Architecture that appears neutral during the day and blends unassumingly into its setting can turn out to be a work of art at night. Light can envelop a structure like a second skin. If lighting units are integrated in a façade so that they are concealed or are mounted inconspicuously away from a façade, this produces a particularly striking surprise effect. Selectively configured light structures result in fascinating patterns of light that can redefine a building. But all this to become practically operational needs extra attention so as to address the associated concerns of environment and efficiency, yet depict minute architectural details, suggests the lighting giant, Zumtobel.
Facades Nowadays
The form of facades is determined not only by their material and shape but also by the light and its direction and colour. The appearance of a facade alters during the course of the day due to the changing direction of light and the varying components of diffuse and direct light.
Different light distributions and the use of lighting control systems give facades an appearance of their own at night. Varying illuminances differentiate components or areas of a facade. Grazing light emphasises facade details while wash lighting facades allow them to appear in their entirety. Shining any light beyond the facade surfaces, either to the sides or over the top, should be avoided.
The nightscapes today are created by illuminated building façades facilitating orientation, convey messages, communicate emotions and create attention. Keeping all this in mind, contemporary lighting solutions for building façades need to create added value for local authorities or have architectural or economic merit by making a location more beautiful and safer, showing a building off in the right light or getting a positive corporate image across. Achieving this demands great aesthetic design sensibility. Nowadays, however, lighting solutions also need to be sustainable, save resources and prevent unnecessary light pollution.
Enhanced emphasis on Façade lighting
The number of buildings that have illuminated façades is increasing sharply. Because of architectural, societal and technological changes, lighting design faces new challenges. Saving energy is an omnipresent challenge, façade lighting must, therefore, get to grips with ecological compatibility issues. All lighting entails increased expenditure on energy. Light that is not properly directed onto a façade is perceived as distracting and an unnecessary waste of light. The ultimate goal is obtaining the best possible efficiency from lighting.
Façade-integrated systems are photometrically optimised using lens technologies and covers and actually direct light onto the surface that is to be illuminated in a targeted manner. This makes it possible to overcome the drawbacks of direct illumination, i.e. distracting glare in indoor spaces and wasted scattered light. This makes it possible, despite façade lighting’s highly creative aspirations, to reconcile façade lighting with ecological requirements.
Façade lighting – A Marketing Gimmick
Society is in a state of change and many people are turning night into day. They want to carry on having fun late into the evening, seek entertainment and information, and in most of the instances, welcome surprises. Even so, safety and orientation must be ensured despite the darkness. Façade lighting shapes the image of a townscape, attracts attention and lures in large numbers of tourists. This boosts revenues and enhances prestige. It also gives investors an economic incentive to gentrify real estate and upgrade property usage, thus making it economically more attractive. Façade lighting creates added cultural value.
Environment & Façade Lighting
Added cultural value must be weighed against the responsibility while dealing with the surroundings and the environment. Improper use of night-time lighting can have a negative impact on the environment. Such lighting disrupts the biological processes of creatures that are sensitive to light. Therefore, lighting designers and architects should aim to find a balance between using light in a way that saves resources and creating added cultural value.
Towns and municipalities use many activities to promote tourism, make a business location attractive or establish a residential district. Illuminating façades at night is a good way of improving the attractiveness of a public space. People love to spend their evening hours in towns and squares. They look for excitement, and interactive communications of this level plays a pivotal role. Illuminated architecture shapes a townscape and gives it a personality.
Improving Energy Efficiency
Energy-efficiency is another distinctive characteristic of professional lighting concepts. Vertical façade lighting gets noticed from a far, making it easier for passers-by to get their bearings and making them feel more secure. Façade lighting can be used in a variety of ways. Among other things, it is a modern tool that can be used to make a landmark structure more appealing. This has to be balanced against the ambitious energy saving targets adopted by municipalities and companies. And today’s intelligent lighting solutions provide a way out of this dichotomy.
LED lighting built into a façade or mounted close to it needs relatively little energy to generate the required luminance levels. LED lighting is unobtrusive and energy-efficient. LED luminaires fitted in window reveals consume less energy at night than a small domestic appliance. Light is directed onto the surfaces that are to be illuminated in a targeted manner by optics and shutters. This prevents stray light and the associated light pollution. Adding to it is that each light source is dimmable and controllable, making it possible to set individual switch-on times and intensities.
Enhancing Safety & Security
Illuminated façades help make visitors and passers-by feel more secure. They are therefore an important aspect of integral lighting design. Dark areas where people could hide are lit thus mitigating against vandalism. The extent to which an illuminated façade can improve security and enhance a location’s image is a matter of façade design keeping in view the fact that vertically illuminated surfaces, assuming identical luminance, are perceived as brighter than horizontal illumination letting the passers-by feel more secure.
Solutions for Façade Lighting
- Architectural
Architectural lighting solutions place emphasis on the architecture, materials and the lighting effect sought after by the architect and building owner. Architecture is illuminated without altering the character of a building. Individual façade elements are accentuated and the natural structures of the façade are emphasised. Bright, vertical surfaces produce a greater sense of security and assist orientation. An appealing townscape attracts tourists and investors like a magnet.
Designers feel that the revolutionary development of LEDs has opened up fresh design approaches for façade lighting. The controllability of the brightness and light colour of LED light sources, together with their diverse optical characteristics, are making innovative technical lighting solutions possible. For example, façade lighting can be realised from inside a building thanks to the compact dimensions of LEDs. Rather than flooding façades with light, it is now possible to integrate light sources into the architecture.
