FEATURE
ABOVE LEFT TO RIGHT: Dexter Moren - Director, Dexter Moren Architects; Stephan Oberwegner - Managing Director, Max Bentheim; Ian Springford - Director, ISA
lighting was one of the key elements, so we thought who better than Philips to come on board and work with us from the very concept stage.”
Gregoir Chikaher, Global Director of Hotels for Arup, said it was vital lighting concepts were explained to clients at the outset of projects, particularly as lighting is more visible and subjective than other elements such as air conditioning or the structural aspects of the building. But according to Sally Storey, Design Director at Lighting Design International, lighting designers are not always involved from the outset: “Sometimes you’re on board as the project develops and part of the original team and sometimes you’re brought on when the concept is developed.” Storey said that LED technology was
evolving and improving so fast that projects were in danger of their lighting technology being outdated by the time the hotel opened, if they had been specified months, or even years, previously: “One of the jobs one will have soon will be to help those who had to make decisions three years ago to retrofit LED technology.” This struck a chord with Simon Baldwin,
Development Director for The Scarlet, an eco-luxury hotel in Cornwall: “We were specifying the hotel two to three years ago
and there was a big worry that we were going to end up with poor lighting, in order to try and deliver low energy throughout. Fortunately things have started to improve, and we’ve ended up with a good standard of lighting but the next hotel we do will obviously benefit from the technology coming through now.”
The discussion moved on to the issue of touchscreen control in rooms, and ease of use for guests. Tapio Rosenius was concerned that hotel guests already struggled to make use of technology in meeting rooms, “a controlled environment where people expect to see a lot of technology. If we then start introducing this touchscreen technology in the room area, we’re going to have to go through the same hoops that people did with meeting rooms.” Gregoir Chikaher spoke for most of the panel in saying: “Ultimately, in twenty years time everything’s going to be integrated, but it needs to be simple,” – a point reiterated by Dexter Moren of Dexter Moren Architects: “In a city hotel, you check in, you haven’t got a lot of time and you certainly don’t want to learn some new system, simplicity is the key issue. You want a decent reading light and an ability to do some work and that’s it really.”
130 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2010 WWW.SLEEPERMAGAZINE.COM
However Rowena Preiss, Creative Director for Philips Lighting, pointed to the iPod as an example of how quickly people could adapt to new technology, if that technology was intuitively designed. “Twenty years ago, if you saw a light switch on the wall and it had a circle in the middle, you wouldn’t know what to do with it – you’d probably press it. Now if you see that, you identify a circle with an iPod type of application and it becomes quite obvious that you’re supposed to spin your finger round on it. We’ve applied that notion to operating a colour lighting system, so as you scroll your finger around, it actually starts to change colour.”
Guy Dittrich asked the panel how notions of ‘luxury’ could sit side-by-side with sustainability. According to interior designer Stephan Oberwegner of Max Bentheim, sustainability is about more than lighting and energy use. “Sustainability is also about lifecycle. If you invest in quality [FF&E] it’s more sustainable than throwaway copies that end up in landfill. If you invest in something has material integrity and design integrity and you complement that with something that is interchangeable like technology and lighting, they can sit together very well.”
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