LIGHTING SPECIAL SLL CODE
Above: Atrium, City of Westminster Academy (lighting by Happold Lighting): according to Raynham learning environments, where good communications between teachers and puplis are essential, are where the new Code will have most impact.
Right: Grimshaw’s The St Botolph Building (lighting by Speirs and Major): ‘Everyone knows that you have to go that extra mile with a bit of flair and creativity to make a really nicely lit space,’ says Raynham.
which has always been in the Code but never stated explicitly, is that you shouldn’t light a working plane. The phrase is only used in this new edition to say that this Code doesn’t recognise the working plane. It is gone, don’t use it. ‘My guess is that it’s going to be a culture
shift for the industry but the payback is that it halves your energy use. If you’re not lighting every square inch of an office to 500 lux, think what that does to the energy consumption. Obviously you’ve got to light desks and the area round them to a reasonable level, but three quarters of the entire space needs only be to 150 or 200 lux – the energy saving is massive.’ As with BS EN 12464-1, there will
Peter Raynham says he is concerned that people extract selectively from the Code
This time it’s a real rethink. Basically we took what we had, tore it up and started again
perhaps be detractors who think the Code, and standards generally, don’t go far enough. Or that lighting specialists don’t need them and we should do away with them altogether. The point, argues Raynham, is that they
are aimed not at the lighting professional but at the non-specialist in the hope of avoiding the worst excesses of the inexpert, and ‘to make sure the clients have some vague ideas of what they might be letting themselves in for’. He adds: ‘When we think of what the
role of the Code is, it’s actually to stop bad lighting rather than to promote good lighting. If you just follow the Code you won’t do anything terrible, but it might
48 CIBSE Journal December 2011
just end up mediocre. Everyone knows that you have to go that extra mile with a bit of flair and creativity to make a really nicely lit space. Lighting design by numbers alone will only produce an inferior result.’ Raynham acknowledges, however, the inherent paradox of aiming at the non- specialist who, by definition, might get the wrong end of the stick. There is apparently no accounting for the perversity of people and the bits they latch on to. ‘What always worries
me when I’m writing a Code is that somebody is going to extract selectively from it some weird and wonderful bits and pieces, and just
use that for box ticking. You will always get a strange bit of any SLL document like this picked up. When we wrote LG3 we said how important it is to get all the wall surfaces bright and, by the way, if you have this sort of screen, it’s sensible to limit your luminaire luminance at certain angles. What emerged was the awful Cat 2 system. ‘Why one particular paragraph may hit
the mood or not of the lighting users I don’t know. I’ve tried in writing it to make sure that they get an overall rounded view and know that they are only supposed to light these particular tasks, but how people will choose to abuse it I can’t say.’
l The new SLL Code for Lighting will be launched in early 2012. ‘Follow the Code’ is on 13 December at the RSA
www.sll.org.uk
www.cibsejournal.com
James Newton
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