The construction style and materials of a building are the crucial design elements, regardless whether it is a historical or modern building. If lighting deals sensitively with architecture, the character of a façade remains the same, day or night. Since, architectural lighting employs a wide variety of methods. Uniform, wide-area illumination of a façade reveals its natural shapes and surface structures, for instance, while the building’s appearance is preserved. Using white light to pick out individual columns or projections in the darkness can be an option to let the architecture speaks for itself.
Our environment is shaped by buildings. It is shaped by sweeping, monotonous façades just as much as by architecturally inspiring and historically important façades. Architecture is set centre-stage by selectively illuminating individual details, shapes and structures or by harnessing uniform, wide-area lighting. Special attention is paid to entrances, columns or individual parts of a building. Proper lighting adds symbolic value to ornaments and historic buildings and reveals their uniqueness.
With architectural centre-stage settings, the construction style and the lighting form a single coherent entity. The materials and colours of a façade are, therefore, the decisive criteria when it comes to choosing a light source and, especially, a light colour. If there is any hint of architectural integrity being adulterated, the appearance of a building will be perceived as discordant in a day vs night comparison.
Unlike daylight, which with its light and shade, provides a three-dimensional view of every building and makes structures visible; different rules apply at night to see if characteristics, contours or structures can be identified to create an impression of three-dimensionality. Artificial lighting cannot replace daylight but it does offer customisable design possibilities. A professional lighting concept lends a building special flair.
The challenge is to use various luminaires, directions of light and light colours to structure a building or a street and make functional relationships apparent. Buildings that have special functions such as restaurants or meeting points call for a special lighting solution. An integral lighting concept also includes façades that have their own lighting design. The purpose of lighting scenarios is not always to emphasise or embellish architecture as many architects want to deliberately give their structures a completely fresh night-time look.
- Emotional
Emotional lighting involves transforming architecture or using light to shape it rather than simply embellishing it. Light patterns, structures and colours inject fresh character into plain, unpretentious architecture at night. Neutral objectivity is replaced by an emotionally perceived experience. Creative lighting elements invite the onlookers to contemplate and linger and provide an interestingly varied atmosphere.
Lighting solutions also have the potential ability to forge an emotional link between architecture and onlooker. Emotional lighting replaces classic accenting and plays with bold colours. Creative light patterns and structures breathe new personality into neutral buildings. They arouse attention and shape a townscape as there is a close mutual interrelationship between colour and light and materials.
Psychologists associate specific values with some colours and colour combinations. Colour can be used as a symbol, for instance, to make the purpose of a building apparent even from a distance. Coloured light is invigorating and creates an atmosphere that is especially effective in emotional terms. Illuminated buildings achieve particularly high levels of public acceptance if lighting compositions do not conflict with those that people are used to seeing.
In addition, coloured light has the ability to steer our gaze, and hence our perception, towards an object in a targeted manner. Matching and contrasting colours grab attention. Dynamic changes in lighting attract particularly large numbers of people. Even a restrained colour change has a major impact, even if it is only recognisable in our peripheral field of vision.
A wide raft of design tools is available in order to implement creative design ideas: buildings cast shadows on walls; reflective surfaces can be used as projectors to throw light patterns. In case of negative contrasts, buildings that are set against a bright surface are defined by their silhouette alone, and their black outlines are artistically incorporated into their look.
- Communicative
Communicative lighting solutions convey information that goes beyond the mere appearance of a façade. They provide boundless scope for presenting brands, values and messages: media content such as text, images and animations can be projected onto the controllable LED pixels on the façade. Stage settings that use corporate colours create a unique brand identity. Lighting concepts like this exploit the full potential of a society that lives at an increasingly fast pace. They enable companies, brands and towns to communicate with their environment even at night.
Media façades provide an opportunity to underscore the existing identity of a town and its unique appearance as well as to project it effectively and consistently. Innovative media façades, used as an element that reflects identity, reference a place and the people who live there – thereby making it stand out from the crowd. The lighting designer’s task is to critically integrate this sensitive interrelationship into a lighting concept. Operators, inhabitants and the town itself will reap equal benefit from this in the long term.
LED technologies and lighting control systems are making lighting ever more versatile. Media content can be played back onto light fields. This imparts information to the onlooker that goes beyond the appearance of the architecture. Communicative lighting concepts like this are deployed primarily in outdoor areas and are used as prestige projects for towns, brands and investors.
LED pixels arranged in a grid are often invisible during the day. Only at night do they reveal their full capabilities: the small points of light are individually controlled, like the pixels in a TV image. This creates images, videos, animations or extravagant colour patterns. Dramas of light staged in corporate colours create a highly memorable brand identity that is recognisable even from afar.
For a long time now, façade lighting has been about much more than simply staging a building. Façade lighting arouses emotions, grabs attention and conveys information of all kinds into the bargain. Unique content, such as images or text, are specific ways of imparting information. Using a specific colour that matches a company’s corporate design is one subtle form of communication. Illuminating a building that is used for commercial purposes in an appropriate corporate colour makes it possible to draw conclusions regarding who the building belongs to.
Communicative façade lighting gets noticed and draws attention to itself. Besides companies, local authorities have also discovered the advantages of communicative lighting for marketing purposes and are using media façades as modern landmarks. A media façade uses light to convey specific information. Façade lighting consists of a large number of small lighting points or luminous fields. When these are individually controlled, images, films and text can be played back on a usually grid-shaped matrix.
Animated façades of today are used as ambassadors. Many of them even support interaction. An interactive lighting solution actively engages with onlookers and its extended setting. A media façade is in harmony with its setting if it embraces both the architecture and people who live in its immediately adjacent space. Public acceptance is greater if a media façade is not perceived as out of place.
