, casting complex shadows on the soffit above. This inclusion of plant life was seen as a means of softening the hard, modern lines of the architecture – a fusion of organic and inorganic.
“It was a part of our lighting concept to include discreetly the plant life into the nocturnal image of the façade,” Danilof said. “This required careful coordination during the technical design and construction stage with the landscape architects and designers.”
This collaboration with the landscape architects and designers, as well as Danilof Studio’s work with Illumination Physics, is something that Danilof believes was integral to the eventual success of the project.
“Collaboration is key in all projects, big or small, business or otherwise. It is how we evolve individually and collectively,” he said. “We were lucky in this project to collaborate on a daily basis with so many disciplines and diverse teams during both the design and construction stage.”
Continuing this collaboration, Danilof added that, on completion of the project, he is looking to help with the maintenance of the building, to ensure that the lighting doesn’t fade with time. “We are preparing a lighting maintenance manual, and we will be having meetings with the company that won the maintenance contract of the building. In a way this is one of the most challenging parts of the project.”
Going the extra mile in this way is a testament to how pleased Danilof is with the final lighting design for the Orbit – a design in which the lighting responds perfectly and organically to the unique shape and context of the design. The sharp, even illumination to the Orbit’s flowing exterior, in which the lighting is seamlessly integrated into the architecture, further enhances this new landmark, and what will no doubt become a new monument to modern workspace design.
University of Michigan Biological Sciences Building, USA
The new Biological Sciences Building at the University of Michigan features vast, daylit atria that put the school’s research and artefacts at the forefront. These daylit spaces are complemented by a seamless lighting design from SmithGroup.
Combining state-of-the-art science education with research spaces and an interactive natural history museum, the Biological Sciences Building (BSB) at the University of Michigan is a first-of-its-kind facility, designed to engage the public and revolutionise life science research, discovery and communication.
Designed by SmithGroup and Ennead Architects and located on the university’s main campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the 312,000sqft facility is characterised by a transparent, open-lab concept, and brings together five biological sciences departments from across the campus. The site also merges these departments with the newly re-envisioned Museum of Natural History, giving the larger community access to the research coming out of these programmes.
The building form was influenced by close collaboration between the University, SmithGroup and Ennead, utilising network mapping tools intended to enhance interaction between disparate groups. The resultant form is that of three closely spaced, terracotta-clad, five-storey laboratory pavilions, broken open on the south side and connected by two vast glass atria, creating views into the facility and bringing natural daylight deep into the laboratories and public spaces. These atria also serve to showcase the institution’s mission to educate the public, acting as giant display cases for large-scale exhibits.
Rodrigo Manriquez, Principal at SmithGroup, explained this design concept further: “This project was an effort to open up the otherwise very conventional, closed towers typical to lab buildings, opening them up into the campus environment and the campus fabric.
“In an effort to divide the three towers, we have two atria conditions that create a relationship of solid and void. For us, it was really essential to understand this architecturally, to be able to have an input in terms of light and dark, and orchestrate the solution accordingly. The concept of portals guided our thinking.”
As such, SmithGroup, alongside Ennead, carried out detailed parametric daylighting analysis, which then informed both the façade design and the glazing choices, ensuring that plenty of natural light penetrated deep into the building without creating any unwanted glare.
One of the core facets of the brief given to SmithGroup and Ennead was to “put science on display”. Jarrett Pelletier, Associate Principal at Ennead, explained further: “Our team worked with the University to elevate this ideal and to echo it at many scales. Breaking the machine-like qualities of a traditional research building apart into multiple towers both drove daylight deep into the working spaces, but also allowed views from the exterior into the research laboratories and collections. Like a contemporary ‘cabinet of curiosities’, the museum’s towers fold open to reveal the innerworkings of the scientific process.”
Matt Alleman, Principal at SmithGroup, elaborated on how lighting design fit into this design brief: “We weren’t given specific direction as to how the lighting solutions should evolve. Rather, we worked in concert with the designers and the university’s brief to create a cohesive lighting concept that further elevated the building’s form and function. It wasn’t a separate thing, it was one and the same.
“I think that’s what worked really well in the synergy between SmithGroup and Ennead in terms of developing the architecture and the lighting systems that accompany it.”
“We pushed to integrate the lighting into the architecture wherever possible, and to use the lighting as architecture,” added Pelletier. “It was a highly collaborative framework where we set a vision and SmithGroup came back with different ways to address that vision, and we worked together to find the right answer.”
As part of this synergistic approach, SmithGroup developed the idea of creating “scientific portals” – a concept that uses day, night, research and exhibit portals to unify the building by strengthening visual connections between the programme, users and visitors.
“The building has great touch points for the interface of a human scale, an articulation that brings out the activity of nearby spaces on the inside,” Manriquez said. “Lighting is actually allowing the typical trick of diluting the glazing into the environment and capturing critical moments. It plays at different scale, and that connection is something the team really took pride in – understanding that the building is experienced at different rhythms, but that connection of scientific portals was always the guiding principle.”
The fluidity between the architecture and the lighting design extends to the contrasting typologies within the building, as students and visitors experience working laboratories, study spaces, and museum exhibits under one roof. While this project could have felt like a number of smaller, self-contained projects, SmithGroup ensured that there was a commonality in its lighting design to connect each space.
“By our description of how you experience the spaces, you might feel that the lab spaces for example, could become very segregated from the rest, but the reality is that we’re putting these spaces on display,” Manriquez said. “That’s how we connect to this notion of scientific portals, whether you’re on the inside, or you’re in the atrium looking in, you have the ability to see the artist on display, if you will.”
“We talked about the different space types, where you can move from an exterior walking path, to a museum exhibit, to a working research lab – they’re all very different environments, but it was critical that we have a common language to solve them, because the idea of this project was that they can be visually connected,” Alleman added. “So we used common approaches that worked well together in solving these very different environments, such that the visual connection would make sense, and that it wasn’t a whole disparate number of different types of space coming together, because there was intentionally a visual connection.”
A primary factor in creating this visual connection is the illumination for the two atria. These vast, fully glazed spaces, spanning the five storeys of the building, fill the inner reaches of the BSB with natural light – even reaching into labs that have no external windows. Complementing this abundance of natural light, SmithGroup opted for a layered artificial lighting approach, starting with a crisp, ambient light to the canopy ceilings, then the artefacts on display, before illuminating the staircases through recessed, linear fixtures from LED Linear and downlights from Lucifer, and then the smaller display cases and labs.
“If you look at the atrium as the macro, and then the lab volumes and even the individual display cases, the layers and approach to lighting that we’re using are consistent throughout all of those,” said Patrick MacBride, Lighting Designer at SmithGroup. “We created a luminous top, and have strategically located point sources to highlight the artefact within that volume, and those were two of the guiding principles that we utilised in every one of those areas.
“In the display case, we added a luminous ceiling to the case, courtesy of Cooledge Lighting, and we had integrated adjustable accent fixtures from Bruck Lighting to specifically highlight the pieces on the shelf, so it was always very intentional, even down to the display case integration of light.”
To create the luminous ceiling of the atrium, 42 theatrical floodlights from ETC are concealed within wall pockets at the third floor level to illuminate the curved, billowing form. However, reaching this decision took a degree of trial and error by the lighting designers, as MacBride explained: “The form bows in two directions, and if you don’t light it correctly, it flattens out and it looks like a flat ceiling, which completely undercuts all the coolness of this ceiling system.”
