042
DETAILS
“Manufacturers might look at lumen output, efficacy, spectral output, colour rendering, colour consistency over lifetime, longevity, ease of installation. But for a designer that’s not quality of light, that’s quality of product or service and it’s that difference that causes so many manufacturers who also offer ‘lighting design services’ to get it so wrong.”
Nike Manchester United Stadium Store, Old Trafford (Pic: Nike). The lighting scheme resulted in a low-energy retail environment – approximately 15W/sqm - which represents a 50% reduction when compared with the energy used by the previous store.
“The immediate answer for some (including a lot of manufacturers) is ‘it’s CRI’ or ‘it’s spectral output’, but that’s not the answer in reality, because there are so many hu- man factors and for me all of the technical data you get from manufacturers are just a pathway to achieving the real quality, which is about people and spaces.”
PNLD is becoming well known for its retail lighting design expertise, so what does Nulty think of how retailers perceive quality of light?
“Quality of light is everything in retail. Retailers don’t necessarily sit down and say I want really good quality of light, they say I want to sell more merchandise and it must look as good as it possibly can. Then they look at their bottom line and think ‘I want that to happen and spend as little as I can because every pound or euro I spend comes off my bottom line and I want as healthy a bottom line as possible’. Retailers are focused on the bottom line and managing their costs, and lighting is one of many tools they use to facilitate that. As a designer, I have to have a completely different mindset when working with retailers – I have to think ‘How can I facilitate this retailer in selling more merchandise by creating a particular
environment?’ Look at the latest fashion retailers, it’s all about the brand, using light or in fact lack of light to create their brand and for you to buy into that lifestyle. It’s all about bottom line! It’s becoming even more important with the explosion in internet retailing. Now anyone can buy a product online so high-street retailing has to ‘decommoditise’ the product. It has to be about buying into a lifestyle or brand ex- perience and lighting is a fantastic medium to facilitate this.”
But do all the lighting manufacturers un- derstand that about the retailers? Nulty has a view: “The manufacturers are generally product driven, asking ‘How do I get my latest fitting into the big supermarkets or fashion retailers’, instead of thinking ‘What environment am I trying to create and how can I achieve that’. That’s why when you walk into some of the stores designed purely by manufacturers, with no lighting designers involved, you will see how flat and dull it can be because they are thinking about the lighting product rather than the people and the space.”
There are lots of discussions going on now about whether LED is ready to be the volume alternative to the incumbent
technologies. Sometimes the answer can be yes, sometimes no. Nulty believes it’s about finding the right solution to the challenge of the brief. PNLD has specified lighting on retail projects with 100% LED. They are one of the practices really embracing LEDs. Nulty explains: “I think there will always be a place for other light sources – LED is getting there but I think when you start using it in environments where quality of light really matters, fashion retailers for instance, this will be the test for LED. Argu- ably, in an office you have a grey carpet and white ceiling where the emphasis on colour rendering can be different than perhaps in a retail environment. In retail, you put the light source under the microscope. I suppose in most applications LED is good enough, but in some higher end environ- ments we need to be super critical of LED because it really does have to compete with other light sources. End users don’t neces- sarily care what the light source is, it’s just another source that emits light, they want to light a wall for instance and for it to look good. Photons are photons, the human eye perceives what it perceives. Actually it’s also about luminaire design, the fixture manufacturers really need help with this.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164