LTS Licht & Leuchten is particularly proud of its role in Glasgow’s most glamorous lighting project.
LTS Licht & Leuchten has been a member of the Swedish Fagerhult Group since 2010 and thus belongs, like 11 other subsidiaries, to Europe’s third-largest luminaire manufacturer. Since then, LTS Licht & Leuchten and Fagerhult Lighting from the UK have worked closely together in the premium luminaire sector. They have realised projects together, like this innovative office building in the largest city of Scotland.
177 Bothwell Street is Glasgow’s largest office building and the third largest office property sale in the UK outside of London.
The development includes electric car charge bays, contactless technology across the site, and 318 cycle storage points. It even has a rooftop patio with Scotland’s first rooftop running track around it.
The 315,000 square foot property will be occupied by the likes of BNP Paribas, Transport Scotland, Virgin Money, AECOM, and CBRE. Supported by a ‘green loan’, the developers committed to achieving the highest environmental standards, with a market-leading EPC rating of ‘A’ (sub 8 score) and BREEAM ‘Excellent’ standard.
In addition, 177 Bothwell Street is the first commercial development in Scotland to commit to the new SmartScore accreditation for smart buildings, having also received a Platinum Wiredscore rating. This benchmark identifies best in class smart buildings that deliver an exceptional user experience, drive cost efficiency, meet high standards of sustainability, and are fully future-proof.
It’s easy to understand why it’s a project that LTS Licht & Leuchten and Fagerhult Lighting are deeply proud of being involved with.
Excelling in efficiency
Fagerhult’s involvement with the project started four years ago when the developers HFD, together with consultants Atelier 10, briefed LTS Licht & Leuchten on their ambition that the building should be ‘energy efficient and smart’.
The aim of maximising energy efficiency required the latest in smart technology. A big contributor to that goal is the smart lighting installed at Bothwell Street, developed, and installed by Fagerhult Lighting.
In its previous incarnation as The Albany Hotel, the premises had standard lighting with emergency monitoring. Now a brand-new construction of a 13-storey building with three acres of glass, it features attractive smart LED lighting with remote control, app connectivity, and Organic Response.
Organic Response works as a wireless solution that requires no wired communication like a dali system. It can be quickly installed in an existing location that has been refurbished or renovated for a potential tenant and it is straightforward to install lighting management from the box.
This blend of cutting-edge innovative systems takes the building’s lighting to another level.
Technology like no other
LTS Licht & Leuchten and Fagerhult Lighting manufactured the luminaires for a dynamic SAS330 ceiling grid across the building per the client’s requirements; balancing capability, future proofing, design, and functionality. Manufacturers are often known to put an attachment infill piece on the luminaire to enable it to fit into a nonstandard lay in ceiling grid. Instead, LTS and Fagerhult made a bespoke solution.
LTS and Fagerhult made the entire bespoke fitting in its factories, which came complete with a 500mm flex and a plug. This tailored, manufactured solution was far easier to install, a mere matter of unboxing, offering up and plugging in, which reduces site waste and install time of installing plugs and cutting cable.
With an entirely Fagerhult manufactured fitting, the installation was not only quicker, as there is less likelihood of things going wrong, but the unit is much easier to replace for any future requirements.
All luminaires at Bothwell Street are endowed with a Constant Light Level (CLO) that maintains L100 throughout its life. A high L-number is significant as it is the basis for the maintenance factor when designing a lighting scheme. Since CLO increases the maintenance factor, it improves optimisation and sustainability and leads to requiring less luminaries than a fixture with a lower L number (L90/L80).
The entire enterprise involved 25 variants of linear luminaires called Lichtkanal from LTS Licht & Leuchten, all of which are configurable, as is Fagerhult’s standard. Fagerhult Lighting Ltd. visited their colleagues in Germany to ensure the spacing and pitching on the LEDs were perfect to the nearest millimetre, essential for delivering a homogenous light output.
Almost 2,200 metres of premium Lichtkanal were planned and installed in close cooperation in this office project.
All fittings blend seamlessly into the environment, achieved by receiving a SAS330 ceiling tile and colour matching it with the custom luminaire. Only then could engineers be satisfied that the chosen colour for the fittings would integrate with their surroundings.
The result at 177 Bothwell Street is end-to-end innovative LED lighting, built at an impressive pace despite the logistical difficulties of the pandemic lockdown. It proved critical to ensuring the control aspect and light type went together, involving hours of consultation between developers and engineers.
Controllable, responsive
177 Bothwell Street’s occupiers will find a lighting matrix that creates an ambient, intelligent, and sustainable working environment. When a person is in a particular area, the lighting goes on above them.
If occupancy is not detected after ten minutes, the lighting level dims to 10%.
If that individual gets up and moves, the light will follow them, creating a corridor of organic, responsive lighting. This compares with traditional lighting systems which often light large zones, regardless of who is there – wasting potentially vast amounts of energy.
Heat mapping comes as standard and can help companies at 177 Bothwell Street discover those parts of their premises that are rarely used. From this data, they might choose to repurpose these areas to better support their business needs.
The lighting at Bothwell Street is controlled remotely by an application developed by Fagerhult. This software allows building owners to customise the light to exactly how they want it for their working and security practices.
Tailor-made apps can deliver substantial benefits compared to ready-made applications, such as automatic driver updating to ensure that it always adheres to LTS´s and Fagerhult’s high software standard. There’s no need for different companies to take individual responsibility for upgrading the software or ensuring that it is working correctly, thus the building owners can be confident that everything is optimised.
Connected to the future
The lighting system enjoys configurability with applications available now as well as those that haven’t even been made yet. The fact that intelligent lighting can integrate with so many modern technologies means that lighting can be crucial in providing information to non-lighting systems. This is achieved using Fagerhult’s Tridium Niagra driver to integrate with the BMS.
Lighting data can help facilities management make productivity maps to show areas more likely to require more intense cleaning or which might be available for a different purpose due to their low levels of usage.
Now that this ambitious project has shown what can be done with efficient, innovative technology, a benchmark has been created.
177 Bothwell Street will likely inspire future office developments, encouraging connected, smart solutions that are even greener and more integrated.
Connectivity is the future. Integrated technology provides people with focused facilities that cannot be matched by conventional lighting.
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