“Where we started with the lighting for the ceiling was to light it from the edges, but we found looking through options that there was no way that we could truly articulate the form from those edges; we flattened it out every time, and found that we needed to change the location of the light sources. We worked with Ennead to integrate that into something that was palatable within the space, and created a tectonic that made sense and really blended with some of the exhibit lighting in that space to become one element,” Alleman elaborated.
Each floodlight is carefully aimed, lensed and dimmed to create an intentional gradient of light emanating from the centre of the ceiling. This indirect illumination from the five-storey volume provides functional illumination for the ground floor.
With this stretching, uplit ceiling canopy, it was important for SmithGroup not to over light the space with further illumination to the suspended fossils that hang in the void. Alleman explained that instead of highlighting them through light, it became a balancing act between “embracing the notion of silhouette, but making sure that we weren’t losing detail”.
“One benefit was that because these pieces were being transitioned from an existing museum space to this new space, we were able to go in and really understand the materiality. This was critical because if we don’t get the material right, we don’t get the luminance right, and we don’t get the hierarchy.”
The push for a hierarchy of light extended to the different light levels within the atrium during daytime and at night. This meant that while the atrium is flooded with natural light during the day, more light was put on the ceiling during the day than after dark. Alleman explained: “The reason for that rolls back to the hierarchy of luminance required in a daytime scenario, to make sure the brightness of the ceiling was aligning with and complementing the brightness of the exterior surround.
“So, whereas some would assume that during the day you would dim that space because there is abundant daylight, it was really important, at least for the ceiling element, that it becomes brighter during the day, and then it was able to dim somewhat at night too.”
Understanding the materiality was another key consideration for the lighting designers throughout the project, as SmithGroup worked to ensure there was a consistency of materiality in every location – tying in with the push for consistency in the overall project. “Every place you see a wood wall, it’s being treated in similar conditions, there’s a perimeter brightness at the top, so it feels as if it’s projecting through, and it has a wall wash layer to it,” Alleman explained. “So, every place that materiality shows up, there’s a consistency, which again helps to layer onto the overall project feel – everything feels tied together.”
The end result is a space in which the lighting is seamlessly integrated into the architecture, becoming one entity that celebrates biological sciences and the work of the university.
“From the larger architectural features highlighted by the dynamic lighting, to the details of the common display cases and flexible fixtures in the exhibit halls, the lighting design works in tandem with the architecture,” said Pelletier.
“It is important to us to make spaces that feel inspiring and that are uplifting places to work and visit. The design of this building was meant to inspire future generations to become scientists. It’s a very human-centred building, designed to support science on many levels. The distribution of daylight across the building makes such a difference in the quality of the experience for the occupants.”
Manriquez was equally pleased with the outcome. He concluded: “The concept guides the decisions that we make, but eventually the assessment is done by the user. Everybody is ecstatic about the opportunity to come together and collaborate under one roof.
“The concept is one thing, the actual perception of the space needs to be intuitive, and I think the project does that, and functionally it is doing what we set out to do. The user doesn’t really know or care who behind the scenes created their space, they just need it to be a comfortable and functional space. I think we provided that.
“It’s a great addition to the campus, and the feedback that we’ve had from the client is a wonderful testimony – it has been used by the university as a great recruiting tool, as an attraction for new talent and retention of faculty. It has become an institutional destination, which is fantastic.”
Charles Library, Temple University, USA
This time last year marked the opening of the new Charles Library at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, ready for the beginning of the Autumn semester. arc sat down with Suzan Tillotson, Founder of Tillotson Design Associates, to find out more about how she and the team became involved with creating the lighting scheme for the striking Snøhetta creation.
Located at the intersection of two major pedestrian pathways, one block away from the connecting artery of the city, and connected to Temple’s Main Campus, the Charles Library anchors a new social and academic nucleus for the university’s student population of more than 39,000.
First impressions of the building are dominated by a soaring high cedar wood archway that envelopes the entrance way, inviting visitors into the 40ft-high cedar wood ceiling lobby. The solid foundations are clad in vertical sections of split-faced granite as a nod to the materials of the surrounding campus context, with its unusual geometric expression providing the building with a distinct identity.
Snøhetta’s design, developed in collaboration with Stantec, is deemed a reinterpretation of the traditional typology of the research library, with a strong theme of integration and unity taking lead in the firm’s design. Incorporating a diversity of collaborative and social learning spaces along with an automated storage and retrieval system for the library’s collection, affectionately termed the BookBot, has allowed the original 1960s floor plan to more than double. The 220,000sqft library anticipates welcoming more than five million annual visitors to its larger space.
Moving inside the building, architectural elements are continued throughout, creating a seamless transition between spaces and a cohesive design aesthetic. The vast wooden arches continue internally, forming a dramatic three-storey domed atrium lobby where a central 24/7 working zone is located, which includes a computing work zone for residents of Philadelphia.
Offering views to every corner of the library, the atrium serves as a wayfinding anchor for users at the centre of the space. An oculus carved into the expansive cedar-clad dome lets daylight pour into the lobby from the floors above, creating a connecting void of light to each level.
Beginning its journey with Snøhetta, Tillotson explained that the team was contacted by the architectural firm in 2012 to join its team for a “Request for Qualifications”. “We went through an evaluation and negotiation process that lasted through April 2014 when our team was formally awarded the project,” she said.
“Their design emphasised transparency and openness as key themes and included the glass curtain wall wrapped around the upper floors, allowing light to fill the space. The undulating wood surfaces and indoor/outdoor connections were very important to them. The main lobby, with its curved 40ft-high cedar wood ceiling is the heart of the library with connections to all floors of the building vertically through the oculus.”
It was also vital that this wooden structure was to be kept clear of any fixtures causing blemishes on the natural finish, so Tillotson ensured the fixture placements were kept away: “One of our design goals was to keep the beautiful curving wood ceiling clear of fixtures, so systems were organised at the columns and track mounted LED downlights mounted to the top of the columns are used for general downlighting. Adjustable LED downlights were integrated into the top of the curtain wall to provide task lighting for the desks below. The three intersecting direct/indirect circular LED statement pendants draw students deeper into the building while also adding ambient lighting to the space and illuminating the wood ceiling.”
Working towards emphasising the colour of the cedar wood was also prevalent in the design approach for both Tillotson and Snøhetta. “The high CRI lighting system and warm 3000K LED lighting brought out the richness of the material,” commented Tillotson.
Further warmth was brought to the space via the clever use of outdoor, in-grade LED uplights with louvers and shields to reduce glare, to render the warmth of the cedar ceiling and create an “elevating yet intimate space in the evening”.
“An array of indirect/direct linear uplights at the fourth-floor wooden ceiling (which spans the length of the building) help to unify the library from the exterior,” she explained.
During the daytime, the library is typically flooded with natural light through the vertical void cutting through to the lobby. Tillotson explained how the architectural lighting was used to elevate the light levels in a cohesive manner with the daylight that would then transition into the evening hours: “During the day, study spaces are bright with vertical illumination to balance with daylight and attract students and staff to these pleasant areas to work in. But the library also needed to be available to students on a 24/7 basis, requiring a safe and inviting experience for studying late in the evening when the rest of the building was closed.
