Elevation revelation

Thirty-five kilometres of cables, many thousands of LED diodes and fittings, the possibility of light control and displays of dynamic scenes – this is a brief description of Poznań’s ‘Las Vegas’, the longest fully-lit mall façade in the country (440m). Since its opening ceremony (October 24th) the façade of the mixed-use Poznań City Center project developed by TriGranit, Polskie Koleje Państwowe and Europa Capital has been illuminated in this way. “For a few years now, a combination of lighting systems based on LED technology with control systems has made it possible to have unlimited fun in terms of façade illumination. There are a few malls in Poland that could do this, but no project up to now has had a similar scale,” says Marcin Gryt, an architect who works as a key account manager for Philips Lighting, which participated in the preparation of the illumination project for the Poznań centre. How much money was spent on this? Neither the investor nor the lighting company want to disclose how big the contract was, but are the costs really the main factor in such projects?

It started with a practical function
The intensifying competition between shopping centres is mostly taking place in cities with rather high saturations of retail space, such as Poznań. After the opening of PCC, the saturation in the city amounted to 758,700 sqm per 1,000 inhabitants (according to Cushman & Wakefield), one of the highest in Poland. Lighting can play a significant role in the battle for customers. “Some time ago lighting mainly served a practical purpose, for example, illuminating the entrance to a mall to make it clearly visible. Now the lighting has an additional marketing function,” emphasises Marcin Gryt. Mody Klif in Warsaw provides another good example of this approach. It is quite a small centre (with a leasable area of 18,000 sqm) located almost adjacent to the huge Arkadia mall (110,000 sqm). It could also be missed among the neighbouring high-rise office buildings. Around 10 pct of the renovation costs for the façade in 2012 were accounted for by the lighting. “We decided to invest in lighting to increase the building’s visibility and attract the attention of pedestrians as well as drivers. Our system is made of white, semi-transparent glass panels lit with LED RGB diodes integrated with the architecture of the façade, which makes it possible to retain its aesthetics. The entire system can be controlled by a special programme thanks to which the façade features not only a variety of colours but also fragments of photos,” explains Jean Paul Hermetz, projects director for Poland at AEW Central Europe.
Thanks to this the elevation can be made pink on Valentine’s Day just by pressing a button, as well as having a warmer colour over the Christmas period. As it happens, the entire system in Poznań can be controlled from a smartphone. “The point is for the user not to have to lose time setting the light parameters every day. If we have sales on and we want to have a more dynamic façade, all you need to do is press the button which says ‘sales’ and everything will change accordingly,” explains Marcin Gryt. This is also one of the features that turned out to be important for Warsaw’s Klif centre. “Changing the colours is a matter of a few minutes, while changing the motifs displayed takes only a few hours work for a graphic designer,” explains Jean Paul Hermetz.

The benefits of the diode revolution
Controlling the intensity and colour of the lighting is, admittedly, not a new idea, but it was only the advent of LED technology that kick-started a real revolution in this field. Traditional systems were either too expensive or too problematic when it came to using them. LED technology utilises a small chip hidden in a fixture to achieve the desired effects more quickly. “LEDs like to be controlled. And this technology is becoming more and more popular,” says Marcin Gryt. It turns out that the controls for the lighting itself are not expensive. The equipment as well as the software (plus the training from the lighting company on how to use it) only add 5–15 pct to the costs of similar but uncontrolled LED systems. A centre owner who switches to such LED systems despite the higher initial investment can subsequently expect savings resulting from lower electricity consumption and less frequent maintenance.
According to Philips, in Central Europe 60 pct of the lighting in the retail and hotel segment is based on LED technology. Centres such as Outlet Park Szczecin, which exclusively use LED fixtures to illuminate the elevation, are becoming increasingly common. “As it turned out, this technology was the best for the project’s requirements. Small fixture sizes can be used, which matched the architectural elements of the building’s façade, and to this can be added their durability and energy-efficiency,” says Marcin Gryt.

Attention to detail
The visual effect of course depends on many factors, and how it is controlled is only one of them. According to illumination professionals, the best results are achieved when a lighting design is developed with the first concept for the building. The architect has to decide where to position the light, whether to illuminate the elevation or to project light from the elevation, to bring out the details by using spotlights or to illuminate everything. There are also some practical issues: are the fixtures themselves going to be visible or not? “For example, in Poznań the LED cases create a very clear picture during the day. There are very strong, clear elements of the façade, which are lit at night. In the design you also need to think about the placement and concealment of the cables,” explains Marcin Gryt. Other seemingly unimportant details also greatly influence the ultimate effect – such as how the light is reflected from the façade. During trials at Poznań City Centre, the lighting company tested several kinds of glass to identify which would provide the best effect at night.

Market domination
Dynamic illumination systems that use LED technology (i.e. those where the light changes) are now set to dominate the market. “Lit-up façades will particularly enjoy increasing interest. Especially large-format systems consisting of fully controllable LED diodes used to cover the façade,” insists Bogdan Skorupka, the light energy efficiency manager of Es-System, which has illuminated such centres as Manufaktura in Łódź, Galeria Korona Kielce, Galeria Krakowska in Kraków, Ikea Port Łódź and Galeria Malta in Poznań. “Mall owners might even go a step further and choose interactive façades,” suggests Marcin Gryt. Such facilities are already being developed across the world. One in Korea is lit up in red when it ‘notices’ a pedestrian wearing red. The assumption behind this is that if someone likes red clothes their interest could be attracted by displaying this colour. In Spain processed images of passers-by are displayed on one building. In France there is a so-called ‘electronic catapult’, where for example you can post some wishes for your fiancée. A huge image resembling splashed paint appears on the façade and arranges itself to form an inscription with the wishes. Will similar ideas catch on? It is hard to say because since the illumination of façades has become part of marketing, it has been subject to a completely different set of rules than hitherto. Costs have been pushed into the background because of a well-known truth about marketing: half the money spent on advertising goes down the drain. Unfortunately, in this case, we don’t yet know which half it is.





Mariusz Dziubiński
project manager in Leibrecht & Wood
No facade illumination for Plac Unii
At the beginning we only planned to illuminate the tower of Plac Unii by placing linear LED lighting in the embrasures. However, after a few weeks of trials with both warm and cold light, as well as one-sided and two-sided illumination, no satisfactory results were obtained.
At the same time it turned out that the building itself emanates light from inside the offices and the glass passageway. The only problem that needed solving was illuminations for special occasions – when the office area is less lit and yet we want to attract customers into the centre. In such cases, we can emphasise the form of the building using an LED spotlight, which will be projected onto the tower and change colours – such a solution was used during the opening of the centre and in our opinion it is an attractive one. We are planning to also use it on special occasions in the future.