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. 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. Viewed from a technical perspective, in present-day systems the way that light is directed has a crucial impact on the ecological performance of façade lighting. Light is often directed imprecisely and the use of light causes light pollution. There is, however, a better alternative than simply shining light on buildings.
Façade-integrated systems are photometrically optimised using lens technologies and covers, and 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.
Façade lighting as a marketing factor
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: they seek out entertainment and information and 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.
Apart from the street lighting which is needed to make traffic routes safe in towns and cities, it is a lighting concept’s job to lend character to urban areas and districts when it is dark and artificial lighting is in use. Regardless of a location’s size, professional lighting architecture makes the most of every district and every town.
Designers and investors recognised the huge potential of designer light long ago and use it as a tool for improving the quality of life and the image of a town. Light sets houses and façades centre stage, shows off historical buildings and modern architecture to full effect, emphasises natural spatial structures and brings squares, parks and green open spaces to life.
A master plan provides the starting point for any planning activity. It acts as a guideline for lighting designers, architects, urban planners, investors, city marketing and retailers. It considers all stakeholders and the available financing and starts with a precise analysis of the character of a town or city. The aim is to consider important urban features, distinctive features of buildings, historically important areas as well as environmental conditions and future development plans.
Improving economic efficiency
Professional façade lighting can potentially become a landmark and a point of interest for reporters and photographers. This encourages tourism – and brings benefits to the economy and communities. More efficient utilisation of amenities and a growing stream of visitors transform the peripheral areas of a town into an attractive business location. Newly arrived firms upgrade buildings and attract employees.
Lighting master plans lay the foundation for a harmonious townscape. Pleasant lighting promotes a sense of identity, puts people at ease and encourages them to stay for a while. Incomers soon feel at home and quickly build a relationship with their new environment. A place soon becomes an attractive place to live, an attractive holiday destination and an attractive business location.
Responsibility for nature, resources and the environment
Added cultural value must be weighed against the responsibility we bear in our day-to-day dealings with nature, resources and the environment. Improperly used night-time lighting can have a negative impact on the environment. Such lighting disrupts the biological processes of creatures that are sensitive to light. Stray light that shines into the sky consumes unnecessary energy and adds to light pollution.
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. More and more people are spending their evening hours in towns and squares. They are looking for excitement, and communication plays a pivotal role.
Illuminated architecture shapes a townscape and gives it personality. A pretty scene is not only a popular choice for postcards, it also has concrete, positive effects on the travel behaviour of tourists and influences commercial enterprises’ relocation decisions: an integral approach to using lighting technology for centre-stage settings and accent lighting and a concept which, besides historic buildings, also includes shopping centres, firms and public areas produces a harmonious townscape.
Sustainable lighting
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 townscape or company building more appealing. This has to be balanced against the ambitious energy saving targets adopted by municipalities and companies. 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. Each light source is dimmable and controllable. This makes it possible to set individual switch-on times and intensities.
Offering safety
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. This also mitigates against vandalism.
Unlit parking spaces and company premises are uninviting. Vertically illuminated surfaces are, assuming identical luminance, perceived as brighter than horizontal illumination. Thanks to precisely adapted light intensity, the building blends seamlessly into its setting. Passers-by feel more secure.
Architectural light
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.
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. The architecture speaks for itself. Using white light to pick out individual columns, ornaments or projections in the darkness is another very popular option.
Emphasising architecture
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 versus night comparison or in comparison with the building’s urban setting.
Structuring architecture
Daylight, with its light and shade, provides a three-dimensional view of every building and makes structures visible. Different floors, functions, entrances and pathways are identifiable. Materials and colours are perceived naturally and true to life.
Different rules apply at night. If characteristics, contours or structures can be identified, this creates 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. Taking the environment of a building into account as a design element results in a high degree of naturalness.
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.
Attracting attention
There is a close mutual interrelationship between colour and light and materials which can fulfil various tasks: it can simply follow functional dictates but can also convey emotionality and aesthetic appeal. 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.
The idea of using cold colours to illuminate buildings on industrial and engineering sites is a tried-and-tested option, for instance. 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. Colour set-ups that are familiar to us from nature are a perfect model to follow. In addition, coloured light can 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.
Transforming architecture
Architecture that appears neutral during the day and blends unobtrusively 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.
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 lighting
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. 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.
Providing information
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 like this are used as ambassadors, many of them even support interaction. An interactive lighting solution actively engages with onlookers and its extended setting.
Electronic interfaces such as SMS messages, Internet-based drawing programs and presence detectors make this possible. 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.