“Multiple open study spaces throughout offer varying levels of brightness to create intimate spaces, with 20fc to facilitate laptop use and brighter spaces at 30-50fc for reading and writing tasks,” she added.
“On the fourth-floor, visitors are invited to stroll through the serene sun-filled, glass enclosed collection stacks where we mounted linear lighting to the tops of the stacks to provide ample lighting for the collections, with supplemental pendants to uplight the wooden ceiling.”
She continued: “The architectural design intent was to promote interactivity and unification, so one of the key architectural lighting design considerations was to ensure that the lighting was consistent on all architectural elements, vertical surfaces and ceilings. In the study areas, we used linear T5 fluorescent fixtures with a custom reflector above a one-inch cell egg crate ceiling system to create a visually appealing pixel image effect. This concept repeats throughout the building to create a feeling of unity and consistency.”
In addition to being an architectural icon for the city of Philadelphia, the construction and design teams on the project were also mindful to make the library an environmentally conscious addition to the city. The fourth floor boasts glazed glass walls on all four sides, giving views out onto the lushly planted green roof. Covering more than 70% of the building’s roof surface, the 47,300sqft garden is one of the largest in Pennsylvania and also plays a key role in the site’s stormwater management system. The meadow-like landscape is filled with ornamental grasses and flowers, providing a rich habitat for pollinators and a calming visual to those both inside and outside the library.
In addition to the garden and water management system, the University also had a target for LEED Gold certification for the library, which required Tillotson’s lighting scheme to adhere to a Lighting Power Density level to be 40% under ASHRAE 90.1.2010.
Overall, Tillotson reflects on the project being “a rewarding and collaborative process. We presented our solutions to Snøhetta and they co-operated to help make their vision for the building’s image at night a reality”.
www.tillotsondesign.com
www.snohetta.com
Stapaskóli School, Iceland
The newly opened Stapaskóli School marks first phase of a wider project to create a new central “heart” for Iceland’s Reykjanesbær. Verkis created the lighting design, accentuating the architecture of the school.
The newly completed Stapaskóli School is latest part of a planning strategy to create a new central heart in the suburb of Innri Njarðvík, in Reykjanesbær, Iceland.
The project, designed by Arkis architects, is an active urban facility that will play a key role within the neighbourhood, providing an elementary school, kindergarten, music school, sports hall, library and swimming pool.
The school will house 500 students and 60 staff, with classrooms spaced out over two floors, with additional technical rooms below and above. The first phase of the project, which encompasses the elementary school, leisure centre and social centre, spans across 7,700sqm, on a plot of around 33,000sqm. Phase two will introduce the sports hall and swimming pool, while the final phase will see the addition of the kindergarten, which will cater for 120 children.
Speaking of the design concept behind the school, architects Rebekka Petursdottir and Lisa Kjartansdottir of Arkis said: “The baseline of the design language is to create a heart that connects everything. All of the molecules, the strings, the activities, everything is connected.”
On entering the school, the main entrance leads students straight into the heart of the site, consisting of centralised, multi-use spaces. Hallways intertwine in a way that they take on their own roles but can also open up to create larger spaces.
This concept was extended to all open spaces, which can morph and merge, allowing the flexibility to open up for larger school events, or create smaller, more intimate spaces for quiet study sessions.
The classrooms are formed in pairs – all are comparable in size, and again offer a high degree for flexibility depending on the teaching arrangements. The architects took great care to ensure ample daylight was provided; in the centre of each ‘pair’ of classrooms, there is an architecturally defined central sphere, with a light core that provides daylight to both levels. The teaching spaces all connect to the heart, creating a network that informs the school’s sense of community.
This creative use of daylight was complemented by lighting design from Icelandic consulting engineers Verkis. Involved from the tender process alongside Arkis, the bid included that Verkis did all the engineering design for the first stage of the school.
As such, Tinna Kristín Þórðardóttir, lighting designer at Verkis, worked closely with the architects on the lighting design concept. By working closely with the architects throughout, she was able to react to any changes to the design brief as and when they came in, however, she explained that the principles of the lighting concept were always maintained.
“We made minor adjustments during the design and construction processes, but we always referred to the lighting concept,” she said. “And the architects were always quick to inform us of any changes, so we could find solutions based on the concept.
“We had a very good working relationship with the interior architects, Lisa Kjartansdottir and Edda Bjorg Jonsdottir, during the design phase. I was given the freedom to do my work, but also got important input from the architects as well. I find that working closely with the architects is really important during the design phase, and it will show in the end product.”
As the school has been fully optimised to make the most of daylight, while it is available, it was important for Þórðardóttir and Verkis to design an artificial lighting scheme that complemented the abundant natural light. However, as Iceland experiences long stretches of darkness through winter, the artificial lighting elements had to effectively simulate daylight when it was not available. Þórðardóttir explained further: “The school is a very well-designed building, in my opinion, especially with regards to daylight. In Iceland, it gets really dark during the winter time, so we cherish every bit of daylight we can get. For example, there is a daylight element in every classroom. There are large ceiling windows that let daylight into the second floor, and “light tunnels” on the ground floor.
“We made a backlit ceiling on the ground floor to mimic daylight, as well as placing floodlights in the ceiling structure on the second floor, to mimic daylight while it is dark outside.”
This blending of artificial lighting with natural daylight was part of a wider move by the design team to ensure that conditions were comfortable enough for the students to effectively work under. A key facet of this, Þórðardóttir explained, was ensuring that the project was designed according to the latest standards and recommendations, both Icelandic and international. These included the Icelandic standard IST EN 12464-1: 2011, and the publication Licht.wissen 02 – Good Lighting for a better learning environment.
“The design was also based on a Danish study conducted by Henning Larsen Architects, DTU, Fagerhult, the City of Aarhus, the University of Aarhus and the Danish Centre for Educational Environment, which investigated whether focus lighting or task lighting would encourage students’ concentration, and thus also improve the acoustics of the building,” she continued.
Schools of this size are intended to become a community of their own within the wider community. This has been translated into the design, in the form of parallels found in each unit. Whether looking at the smaller or larger units, the design offers a transparency in all teaching spaces, with the possibility for multi-disciplinary approaches and the opportunity for understanding between disciplines to become more open.
Furthermore, the design of the school seeks to extend the facility into the environment from which it originates. As such, the design team sought to stimulate the connection between teaching and the external environment with an increased understanding of sustainability and a greater awareness of nature. This was achieved with the recurring use of birchwood, coupled with concrete, inside. Such materials are offset by pops of playful colour, which are intended to provide each teaching space with their own individual identity.
To complement the architectural design principles, there is also a consistency and cohesiveness in the school’s lighting design. Whether in the elementary school or the more social areas, Þórðardóttir believes that there is an overall “uniform, cohesive design”.
“The overall design is, in a way, ‘fluid’, in that we do not have a strict symmetrical design,” she continued. “All the luminaires are ‘randomly’ placed in the ceiling to give it a fun, lively look. This meant that it was easy to adjust the location of the luminaires if there were any collisions with other systems, for example sprinklers, ventilation nozzles and such.”
