LIGHT + TECH 89
‘Young architects may then have a keener interest in lighting if they were taught it well and given lectures by good lighting designers. The theory of lighting should also be covered as it’s very technical.’ While embracing the need for artificial lighting, in the same interview he expressed his dismay at its overuse in contemporary buildings. ‘Lighting levels could easily come down by 50%,’ he said. ‘We’re still not designing for the computer age. Nearly every ofice building that comes up for let is fitted out to Category A, with suspended ceilings and banks of unnecessary lights – nobody wants this anymore.
‘Computer-based tasks simply don’t need such high levels of artificial lighting,’ he continued. ‘There is huge scope for designing buildings with filtered daylight and very low, background light. Buildings could have pools of daylight, and a lot of the artificial lighting in between could be completely done away with.’
His projects featured creative ways of exploiting natural light and bringing daylight deep into buildings, not only for sustainability reasons but also for the well-being of occupants.
The 1993 Cologne headquarters and factory for Igus, maker of high-performance polymers, featured roof domes to draw in north light down to workbench level and included four landscaped courtyards, planted to represent each season, which acted as rest centres for workers. More recently, and spectacularly, his Fulton Center, the transit hub in Lower Manhattan, New York, featured a canted 16.15m-diameter circular skylight known as the ‘Oculus’, which brings sunlight and daylight through the building to the subterranean levels beneath. The effect of the natural light is magnified by an integrated artwork, the Sky Reflector-Net, a steel cable-net structure that forms an independent reflective lining, offset from the dome’s interior, and which directs sunlight downwards. The two elements together provide suficient illumination to the building interior to allow electric lighting to be turned off during the daytime. The concept was created by James Carpenter Design Associates (JCDA), and its design and development was down to an engineer/architect/artist collaboration between Arup, Grimshaw and JCDA. ‘The raison d’etre of the whole scheme was to bring daylight through the Oculus at the top, right down to the two levels below ground,’ explained Grimshaw. From its first project, the Grimshaw practice has viewed architecture and industrial design as inseparable disciplines, an approach that has occasionally meant venturing into the design of lighting systems. Together with what was then Speirs and Major, lighting consultant for the project, Grimshaw created a bespoke lighting solution for the St Botolph Building in the City of London in 2010. This involved a simple lighting boom designed to integrate within a central glass and steel atrium lift lobby and bridges. More recently, as part of the consortium with Atkins, GIA Equation (lighting consultant) and Maynard,
Grimshaw collaborated on the lighting systems as part of the line-wide identity for London’s Elizabeth Line. The key fittings were the cross passage booms by Designed Architectural Lighting (DAL) and the Totem uplights and escalator deck uplights by Future Designs.
Grimshaw also memorably designed the classic Tecton continuous-row lighting system with Zumtobel, released in 2001. The new Tecton II, revisited by Pininfarina, is the latest of several iterations, including an LED version in 2010.
‘For us, Tecton was the first product that followed a “design-led” approach – without us even realising it at the time,’ says Mario Wintschnig, product manager of Zumtobel at the time.
While its founder has gone, it’s clear that the understanding and appreciation of lighting is deep in the practice DNA. ‘When you’re coming up with the bare bones and skeleton of the project, it’s just about form creating, but within that, quite soon afterwards you have to think about the whole experience,’ said Whalley in the Arc interview. ‘Not all of our projects benefit from the availability of natural light, so the integration of lighting is absolutely the experience of the space – it’s got to be thought of from the beginning. ‘So I think how you integrate lighting into the architecture, so that it’s seamless, and just becomes a natural part of the architectural experience, is absolutely critical.’
‘Rather than design a building and ask [lighting designers] to light it, you have to work with them from the beginning of the concept, especially if lighting is a key issue’
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw
Above left The late, great Sir Nicholas Grimshaw
Above The practice collaborated on the lighting systems as part of the line-wide identity for London’s Elizabeth Line
Right The British Pavilion for the 1992 Expo in Seville showed Grimshaw’s fascination with daylight effects: ‘We had water running down the glass facade. There was something extraordinarily satisfying about getting daylight through water – it made you feel cool just looking at it’
PHOTOS: JOHN LAMB VIA GETTY IMAGES
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