A new lighting system bathes the Collegiate Church of Vreden and its crypt in modern light and provides not only basic illumination but also effect lighting that can be individually adapted to liturgy. The project manager at LIEBA Lichtarchitektur opted for LED modules and strips in RGB and warm white in combination with OSRAM OTi DALI drivers and Loxone mini-servers. The new system can be easily controlled by app using mobile devices – directly on site or via the internet.
To equip the Collegiate Church of Vreden with a new lighting system, lighting architect Lothar Göring at LIEBA had to meet two requirements: on the one hand to provide high-quality white light for comfortable reading of the Bible and hymn sheets, and on the other hand to bring out the plain walls and domes of the church in coloured light.
For basic downward illumination, Göring used high-quality LED modules featuring warm white (2,700 K) LED clusters with a maximum of 50 watts. To ensure a high level of visual and reading comfort, he chose the highly efficient OSRAM Golden DRAGON LED chips with excellent colour rendering of CRI 90 and minimal colour deviation. The lighting expert also flooded the walls and domes of the place of worship with RGB light to create impressive effects. To do this, he used LED modules as uplighters and flexible, easy-to-install LED strips as side lights – each with an output of 12.5 watts.
“The extraordinary thing about this project,” says Göring, “is that in one luminaire nine channels can be automatically controlled via a Loxone mini-server and OTi DALI driver using an app.” In the collegiate church, as many as 30 luminaires were installed. To control the 270 channels, three Loxone DALI modules serving a total of 90 OSRAM OTi DALI drivers were sufficient – with extremely compact OSRAM OTi DALI 50 regulating the luminaires of the warm white basic lighting, and OSRAM OTi DALI 75 the RGB effect lighting. Another special feature is the illumination of the crypt below the high choir. To draw attention to this area of the church and increase visitor frequency, motion detectors control the lighting scenes
Despite all the technical refinements, operating the new lighting system is very straightforward. Using a tablet or smartphone, the lighting in the collegiate church can be adapted to the liturgical colours either individually or by selecting predefined scenes. This allows for the church to appear in a solemn light time and time again and matched to a specific occasion.