Verkis opted for a number of fixtures from Intra Lighting, iGuzzini, Fagerhult and Rovasi, alongside LED panels from Modus and Osram, which are complemented by Exenia’s colourful Willy pendants. Þórðardóttir explained further the selection policy for the project: “We looked for luminaires that we know we can count on, where the quality and the price is good for our client. I also find it important to calculate all rooms in a calculation software such as Dialux, and therefore I also look for products that I can easily use to calculate. Not all companies offer that option, but as a lighting designer, I find that very important.”
Þórðardóttir’s attention to detail in this regard, and the close communication across the entire design team throughout the construction process, has led to a school that proudly sits within its surroundings, becoming an integral part of the local community while honouring it’s environment. The lighting is a key facet of this, complementing Arkis’ architectural designs.
Þórðardóttir is equally pleased with the end result. “We are very happy with the final outcome,” she said. “During the construction phase, we visited the site many times to see how the project was coming along, consulting with contractors and solving issues along the way.
“Seeing the final product is such a good feeling, seeing everything coming together, and as our goal was to emphasise the architecture, it was really pleasing to see that we achieved this.”
Lightified
Rupert Tait, Founder of Smith Tait Lighting Consultants, tells us more about his newest creation: Lightified – an online tool aimed at streamlining the specification process
The lighting industry is highly competitive and demands that professionals work within tight deadlines and under immense pressure. As a means of easing some of that pressure, founder of Smith Tait Lighting Consultants, Rupert Tait, has created Lightified, a new online tool that aims to enable lighting professionals to fulfil their roles as efficiently as possible.
“Lightified was created to ease this pressure by digitising the current offline process,” Tait explained. “Outside of Lighting (and construction in general) we’ve seen digital revolutions in everything from F&B to Travel; with automation revolutionising processes and enabling companies to be far more efficient. The pressure lighting professionals experience is largely the result of an offline, highly analogue process – where being faster or more efficient is achieved by hiring more people, rather than optimising processes.”
Why was Lightified Created?
Tait is someone that has experienced this pressure first hand – as founder of Smith Tait Lighting Consultants, which over the last decade has grown into a multinational company with four global offices and a large market share across the MENA and SEA regions, and also in previous roles where he worked as a supplier in South Africa, where he explains the industry demands “were only magnified by the logistical nuances of the region”.
It is from these experiences that Tait envisioned Lightified. “The concept of Lightified in its most embryonic stage was designed as a tool to help my team leave the office on time,” he said. “It wasn’t long however, before it became clear that Lightified could be the saving grace of lighting professionals globally, and the tool developed into what clients see today.”
Since it started, Lightified has been chosen to participate in two start-up accelerator programmes; the first was the Dubai Smart City Accelerator by Startup Bootcamp, where Lightified was chosen out of 800 global companies and eventually achieved first place, securing funding from the Dubai government in the process. The most recent was the New York Abu Dhabi University Corporate Sprint Accelerator, which partnered with leading contractors in the Middle East. Lightified was awarded the innovation prize by ALEC Engineering & Contracting, winning the top prize of $10,000. ALEC is now partnering with Lightified to digitise its procurement process.
“That spirit of innovation is a common thread that runs throughout the team,” continued Tait. “Each bit of product development is done with one goal in mind – to digitise the industry and alleviate the pressure from lighting professionals.”
How Does It Work?
The core features of Lightified are concerned with searching for products and building specifications. The key time-saving opportunities lie in searching for products and comparing their technical information. In today’s world, that information is often found in fragmented offline places, making gathering it a time-consuming and often frustrating process.
“On Lightified, you will find all the product information in one place, with household brands (Flos, Linea Light, Sylvania, Kundalini, to name a few) quick to sign up to the platform to make it as easy as possible for designers to specify them. Product selection will now take minutes, rather than hours,” said Tait.
“It is not uncommon to see a lighting catalogue used as a mouse mat in our office. With the advent of new technology and the use of AI, we envisage that is all the catalogues will be good for in the future.”
Lightified, Tait explained, enables project information to be compiled and stored in one central, dynamic project page, which can be accessed and viewed by clients, contractors and suppliers. Once the products are selected, quotes can easily be requested with no need to upload product data and fill out Excel spreadsheets as the information is pre-loaded onto the system, and easily compiled into a quote.
“Where does Lightified go from here? For designers, the possibilities are endless,” Tait exclaimed. “It represents an area of focus where the technology can be pushed to the limit to deliver truly revolutionary services. At our most ambitious we will use the automated product selection to reduce the time it takes to build a specification.
“Utilising AI image recognition to identify products in project pictures, a designer will be able to select an inspirational project picture and gain instant insights into the products used to create the scene. The exciting part is this isn’t technology that will be available at some distant point in the future – it is on the roadmap for the next year.
“From a manufacturer point of view, we are producing industry-wide analytics. These will give insights into data that will help them to make decisions and form their corporate strategy. For example, which products are being specified in different regions around the world, which product ranges are the most/least competitive, and what areas of the market they’re not being specified in.
“We take inspiration from sites like Amadeus in the travel industry; building technology that brings all elements of the construction industry together. Long-term we will build out the verticals for all aspects of the construction industry, with Lightified the first (and most complicated) of that vision.”
How Can Designers & Manufacturers get involved?
Tait is inviting more designers and manufacturers to get in touch to help build Lightified further. “Lightified is built to help lighting professionals, so we encourage lighting designers and manufacturers to reach out and see the benefits for themselves. We cover all types of lighting, from decorative to commercial, floodlights to pendants.”
For more information, visit the Lightified website.
Hoare Lea: LightSIM
Dominic Meyrick, Partner at Hoare Lea, explains how the lighting design studio’s web-based controls app - LightSIM - helped to rejuvenate the lighting for LTS Architects’ new office space.
Back in August 2019, I gave a talk to LTS Architects at their rented offices in Bermondsey. During the conversation that followed, we discussed workplace lighting and
I mentioned that I thought their lighting was terrible... fortunately Greg Shannon, director and founder of LTS, took this in good grace, and we went on to examine the existing scheme, with its 600x600 ceiling downlights, together.
Recognising that the ‘LG3 throwback’ lighting was awful, Greg had hoped that the task lighting in which LTS had invested would enable everyone to turn off the inherited background fluorescents. However, when they tried this, staff complained that the space was too dark. My CPD seminar had mentioned that this approach doesn’t generally work, and because LTS were moving to a new office at 66 Wentworth Street in Spitalfields, London, I agreed that I would advise on the lighting scheme with a view to trying out new ideas about how an office could be lit to save energy, while creating a comfortable, attractive visual impression.
The new office comprises a ground floor containing the main workspaces and a small meeting room, while the basement level is designed around a long meeting table set beneath a timber slatted ceiling, lit by an internal skylight. I had the plans, knew the environment and the work that would be carried out, and so could tailor the lighting accordingly. Obviously, this is the luxury of a Cat B fit-out.
Ground Floor
Bang on trend, LTS were thinking of painting the ceiling and services black. Perhaps this aesthetic works in a hip coffee shop, but I didn’t think it would work for an office where visual comfort is paramount and factors, such as age, should be considered. The brain and visual system is designed for daylight. If the ceiling above our heads is dark, our visual system will take us to the time it is naturally dark overhead: nighttime. And so any space will appear dark. Clearly this would be a problem in a workspace. We therefore recommended keeping the galvanised silver elements on the ceiling and painting the concrete slab white. We could then uplight the ceiling and use the interreflection created to bring brightness into the space. Such an approach would mean that the mechanical kit would be lit and, well, why not! If it is there, why not flaunt it à la high-tech architecture.
