The construction of five new Bennetts Associates designed buildings along the eastern fringe of the City of London created a new London square, completed in 2008. Each of the buildings has its own architectural character designed to relate to the historic context and fabric of the City of London.
To achieve the required amenity lighting without creating any clutter, we employed a combination of asymmetric wall mounted downlights and soffit mounted downlights along the narrow passageways and the colonnade that leads you into the main space.
Interior lighting from the buildings makes a deliberate contribution to the lighting of the square. Layered onto this are highlighted landscape features, including the underlit benches, and 3 large specimen trees which are backlit from high level allowing them to be seen as silhouettes against the backdrop of the buildings behind.
Supplementary amenity and security lighting is provided via downlighting from a catenary system stretched across the square at high level, to be used when the interior lighting is switched off late at night.
To preserve their sense of transparency and avoid over lighting, the after dark identity of the buildings has been provided mainly by the internal illumination of the offices. Key vertical surfaces in the lobbies are illuminated, making the lobbies themselves clearly legible on approach. To finish the lit composition selected key architectural elements including the glazed stairs, building crowns, feature screens and louvres are revealed.
Carefully located wall mounted luminaires to the glazed stair provide a sense of vertically that links the buildings to the crown of Building 6, creating a landmark for the development.