Architectural and artistic lighting and landscape lighting
Architectural and artistic lighting and landscape lighting: should they be coordinated and complementary, or are these two completely independent sectors of outdoor lighting? The experts from the Svet Expert lighting company will discuss this in this article.
In today’s world, the evening appearance of an object receives quite serious attention. Indeed, architecture should not be lost when it gets dark. We, as experts in outdoor lighting, advocate for every building to have its own architectural and artistic illumination. In addition to architecture and facade, each building is surrounded by some kind of territory: it can be entire landscape areas, parks, entrance groups and much more. What place does outdoor light occupy in creating a common unified concept of a building? Is it necessary to highlight this territory with decorative light, or will it be enough just to place functional fixtures on poles that are responsible for minimum illumination?
Modern developers are increasingly focusing on non-standard solutions in the lighting design of their buildings. Speaking about residential complexes, we can’t consider the facade separately from the landscape light. Facade lighting operates at the same time as street lighting, so the overall picture of all the evening light in the territory and on the structure of the object should be synchronized. Even speaking of evening renderings, used for advertising and marketing purposes, we can note that often we see night visualizations, where individual elements, small architectural forms of this building and protruding structures are highlighted. The use of evening concepts of a future construction site looks advantageous and emphasizes the development among others, because today, highlighting only the facade or a separate entrance area is a wrong decision. Now we introduce outdoor lighting technologies up to linking the architectural lighting project with landscape decorative and functional light. Creating such a project, we understand that this is a more complex process, but facade light without landscape light does not look integral, so we intentionally go for such a design. We will tell more about landscape lighting in this article.
"About what landscape lighting is, how individual areas can be highlighted with the help of light, and features of the territory can be emphasized, even 10 years ago no one knew - says the general director of Svet Expert. - Today, in the modern world, whole sections and directions are devoted to this. In addition to street and functional lighting, decorative principles of illuminating landscape zones are often used. And if earlier the adjacent territory of a new residential complex under construction included only lighting poles with functional light, ensuring safe movement around the site, now, in addition to the utilitarian light, developers use a large number of decorative lighting devices: they develop and highlight small architectural forms, tree crowns, paths and green plantings, create interactive installations with integrated light illumination. This is a separate section that requires detailed study, because it uses specialized equipment that has its own installation and installation requirements and rules.
As lighting experts, we cannot separate landscape lighting and facade lighting. Let’s give such example: the Mits group, for which we are contractors for lighting solutions, asked us to link the existing landscape lighting with the new facade lighting concept. When we began to study these projects, we realized that there is indeed a lack of coordination. Landscape lighting was performed exclusively in cold shades, in light columns, bollards for decorative lighting of the territory of this complex were offered to use cold-color LEDs 5000K. While lighting pillars, performing the role of utilitarian lighting for the movement of pedestrians and motorists within this complex, were used neutral white tone, which completely did not fit into the concept, as there was an alternation of spots of cold and neutral-white color. And if we talk about the facade of the complex itself, it is a complex lighting solution, its facing is made in two shades: the first has a warm undertone, and the second is quite gray cold, so architects for facade lighting assumed to use a combined color design with lighting areas, cold and yellow-warm LEDs luminescence. And if you look separately at each zone and building, everything looks beautiful and conceptually correct, competent, but if you make a panorama of this residential complex and highlight this development as a single object, you get a disparate picture. For this reason, we completely revised the landscape lighting and suggested adding illumination to green plantations, changed the color of LEDs and all the lamps located on the lower tier of the facade made the same luminescence as the general outdoor. Thus, the overall visual perception of the night view of this object has become absolutely integral and uniform. Many examples can be given. And we are glad that the high professionalism of a modern developer improves the quality of work and the level of the facility under construction.”
"As for the management of facade and landscape lighting, in each project completed to date by our company, there is a complete agreement between these two sections - says the leading engineer of Svet expert. - The inclusion and shutdown of facade lighting, as a rule, occurs at the same time as the light sources in the adjacent territory. Most often, the management of outdoor lighting of the complex territory is carried out through an astronomical or twilight relay, so it is logical to connect and turn on all outdoor lighting simultaneously. But, speaking in technical terms, these are two completely different sections. Facade lighting is powered by an electrical panel located in the residential complex, where all controls and power switches for it are located. Functional light of the LCD territory and decorative landscape illumination are most often powered by a transformer substation located near this complex. Moreover, the installation method of lighting devices differs significantly. Landscape lighting is accompanied by a large number of trench works, while facade lights may have overhead installation. In addition, equipment that is protected from dust and moisture is needed, all lighting equipment for the landscape should be anti-vandal. We understand that specialized lighting fixtures illuminate different areas, including children’s playgrounds, recreation areas, parks, so we pay great attention to safety and comfort here. The current trend of linking landscape light with architectural and artistic illumination is in demand and is increasingly found on new objects. This is the right and correct approach in order to not only create a single luminous appearance of the under-construction complex, but also to safely and correctly perform all connections and installation works at this facility.”