The big idea on the ground floor was to have a continuous linear system, rather than pendants hanging over the desks. The main obstacle to this change was the aesthetic of exposed services, which were set.
We knew staff would be largely working in the middle of the floorplate, so the only space available for lighting was around the edge. Supplied by Optelma Lighting, the linear system runs around the space, uplighting the room and creating a background lighting level of 200lux +. The asymmetric system runs right across the windows. This is because at night, windows become ‘light suckers’; putting artificial light on the ceiling above the window opening reduces the impression of ‘black holes’. Therefore, with the exception of the entrance door, the eight areas of large glazing within the ground floor working area all have the system running across. However, the channel is so small (around 50x10mm) that it appears as a line, which does not upset the aesthetic.
We brought 13 Dyson Lightcycle task lights from LTS’s old office. These are the only ‘feature’ light fittings in the interior, and give the task lighting on each desk as required by BS EN 12464-1.
Having been a lighting designer for more than 30 years, I am happy to admit that while I love their light, I ‘hate’ light fittings as too often they distract from the architectural character of an interior. However, in this office, the Dyson task light is part of the ‘desk architecture’ and so is a visual enhancement rather than distraction.
Away from the main office space, the second big idea was to use concealed lighting. In the corridor between the office area and back meeting room, a floor-mounted, buried light fitting along one side uplights the wall. Opposite, in the alcove area where desks are located, concealed fittings ‘push’ downlighting onto the working area.
Finally, rather than trying to hide the ugly fan coil air-conditioning units, we decided to make them a feature, with colour-changing LED lighting putting colour into the space.
Basement
The basement comprises a meeting room, break-out space and desking. At present three of the desks are spares, which might in the future be rented out. As there is no task lighting in the basement, it was agreed that pendants would provide direct lighting over these. The main feature is the pin wall, which at 15m long, runs from one end of space to the other. Rather than putting downlighting on this thoroughfare, we specified asymmetric light fittings under the board. This system provides light that washes down onto the corridor that runs from the front to the back of the building.
The same asymmetric profile is used in the basement and the ground floor. Interestingly, we changed the lumen package for the LED strip: on the ground floor ceiling it is 3000lm per square metre, whereas under the pin wall in the basement it is 1000lm. Opportunities can be missed if care is not taken when working out the LED strip to be used within a profile. LED tape will only do the job if you consider the lumen package, placement and purpose.
LightSIM
Hoare Lea’s web-based LightSIM Controls App enabled LTS to explore lighting scenes, with photometrically accurate imagery on- screen, before they were uploaded to the real-world environment. Once a ‘scene’ is created in the app’s virtual environment, it is sent to a web-based lighting controls system and then imported directly into the enabled light fittings. We specified Mymesh from Chess; this enables each fitting to be ‘spoken to’ without hard wiring a control system.
LTS can easily reformat any of the lighting scenes. Whether in the building or working remotely, they can control the light, creating different scenes, while saving energy by making sure light is only on when needed.
Energy
The energy use across the lighting, if all on at 100% output, sails close to the maximum requirements of Part L (10.76W/m) for an office space. However, the LightSIM has allowed the ‘trimming’ downwards of the energy use to 6W/m, without losing that all important visual impression; and obviously the task lights are only on as and when required. The key is to remember that the eye, designed for the lit condition of daylight, will not ‘see’ the difference in visual impression of a lit scene when the lighting is at 100%, compared to 70% output. With further ‘tweaking’ the overall energy use was reduced without any detriment to users.
Commenting on the success of the solution, Shannon said: “It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Dominic and his team, and watch our humble home come to life. The results have transformed our thinking on lighting, energy use and what’s possible. We have saved significant sums on the build and on our running costs and have gained a beautiful scheme of which we are all very proud.”
David Morgan Review: Orluna Origin Natural
David Morgan inspects Orluna’s Fade Adjustable downlight fitted with the new Origin Natural light engine, following its debut at [d]arc room livestream.
A 50-year business trajectory has taken Orluna from its origins in the aeronautical industry into the architectural downlighting market.
Started in 1973 by a group of aeronautical engineers, the company was involved in early applications for LED light sources for use in civil and military projects where their efficiency, long life and mechanical resilience were ideally suited. This was long before LEDs were adopted for use in general lighting, so the company had a good headstart in their use.
In 2009, Andrew Kilborn took over the company after a career in private equity and venture capital. Under his management, Orluna has become one of the leading suppliers of downlights for high-end residential, hospitality and retail applications, working closely with lighting designers and specifiers around the world. His focus for Orluna is to grow the company organically with a long term investment horizon.
The company is truly international. It currently has more than 50 employees with overseas offices in Austria, Dubai and Singapore and works with a network of partners in 32 countries.
Orluna’s first big success in the architectural lighting market was the Quad 50 range of architectural downlights, which proved to be popular with the international lighting design community and helped to establish the brand.
All Orluna products are made in the UK with an above industry average content of UK-made mechanical components. Orluna plans to increase this proportion to even higher levels in the future. Sustainability is an important topic for the company and, by sourcing more mechanical components locally, it will help to reduce the carbon footprint caused by the shipping required to work with overseas supply chains. It will also allow easier re-use and re-assembly of products at the end of the life of the luminaire when light engines and drivers need to be replaced. By focusing on a limited number of related product types, Orluna is able to create a modular range where common components including heat sinks, light engines and bezels can be used on a variety of different product variants to achieve economies of scale.
The latest product introduction from Orluna is the Fade Adjustable downlight fitted with the new Origin Natural light engine.
Unusually Orluna luminaires incorporate custom COB light engines made to its own phosphor recipe. The previous generation of Orluna light engines, the Origin, features a CRI of 98 with a very high R9 value of 99. Under the TM30 system the Origin light engine has values of RF of 94 and RG of 101. However, the spectrum of the earlier Origin light engine was not fully continuous and had some dips in the violet and cyan areas.
The new Origin Natural light engine improves the RF value to 98 and the RG to 100 so getting even closer to the sunlight spectrum and achieving slightly higher values than a Soraa Vivid 3000k lamp. The spectrum of the new light engine is now noticeably more linear and continuous across all the colours. At the moment, only 2700k and 3000k colour temperatures are available as these are the most used for Orlua projects. A warm, dim light engine is available, which adjusts from 1800k to 3000k with a CRI of 98 and R9 of 98, but at the moment this is not included within the Origin Natural range.
The small improvements in the colour fidelity performance of the Origin Natural light engines should be useful to get the attention of the target market of lighting designers. The lit effect from the Fade adjustable downlight sample I tested was impressive with all colours well differentiated, attractive and with a clean, soft-edged beam with no imperfections.
I suspect that the wide range of distributions available may be of greater interest to designers, with up to 10 beam angles in most of the Orluna range. Ranging from a very narrow 8° spot up to a 55° wash in the symmetric distributions and with two different elliptical beam angles for asymmetric applications.
