How can you correctly illuminate your workspace?
This is the burning question for employers and employees across the UK. The workspace has shifted in the last two years as we enter the post-pandemic working world.
Hybrid working is now normalised and to draw people into the workplace employers must create attractive, creatively stimulating and flexible office worlds.
This mindset may be in full swing but one considerable part of office equipment is still observed quantitatively – the lighting. Think, old style glaring panels. This lighting solution with panel lights does not complement the visual task of the user and means all forms of work are supported with the same lighting. This approach of low-contrast and undefined appearance of the room leads to fatigue and a decline in productivity. The solution? We need to reimagine workspace illumination.
ERCO understand the power of light in the workspace and take a qualitative approach to office lighting solutions. Zonal lighting analyses the functions of the space and what light is needed where.
Luminaires with good glare control and simultaneous high cylindrical illuminances, light the workstations, enable good visual comfort and achieve good, pleasant facial illumination. Illuminated vertical surfaces ensure a bright spatial impression and balanced contrast conditions for work on screens.
Illumination of circulation zones and the central aisles allows pleasant orientation. This considered and human-centric approach to lighting is visible throughout the ERCO work project portfolio.
Human-centric lighting is of essential importance in work environments. Light can significantly contribute to the quality of the room and support dialogue and concentration. It is imperative that lighting solutions align with the design and physicality of the space to create dynamic and modern environments in which businesses and people thrive. When it comes to illuminating offices their considered approach to design, promotes comfort, flexibility and energy efficiency.
This approach was integrated into the iconic White Collar Factory project. The White Collar Factory may be one of London’s most pioneering new office developments, but its basement was never intended to become a workspace. However, when plans to turn this space into a restaurant failed to materialise, the building’s architects, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM), saw an opportunity to challenge previous assumptions.
This 983-square-metre space, whose only source of daylight comes from four small skylights, has been cleverly transformed into a flexible creative hub for 110 of AHMM’s own staff, all thanks to a human-centric lighting scheme legalised with an innovative lighting system from ERCO.
With the limited amount of daylight on offer in the White Collar Factory, ERCO’s human-centric lighting system played an important role in bringing natural variation to the workspace over the course of a day. ERCO’s lighting solutions have illuminated the space bringing to life a space for flexibility, wellness and creativity.
‘You look at scene-setting, you look at the changing nature of the body,’ said Simon Allford, AHMM when discussing the White Collar Factory lighting solution. The goal, he explained, was to show it’s possible to create dynamic lighting conditions even when you’re dealing with a windowless space, offering an alternative to the standardised lux settings prescribed by the industry. In this way, the lighting becomes a research project of its own.
‘You’re looking at the impact of light, rather than the fittings,’ he stated. ‘It’s this idea that you’re not looking at holes in the ceiling, you’re looking at sources of light landing on surfaces.’
For further information, visit erco.com
Photography by Rob Parris