In today’s world, the evening appearance of an object receives quite serious attention. Indeed, architecture should not be lost when it gets dark. We, as experts in outdoor lighting, advocate for every building to have its own architectural and artistic illumination. In addition to architecture and facade, each building is surrounded by some kind of territory: it can be entire landscape areas, parks, entrance groups and much more. What place does outdoor light occupy in creating a common unified concept of a building? Is it necessary to highlight this territory with decorative light, or will it be enough just to place functional fixtures on poles that are responsible for minimum illumination?
Modern developers are increasingly focusing on non-standard solutions in the lighting design of their buildings. Speaking about residential complexes, we can’t consider the facade separately from the landscape light. Facade lighting operates at the same time as street lighting, so the overall picture of all the evening light in the territory and on the structure of the object should be synchronized. Even speaking of evening renderings, used for advertising and marketing purposes, we can note that often we see night visualizations, where individual elements, small architectural forms of this building and protruding structures are highlighted. The use of evening concepts of a future construction site looks advantageous and emphasizes the development among others, because today, highlighting only the facade or a separate entrance area is a wrong decision. Now we introduce outdoor lighting technologies up to linking the architectural lighting project with landscape decorative and functional light. Creating such a project, we understand that this is a more complex process, but facade light without landscape light does not look integral, so we intentionally go for such a design. We will tell more about landscape lighting in this article.
"About what landscape lighting is, how individual areas can be highlighted with the help of light, and features of the territory can be emphasized, even 10 years ago no one knew - says the general director of Svet Expert. - Today, in the modern world, whole sections and directions are devoted to this. In addition to street and functional lighting, decorative principles of illuminating landscape zones are often used. And if earlier the adjacent territory of a new residential complex under construction included only lighting poles with functional light, ensuring safe movement around the site, now, in addition to the utilitarian light, developers use a large number of decorative lighting devices: they develop and highlight small architectural forms, tree crowns, paths and green plantings, create interactive installations with integrated light illumination. This is a separate section that requires detailed study, because it uses specialized equipment that has its own installation and installation requirements and rules.
As lighting experts, we cannot separate landscape lighting and facade lighting. Let’s give such example: the Mits group, for which we are contractors for lighting solutions, asked us to link the existing landscape lighting with the new facade lighting concept. When we began to study these projects, we realized that there is indeed a lack of coordination. Landscape lighting was performed exclusively in cold shades, in light columns, bollards for decorative lighting of the territory of this complex were offered to use cold-color LEDs 5000K. While lighting pillars, performing the role of utilitarian lighting for the movement of pedestrians and motorists within this complex, were used neutral white tone, which completely did not fit into the concept, as there was an alternation of spots of cold and neutral-white color. And if we talk about the facade of the complex itself, it is a complex lighting solution, its facing is made in two shades: the first has a warm undertone, and the second is quite gray cold, so architects for facade lighting assumed to use a combined color design with lighting areas, cold and yellow-warm LEDs luminescence. And if you look separately at each zone and building, everything looks beautiful and conceptually correct, competent, but if you make a panorama of this residential complex and highlight this development as a single object, you get a disparate picture. For this reason, we completely revised the landscape lighting and suggested adding illumination to green plantations, changed the color of LEDs and all the lamps located on the lower tier of the facade made the same luminescence as the general outdoor. Thus, the overall visual perception of the night view of this object has become absolutely integral and uniform. Many examples can be given. And we are glad that the high professionalism of a modern developer improves the quality of work and the level of the facility under construction.”
"As for the management of facade and landscape lighting, in each project completed to date by our company, there is a complete agreement between these two sections - says the leading engineer of Svet expert. - The inclusion and shutdown of facade lighting, as a rule, occurs at the same time as the light sources in the adjacent territory. Most often, the management of outdoor lighting of the complex territory is carried out through an astronomical or twilight relay, so it is logical to connect and turn on all outdoor lighting simultaneously. But, speaking in technical terms, these are two completely different sections. Facade lighting is powered by an electrical panel located in the residential complex, where all controls and power switches for it are located. Functional light of the LCD territory and decorative landscape illumination are most often powered by a transformer substation located near this complex. Moreover, the installation method of lighting devices differs significantly. Landscape lighting is accompanied by a large number of trench works, while facade lights may have overhead installation. In addition, equipment that is protected from dust and moisture is needed, all lighting equipment for the landscape should be anti-vandal. We understand that specialized lighting fixtures illuminate different areas, including children’s playgrounds, recreation areas, parks, so we pay great attention to safety and comfort here. The current trend of linking landscape light with architectural and artistic illumination is in demand and is increasingly found on new objects. This is the right and correct approach in order to not only create a single luminous appearance of the under-construction complex, but also to safely and correctly perform all connections and installation works at this facility.”