The Fade adjustable downlight is an 80mm diameter trimless, fully recessed luminaire with a 28° aiming angle. It incorporates both a cone and a baffle for good glare control and visual comfort. With 10 distributions and a wide variety of colour finishes there are many options to fit project requirements.
The development of the Origin Natural light engine and the Fade adjustable downlight were understood to have taken around 18 months. Design Director Graham Lunn and Daniel Mahdavi and Chief Technology officer were responsible for these projects.
The luminaire is constructed from a conventional combination of aluminium die castings, aluminium extrusions and machined components. The build quality and finish are good and the rotation in both axes is smooth with a positive horizontal rotational stop giving around 350° adjustment. The luminaire snaps positively into a moulded ceiling plate with ball catches that will allow further horizontal rotation if necessary. A somewhat flimsy moulded rubber gaiter fills in the variable gap created as the luminaire is angled back to prevent a direct view into the ceiling void which is a nice design feature. The bezel assembly is easily unscrewed to allow the reflector and diffusing window to be changed on site if necessary.
The heat sink on the sample I tested ran quite warm and I noticed that the direct air flow path through the heat sink was somewhat restricted, but I assume that the COB LED running temperature will be within operating limits when used in a ceiling void.
Orluna has achieved a very high level of performance with the new Origin Natural light engine, which should differentiate it to some extent from the many other downlight companies. The wide range of optics and variety of luminaire options, including the Fade adjustable that can use this new light engine will definitely give the company a strong story in this market.
Paula Rainha & Joana Mendo
After several years of collaboration, Paula Rainha and Joana Mendo have joined forces to form new lighting design studio, Filamento. arc speaks to the duo about their aspirations for the new studio.
How did you both get into lighting?
Paula Rainha (PR): I wanted to be a dancer at some point in my life, but I ended up training as an architect. When I finished my degree, I felt that dance was missing from my life, and I started my quest on how to combine dance and architecture as a career. I found stage lighting design as a way to define space in the dance world and I applied for a MSc in Lighting in London. Cutting the story short, I never did stage lighting design but I completely embraced the architectural lighting design profession.
Joana Mendo (JM): After working some years as architect, I realised that light had always been my favourite subject and the priority in all my conceptual approaches. At the time I wasn’t quite sure if I could make it my profession, but my interest was growing bigger and bigger. I think also due to the adaptation from sunny Lisbon, where I grew up, to a northern European city, where light and sun are treasured, as they only come in small doses in winter. This was in 2008, when I got accepted for an internship at Lichtvision in Berlin, where I learned a lot and started understanding what it is to design light. I never wanted to do anything else after that.
Can you describe your lighting career so far?
PR: I started my lighting career in London with Gary Campbell at Campbell Design in 2005. Then I moved to BDP Lighting where I stayed for another two years before moving back to Lisbon in 2009, where the profession was almost unknown. After a difficult start in Lisbon, during the credit crunch, in 2011 I had the chance of winning a competition that made me travel the world in search of lighting installations. This also gave me the opportunity of meeting architects and raise awareness within the local industry. 10 years later I’m proud to say that I’ve established my own company, Synapse, and I started working with some of the largest and most recognised architectural practices in Lisbon.
JM: I’ve worked for different companies in Berlin and London, which were extraordinary experiences, both professional and personal. In larger companies like Lichtvision and Arup I learned about the latitude of our profession, that you can do so many things within lighting and you can reach so many people with your work. While working with Marci Song at Seam Design and living in London, I was reassured of the importance of design and our contribution to people’s lives, when we create a certain environment or atmosphere with lighting. My career is an important part of life, moving around, experiencing, keeping my eyes open and trying to respond the best that I can to the opportunities that cross my path.
How did the two of you meet and begin working together?
PR: We met in London, in a “Configuring Light” workshop in 2014, after knowing of each other and exchanging some emails (there were not many Portuguese lighting designers back then). Through many great conversations and sharing of professional experiences, we understood that we agreed on lots of subjects and had very compatible design backgrounds. It was a connection that got stronger very naturally. In 2019, when Joana moved back to Portugal, Synapse had a lot of work going on, as the country was booming with tourism and new investments, and I asked Joana to jump in and help out.
When was the decision taken to officially merge Synapse into a new company?
JM: After working for nearly a year together in outstanding projects such as Convento do Beato and a number of high-end hotels, it made sense to officially join forces and we decided to merge our companies.
Why did you decide to create a brand new practice?
PR: When we merged our companies, the issue was raised on whether to keep the name Synapse or start a new brand. We thought it made sense to open a new chapter for both of us - Joana for leaving Germany and her sole trader company and me for starting a new venture, with a larger structure and a business partner.
What would you say is the design philosophy for Filamento?
JM: Filamento is an independent lighting design practice – in some countries this is still not very common, particularly in Portugal. In our projects we are interested in providing the best design, technical and sustainable solution to our client, and we believe the only way to achieve this is to stay independent and work closely with the design team. Due to our architectural background, we are mindful of how light can reveal and uphold the built environment, its conceptual form and support its function. We believe each project is unique and that lighting can have a great impact within architecture and the people that use these spaces.
Do you have a particular area of specialism?
PR: Actually no, even though, due to the current market, we have been working a lot in hospitality and corporate office projects. Due to our past experiences, we have a strong interest in cities, the public realm and exterior lighting projects as well.
What are your aspirations for Filamento? What do you hope to bring to the lighting world?
PR: We would like Filamento to be recognised by the quality of our designs and continue to be involved in landmark projects, with extraordinary design teams that keep challenging us to come up with innovative solutions. Our wish is that the practice provides opportunities for us and the team to learn and grow as designers, in the long term. We also hope to play a role in developing a lighting design culture in Portugal, by bringing our international experience here and raising awareness on the impact of light in the built environment.
What do you think the future holds for the lighting industry?
JM: The lighting design community has been showing an extraordinary capability to connect in the digital world. Especially during this pandemic, we all realised that remote work and interaction within our profession can be very successful. We see this as an opportunity for smaller practices to work internationally and for some smaller communities to open up to the global market. For quite a long time, lighting design in Europe was centred mostly in Germany and the UK - we believe this is starting to change, which can enrich the lighting industry long term.
Asst. Prof. Dr. Karolina Zielinska-Dabkowska
WiL Ambassador for Poland, Asst. Prof. Dr. Karolina Zielinska-Dabkowska IALD, IES, CIE, MSLL, RIBA, reflects on her lighting career, as a designer, researcher, educator and mentor.
Although Asst. Prof. Dr. Karolina Zielinska-Dabkowska is now recognised as one of the primary educators and trend setters in the lighting design world, her career in lighting design almost didn’t happen.
“I never planned a career in lighting design, it just evolved on its own,” she said. “I always wanted to be an architect, and graduated with two degrees in Architecture. Until 2000, I was unaware that lighting design existed as a profession.”
Zielinska-Dabkowska first ‘discovered’ lighting design while studying architecture in Germany, where she noticed that in Hildesheim, at the HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Art, you could study architectural lighting design – the first such lighting programme in Europe.
Although she has some memories of playing with candlelight as a little girl growing up in Poland, it wasn’t until 2002, while participating in a lighting design workshop in Alingsås, Sweden with Jonathan Speirs and Mark Major, that Zielinska-Dabkowska realised lighting design was the career she wanted to pursue. “I was immediately hooked, as I always felt my architectural design was incomplete, that something important was missing. That special something turned out to be light.”
