Occupying 89m of Oxford Street façade from North Audley St to Balderton Street, is situated on one the busiest and prestigious shopping destinations in London.

The project brief

The project brief was to unify the block of buildings, by picking out the features that would render the facades character best at night.  To ensure the façade not only looked impressive at night, unsightly cabling should not detract from the buildings charm and architectural beauty during the day, attracting higher end retailers and discerning shoppers, by giving the development presence and charisma.

acdc’s solution

Through extensive lighting trials and 2D Photoshop visuals LDI picked out the features that would render the facades character best at night, the team produced detailed mounting drawings for each fittings location and cable routes.

Red brick vertical features are picked out by 10° Plaza 10 fittings in 2700K, to enhance the warm tone of the red brick giving an inviting warm glow. The rhythm of narrow beam uplighting was carefully planned to ensure the right amount of shadow and highlight, ensuring the form of the building was expressed from all viewing positions without over lighting the features and loosing contrast. Window reveals and wider features are lit with spread 12 x 40 Plaza 10 fittings, and horizontal lighting is provided  Fino to link and unify the verticals.

The lighter stone building, with dark stone columns, is lit with 3000K Plaza 10 fittings, to preserve the lighter finish, and to ensure the light stone is not given an unnatural tone from the warm 2700K lighting used on the majority of the development. This change in colour temperature also intentionally makes the light stone building a feature within the estate as a whole. This façade is lit by the same techniques that unify the development, but given its own identity tailored to its own architectural elegance by using a more suitable neutral white colour temperature.

All visible fittings used on the project are RAL finished to match the various mounting surfaces, ensuring minimal visual impact on the façade by day, and all cabling routes are well concealed from direct view by pedestrians.

The fittings are all selected and tested for their precise optical performance, and all fittings are equipped with glare snoots and louvers where necessary, to ensure no glare is experiences by pedestrians or building occupants. The glare snoots are finished to match the fittings, and the internal louvers when used are matt black and orientated perpendicular to viewing angles, to ensure glare control is optimal.

Lighting Design:
Lighting Design International, UK

Client:
Tribeca Holdings

Architect:
ESA Architects, UK