Here the goal was to bring the cen­tral square in the town of Del­brück to life using light. A new light mood there­fore needed to be con­ceived using lumi­naires that would also not com­pete too heav­ily with the archi­tec­ture of the sur­round­ing build­ings. The resul­tant light con­cept was devised by Studio Can­dela in coop­er­a­tion with FSWLA and took into account the unique nature of the archi­tec­ture at Kirch­platz in Del­brück. The plan­ners chose the uni­ver­sal Lif light column by Selux, the min­i­mal­ist shape of which blends har­mo­niously into the sur­round­ings.

Kirch­platz in Del­brück or Church Square is located at the heart of this small town in North Rhine-West­phalia with a pop­u­la­tion of 30,000 inhab­i­tants. Around the Catholic parish church of St. John the Bap­tist, the crooked wooden spire of which is regarded as the town’s land­mark, stands a unique col­lec­tion of half-tim­bered houses. The pre­vi­ous light­ing at this church square, which was merely func­tional, has now been replaced with a modern light­ing con­cept, for which the Lif has assumed the star­ring role.

A slim, cylin­dri­cal light column with a diam­e­ter of just 180 mil­lime­tres, Lif blends per­fectly into the town­scape as a space-defin­ing ele­ment, its ele­gant purist design accen­tu­at­ing the area around the parish church with pre­mium qual­ity light. Being a mod­u­lar system, a vari­ety of gear trays can be installed on the Lif, which is the reason plan­ners chose it for the task of both envi­ron­men­tal and path­way light­ing. The Lif top ele­ment illu­mi­nates Kirch­platz and the path­ways that lead off from it with its down­wardly directed light while the twinspot mod­ules cast their light upwards as far as the tops of the trees that line the square. As well as illu­mi­nat­ing the trees how­ever, this hor­i­zon­tally beamed light also bathes all the façades around the square in a reserved, roman­tic light.

Lif suc­cess­fully sets the impres­sive sur­round­ings of the parish church in Del­brück in scene by tar­geted use of light, liven­ing up this town centre while pro­vid­ing it with a high degree of sojourn qual­ity – par­tic­u­larly during the evening hours.


project: Lif in Delbrück
client: City of Delbrück
landscape architect: FSWLA Landschaftsarchitekten GmbH, Dusseldorf
lighting designer: Studio Candela, Herford
photographer: Markus Bollen