Zielinska-Dabkowska followed this interest in light and began working for L-Plan Lighting in Berlin in 2002. It was here where she began to understand the true potential of lighting design. “While working in Berlin on the illumination of the new Munich airport terminal, I realised for the first time, as a building architect for many years, that I could only work on one large project at a time. Whereas, a lighting designer is fortunate enough to work on many projects concurrently because these projects are at different stages of development and sometimes they are located in different places around the world,” she said. “It could be an urban lighting masterplan, the illumination of an exterior façade, the interior of the building, or elements of landscape architecture, there are many possibilities.”
Upon graduating in Architectural Engineering at HAWK in Hildesheim in 2004, she left for New York City to work for Fisher Marantz Stone.
“My departure to New York to gain experience in one of the oldest lighting design practices in the world, and to work with a great international team on many world-famous projects, convinced me that this was the professional path to follow,” she explained. “Light gives the opportunity to change architecture, to visually modify its form, material, etc.”
She relocated again in 2005, moving back to Europe to start a new role as Senior Lighting Designer at Speirs + Major’s London office, where she worked on numerous projects centred around external illumination. “This is also where my knowledge about urban lighting masterplans (ULM) developed, and thanks to this valuable experience, enabled me to contribute a chapter titled “Urban Lighting Masterplan – origins, definitions, methodologies and collaborations”, for a RIBA book called Urban Lighting for People: Evidence-Based Lighting Design for the Built Environment,” she explained.
Then, after a chance encounter during a flight in 2007, Zielinska-Dabkowska was offered an interesting job opportunity at Light Bureau by its founder, Paul Traynor. “The company was redesigning the previous lighting proposal for the new Main NATO HQ in Brussels, and I was going to be fully responsible for this, and other exciting projects.”
Six years later, due to family reasons, she relocated to Switzerland in 2013, where she started working for Reflexion, and after obtaining her PhD degree in Technical Sciences with honours from the Faculty of Architecture at Gdansk University of Technology (GUT), Poland, she founded designs4people [d4p].
With a CV that has seen her work for three of the largest, most well-known lighting design practices in the world, Zielinska-Dabkowska believes she learned a great deal before setting up her own studio. “I decided to join these companies to know what makes them stand out and discover why they’re so unique and different,” she said. “I soon realised that the creative designers of these companies work under visionary individuals. Also, each company has a specific design approach and process in place, so combining these experiences was highly useful.”
Zielinska-Dabkowska elaborated on how these experiences led to a shift of ambition in her lighting design career: “At first, I was only interested in creating beautiful spaces with the help of lighting and the expression of my creativity, but it didn’t take long before I understood there was much more to realise,” she said.
“My vision for the future soon became focused on redefining what it meant to design healthy lighting for humans and built environments, via education, research and policy making. I believe we are just at the beginning of a long and winding road. In today’s world, I think individuality equates to a designer’s ego, which is not my aim, rather, as things become more complex in terms of knowledge inputs, the solution involves the creation of intradisciplinary teams and teamwork.”
With this in mind, Zielinska-Dabkowska explained in more detail the design philosophy for her consultancy, designs4people: “We no longer solely design illumination just to create memorable, highly aesthetic spaces during the night. Our approach is unique and it’s centred on the user and his/her habitable environment.
“This involves basing our designs on the newest research knowledge in the fields of astronomy, biology, medicine, ecology, etc, whilst also applying practical experience. “Essentially, I am a problem solver. My love for integrated lighting design involves a hands-on process, lighting mock-ups and tests onsite in order to find the best possible lighting answers. A professional lighting designer with my perspective and background, has a responsibility and moral obligation to use lighting with far more care, caution and restraint. More recently, there’s been an increasing number of municipalities seeking my advice on how to create healthy, environmentally conscious nighttime built environments that exist in harmony with architecture, urban planning and the natural landscape. There’s growing awareness now, of the value and importance of providing a safer environment for humans, flora and fauna by significantly improving the way artificial lighting is applied both in urban and rural areas, and particularly, in places recognised as ecologically significant, or where there are vulnerable species.”
Alongside the aforementioned NATO HQ in Brussels, Zielinska-Dabkowska believes she has been privileged to work on a number of high-profile, well known projects. Some examples cited by Zielinska-Dabkowska include the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the Tribute in Light Memorial art installation in New York while at Fisher Marantz Stone, the lighting vision for King’s Cross Lighting masterplan, the external illumination of the Granary Building and Granary Square in London and the external lighting for the new astronomical observatory cone at the Royal Observatory Greenwich while at Speirs & Major, and the urban lighting masterplan for Porto Montenegro, which includes the illumination of an historic crane, for Light Bureau. “One thing worth mentioning, is that these projects always involved teamwork,” she added.
While she has worked for some of the major lighting design studios across her career, Zielinska-Dabkowska cited Lesley Wheel as her lighting hero, one of the founders, and the only female founder of the IALD. She also has a strong admiration for her friend Anne Bureau. “Anne has not only established herself as a female lighting designer over the last 25 years, but she’s also capable of handling large scale projects almost on her own, and on top of that, she has a family with two children, enjoys what she does and is an authentic person. I do not know how she does it all!”
Throughout her lighting design career, education has also played a key role for Zielinska-Dabkowska, both in her own studies, but also through her work as a mentor and teacher. This is something she feels came naturally to her when she was young. “I seem to have teaching in my blood,” she said. “Very early on, I mentored people in the lighting design offices I worked for. Often, we had students who would intern with the company and would stay during their Master’s thesis semester, and I would mentor and supervise their Master’s thesis.
“This developed gradually over the years while I was a guest lecturer for the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona, and also during my time as a senior lecturer at Hochschule Wismar University of Applied Sciences: Technology, Business and Design in Germany for three years, I oversaw Master’s and PhD students.”
More recently, in 2018, Zielinska-Dabkowska was offered a part-time Assistant Professor position at GUT, where she founded the research lighting laboratory, GUT LightLab, which conducts research on various aspects of light and lighting in the built environment.
Now, she is currently involved in the new Erasmus+Strategic Partnership project called Light4Health – Health Research-Based Innovative Open Educational Resources and Tools for Lighting Design Students and Professionals. “The team is developing a novel educational course to teach health research methods and findings to lighting designers at the graduate level,” she explained. “I am especially excited as Prof. Dr. George Brainard and his lab are involved in this work.”
Over the last 15 years, since her early days in the profession, Zielinska-Dabkowska has noticed a marked improvement in the level of education on offer for prospective lighting designers.
“Today, it’s much easier to deepen your knowledge about lighting design than when I began,” she said. “Quality education is now offered in countries such as the UK, US, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Spain. Interestingly, each of the programmes have a slightly different focus point, which I think is necessary. I love the variety.”
“While I was working for Hochschule Wismar as a senior lecturer, I often had requests from my colleagues, who were principals of top international lighting design consultancies, wanting recommended students for internships. After finishing their obligatory internship, many of my students were given a great job position before they even graduated.”
