Human Centric Lighting in the new brand studio
Outdoor manufacturer Lowa puts its trust in perception-oriented lighting from ERCO
Office landscape meets world of experience: the south German outdoor shoe specialist Lowa combines creative departments and brand studio in its new premises. Light from ERCO at the location ensures both maximum visual comfort for creative work and an authentic display of the products. The zonal lighting concept is based on the principle of Human Centric Lighting and thus on human perception – entirely according to the needs of employees and the responsible use of energy resources.
Almost 100 years ago, the shoemaker's son Lorenz Wagner founded the company of Lowa in Jetzendorf, Germany, near the Alps. The company, which has advanced to become an outdoor specialist, has been drawing on the pioneering spirit of alpine mountaineers since the 1920s. The expertise is evident in the development of footwear able to withstand even the extreme conditions of mountain peaks exceeding 4,000 metres above sea level. The company is now expanding internationally, and needs more space for its rapidly growing workforce. In the adjacent town of Petershausen, Lowa set up an office and brand world for its marketing, design and development departments: this is intended to attract potential staff as well as international customers via a mountaineering-oriented interior concept and good accessibility from the nearby metropolis of Munich situated in the foothills of the Alps.
Flexible lighting for creative work and brand presentations
Atelier Seitz, which specialises in trade fair construction, developed an interior concept for the showroom and offices that reflects the sporty, functional and sustainable spirit of the brand. The interior design focuses on flowing transitions between areas for concentrated work, team cooperation and the presentation of shoe collections for customers in two showroom areas.
The lighting had to meet a wide range of requirements in accordance with the different uses: visual comfort and a high level of glare control for work on computer screens were the primary requirements in the working areas of the creative departments, whereas in the showroom areas the products had to be displayed to best advantage with high colour rendering. To enable maximum flexibility for changing office layouts and merchandise presentations throughout the location, the designers specified a combination of track, wallwashers, spotlights and track downlights from ERCO.
A focus on human perception
The lighting in the new Lowa brand world was planned so that light is only used where required by the needs of human perception – even if furnishings and fittings change in the future. Jilly track-mounted downlights thus illuminate the individual workstations in the office area and circulation zones. Here, Jilly combines the flexibility of track spotlights with the visual comfort of downlights and, thanks to their oval distribution, enables large luminaire spacing of up to two metres.
With its particularly flat housing design Jilly blends discreetly into the ceiling appearance despite a low room height and suspended track. Via a DALI interface, each workstation is also equipped with a control unit that ensures individual and thus also demand-oriented control of the lighting.
As well as Pantrac wallwashers in the corridors, flexibly alignable Opton spotlights ensure particularly uniform illumination of the walls – after all, the visual perception of a space is mainly based on orientation to vertical surfaces. In general the following applies: a uniformly illuminated wall creates a significantly brighter impression of the room than a floor illuminated to the same illuminance. If 100lx are applied to the wall instead of the floor, a room appears three to five times brighter just because another surface is illuminated. This lighting design approach also reduces energy requirements by around half for the same illuminance.
In both showroom areas, ERCO lighting tools can be flexibly aligned to the display- and discussion islands thanks to interchangeable distributions, and at the same time can highlight the presentation walls. Opton also has colour rendering of CRI 97 – an optimal value for merchandise displays as it is particularly close to daylight quality.
