A major lighting scheme that demonstrates the wide range of performance benefits that RIDI luminaires can deliver in the commercial office environment has recently been completed at the newly refurbished Faraday Building in the City of London .

The Faraday Building, a monumental Victorian structure in EC4, and once the hub of Britain's telephone network, is now home to BT Wholesale - the arm of the BT Group that provides network services and solutions to communication companies throughout the UK. Around 5,000m² of floor space have been completely refurbished. Previously used to house cumbersome exchange equipment for BT. The Bristol office of Parson’s Brinkerhoff, working alongside London-based architect AJMK, was set the challenging task of creating a New York loft-style interior. The value of the lighting installation was approximately £500K on a total spend of  around £11M.

The brief was to provide DSE compliant lighting in the office areas, which needed to be incorporated into the mechanical chilled beam system. The look and feel of the office would be more industrial, with all Mechanical and electrical services exposed to view. The fluorescent lighting would use virtual daylight lamps and polarising filters to boost the attitude and performance of the people in the space. The lighting scheme was designed to optimise the use of the ambient daylight by the use of dimmable digital ballasts linked to light sensors and presence detectors.

The open plan office areas used recessed T5 luminaires flush mounted into the suspended Chilled Beam panels. The luminaires had a linear slot at the back of the fitting to allow a component of upward light to illuminate the soffit behind the chilled beam panel and eliminate dark ceiling effect. The circulation areas were treated differently using a combination of linear fluorescent luminaires and LV downlighters recessed into a Makrolon® tray system to add sparkle and interest to the space. The office was zoned so that zones switched out after a predetermined period when no presence was detected in the zone or in the adjacent zone. Circulation area lighting remained on a floor if presence was detected in any zone on that floor.

RIDI were able to produce a solution using one single lamp 54 watt T5 lamp in each of the 4 suspended panels of the chilled beam system. Virtual daylight lamps were used with a polarising sleeve to reduce glare.   The emergency lighting was incorporated in the general lighting using separate 3 hour emergency battery packs. The T5 lamps provided an illumination level of approximately 80 lumens/watt which was an important consideration to reduce the heating load on the Chilled Beam Air Conditioning System. Also the optimum energy savings were possible using day linked light sensors and presence detection.

Eddy Mealey of Parson’s Brinkerhoff explains: “The lighting in the board roomwas designed to provide asolution suitable for video conferencing. There was a combination of low voltagedownlighters and recessed fluorescent lighting wired to allow the maximum flexibility to create the different scenes required by the Audio Visual consultants. RIDI was chosen because of the quality of the luminaires, and the previous experience it had in integrating lighting within Chilled Beam Air Conditioning Systems.”