She continued that this increased level of educational opportunity only helps to boost the profile of lighting design as a profession – something she feels could still be enhanced. “Good quality education is one of the important pillars of professional recognition. For example, architects and civil engineers are subject to legal restrictions and requirements. As such, they can only be carried out by holders of specific qualifications. Yet, with lighting design, such credentials remain unrecognised worldwide. I hope one day soon this will change for the better.”
However, while Zielinska-Dabkowska does believe there is more recognition of lighting design, thanks to the greater availability of higher education on the subject, she feels there is still some way to go for it to be considered an essential service. She explained: “When there is an economic crisis, the first professionals who are mistakenly, often seen as just ‘nice to have’ and ‘unnecessary’ on a project, and therefore, easy to get rid of, are lighting designers and landscape architects.
“Today, I do see a trend of some of the large engineering companies such as Arup, WSP, AFRY and Buro Happold, offering lighting design in their services. With the rise in complexity, budgets, and also the scale of the latest architectural projects, clients increasingly prefer to deal with one company, i.e. a multidisciplinary consultancy that can provide all the required services under one roof. This way of appointing the design team is perceived as creating a better flow of communication between the different disciplines, which can facilitate faster solutions to problems. Moreover, responsibility is focused on one entity. The disadvantage with this approach, is that it can at times, prevent the introduction of innovative solutions to the project in order to avert risk, so there may be a tendency to avoid employing smaller or less known new outlets.”
Although she has achieved a great deal throughout her lighting design career, Zielinska-Dabkowska revealed it was a struggle for her to be to where she is in now. In her early days as a young woman she “had to fight to get to my current position. I wish I had a mentor back then but I did not,” she said.
“Most often, I was the only female and the youngest person on the project team. Many times, I also had the impression I was denied the same entry level on a project as my colleagues simply because I was a woman, and that I had to first prove my skills and competence. This has changed now as I have more grey hair [she laughs], or perhaps there has been a slow shift in attitudes of investors or architects?!”
While the situation is improving for her personally, Zielinska-Dabkowska still has some frank concerns regarding inequality within the lighting design field, both in terms of pay, and opportunities for career progression. “I remember once in the past, discovering my work colleague was earning 10% more than I was, even though we shared the same position and I was dealing with international projects, which involved a lot of travel,” she said. “When I questioned my boss about this discrepancy the answer was “you don’t have kids.” That seemed grossly unfair.
“From discussions with many of my colleagues, who are male owners of lighting practices, there appears to be some hesitation in hiring a woman of reproductive age. What’s preferred, are graduates who still want to have a career, who can work hard and believe it’s too early to settle down and have a family. Sadly, for those who do decide to have children, after maternity leave, often their contracts are terminated. This is unjust in our society and should change in our field as well. A real-life example, is of a good friend who was senior lighting designer in a large company. When her maternity leave ended, she was asked to depart after ten years of employment with that business.”
“This situation has impacted me personally as well. Throughout my career, due to the demands of my profession and the many ever-present expectations, the timing was never right to settle down and have a family of my own. If you were to ask me if I regret anything about my career, my answer is a resounding yes. I would have loved to have had children, but it’s impossible to turn back the clock.”
While her story is heartbreaking, it’s both striking and refreshing to see Zielinska-Dabkowska talk so candidly about what can be an uncomfortable topic, but such inequality is one of the core reasons that Women in Lighting (WiL) was established. Zielinska-Dabkowska has been involved with the initiative, acting as the Women in Lighting Ambassador for Poland, both to raise the profile for women in lighting design, and also to establish the lighting design profession in Poland.
“It is very hard to work here – I am the only IALD professional member in the country so far. It’s also challenging being a woman lighting designer. Most of my competitors here provide lighting design services for free by selling lighting equipment to cover their costs,” she explained.
“We will be unable to establish an independent lighting design profession in Poland if such procedures remain in place. Often, projects are lost as my fee proposal is considered too expensive. The general attitude of architects also needs to change. They expect between 10-25% of the lighting equipment budget price to be paid to them by lighting suppliers who also provide so-called “lighting design”. It’s unfeasible to compete with this.”
Looking forward, Zielinska-Dabkowska would like to see an increased impetus on the importance of cross-disciplinary research – something she feels would both improve the stature and recognition of lighting design as a profession, while also leading to an improvement in the health and wellbeing of both humans and wildlife. “The only way to establish lighting design as a recognised profession is to ensure a transdisciplinary, design-led research approach is established, in order to generate strategies that support both the health and life quality of humans and wildlife,” she asserted.
“We need to become experts in our own right and be paid for this complex knowledge as well as the proper methods to apply it. For us as practitioners, it’s crucial to gain new knowledge and an appropriate integration of skills, methods, data, and perspectives from different scientific fields connected to health, wellbeing and biology.”
Since 2014, Zielinska-Dabkowska’s has been active on the Scientific and Organising Committees of the Light Symposium Wismar, Germany, which is a platform to connect research and practice. She’s also been involved in public policy making connected to lighting and light pollution and is on the Technical Committees of the CIE, IES and IDA, which all work on the development and establishment of lighting standards and/or guidelines.
This means that Zielinska-Dabkowska’s role as an educator within the lighting profession shows no sign of slowing down, and she concluded that her role as a mentor and teacher is one of her main sources of inspiration. “I love to mentor my Master’s and PhD students on light and lighting,” she said. “My students and colleagues who have developed their skills under my tutorage and are recognised in the lighting design field, provide endless inspiration and are my ultimate lighting design qualifications.”
www.designs4people.com
www.researchgate.net/profile/Karolina_Zielinska-Dabkowska
New dates announced for Light Middle East 2021
(UAE) – Show rescheduled from January to late September.
Light Middle East has been rescheduled from January to September 2021, organiser Messe Frankfurt Middle East (MFME) has announced.
The three-day event was initially set to run in January 2021, but will now take place from 28-30 September at the Dubai World Trade Centre, where it will co-locate with two other MFME-organised shows: SPS Automation Middle East, a platform for industrial automation solutions; and Middle East Cleaning Technology Week.
Dishan Isaac, Senior Show Manager for Light Middle East, said the move is widely supported after careful consideration and consultation with industry stakeholders, including exhibitors, trade professionals and supporting associations.
“Moving Light Middle East to September 2021 is in the best interest of our valued customers, and the co-location with SPS Automation Middle East and Middle East Cleaning Technology Week offers a level of synergy around the built environment,” said Isaac.
“In its 15th edition, Light Middle East 2021 will solidify its position as the region’s number one networking and sourcing platform for the entire scope of architectural, decorative, technical, industrial, indoor and outdoor lighting solutions.
“The platform will be packaged with the return of the THINKLIGHT Forum, offering insights and reflection on the evolution of our industry, particularly in light of the pandemic we’re now navigating.”
The newly rescheduled event, which is expected to welcome more than 300 exhibitors and 6,000 visitors, will open just a few days ahead of Expo 2020 Dubai, which takes place from 1 October 2021, through to 31 March 2022.
“Held under the theme Connecting Minds, Creating the Future, Expo 2020 Dubai is expected to attract more than 25 million visitors, with 70% coming from outside the UAE,” added Isaac.
“Once Light Middle East concludes, international exhibitors and visitors can take advantage of their time in Dubai and explore the myriad country pavilions and unique features of this six-month long mega event.”
