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design challenges, but the comfort of the eye and balance of vertical contrast takes precedence over light levels. We are now using our restaurant and hotel experience to inform lighting office suites across the city. Our evening light setting is crucial to a comfortable working environment. Tis is only likely to increase now that Covid-19 has dramatically domesticised our working day and changed our human demands.
Te increased density of screen time at work, for leisure and on our phones, increases the amount of time each day that we stare into the cool blue strobing light that keeps us stimulated and concentrated. Te need to balance this is also increasing – future places for work and leisure need to offer quieter, warmer and darker spaces as an alternative to still being ‘on your screen’. As a profession we need to reinforce the desire to return to group, collaborative working without a digitised intermediary. Te following projects are examples where our team has successfully designed in a darkness element and illustrates how this trend has been developing in recent years.
An intentionally dark space within the workplace has traditionally been associated with a place to present, where attention is concentrated on to a single speaker. Dating
back to Wagner’s demand to darken the auditorium during performances, we culturally accept sitting in dark spaces akin to theatres. Tis is apparent when the auditorium or meeting room is the sole dark space in the environment. Around 2018, using evidence we gathered from carbon reduction techniques, for the first time we had a compelling reason to persuade our clients that less light was better.
Te ability to model daylight helped to counter the intrinsic fear our clients had that a dark space was a negative space. By asserting that reducing carbon consumption and promoting natural healthy cycles are positive reasons to use darkness, we were able to reduce quantities of light fittings. We took this further, using reflective materials and darkness to act as natural balances to the ever-changing daylight.
Te images of LDN:W and UCL illustrate that taking this approach means very few light fittings are visible within the threshold and atrium spaces of the building. Te key was to allow these spaces to be read ‘at night’ in their evening settings, exploiting the transformation of the windows into black mirrors. Where occupants are working or reading, their pool of light remains local within the dark environment.
‘The entire natural lighting cycle of light and dark, and the ability to choose the different moods these stimulate, will be present in all workplaces’
From left The atrium of UCL’s new student centre is designed to be an effective space in both daytime and evening settings, when the windows transform into black mirrors; Cambridge Assessment’s HQ uses reflective surfaces to emphasise the ever-changing daylight; the library at the Digby Stuart campus at the University of Roehampton uses small pools of light to create a different feel when the space is used at night
RIGHT AND FAR RIGHT: TOM NIVEN MIDDLE RIGHT: PHILLIP VILE
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