Why Human-Centric Lighting Matters

Above. Interior fi nishes lend texture and softness—such as patterned wall tiles, neutral terrazzo fl oors, and carpet-like fl oor tiles—while meeting the durability requirements of a healthcare environment. Furnishings were selected to accommodate seating for a variety of users and promote activity as needed.

Below. Clinics are organized as modules and typically contain 12 exam-room pods with separate patient and staff circulation zones to allow a more personal treatment experience.

radiology center serving the entire campus, rehabilitation facilities, and a pharmacy. It also contains a variety of centers focusing on specialties such as musculoskeletal health, breast health, urology, pain, apheresis, stem-cell transplants, and a range of related imaging services.

Throughout, clinics are organized as modules and typically contain 12 exam-room pods with separate patient and staff circulation zones to allow a more personal treatment experience. By dividing “onstage” and “offstage” tasks, the pods operate as well-oiled machines. The exam rooms are designed to be adaptable depending on schedules and specialties. Support and treatment areas are often shared between two clinics, significantly reducing the building’s square footage while encouraging interdisciplinary interaction.

CO Architects conceived each floor with a distinct identity to aid in wayfinding. The designers integrated signage and incorporated intuitive color cues that reference natural elements, from grass green in the basement to sunny shades on upper floors. Other interior finishes lend texture and softness—such as patterned wall tiles, neutral terrazzo floors, and carpet-like floor tiles—while meeting the durability requirements of a healthcare environment. Furnishings were selected to accommodate seating for a variety of users and promote activity as needed.

The designs of the faculty and staff workplaces within the Pavilion had to not only bring together personnel from several different specialties and generations, but also create an environment that promotes cross-pollination. CO Architects conceived open work areas in which staff can choose from a variety of seating heights. They also integrated informal lounges and hoteling zones throughout the building.

According to the architect, the design is nimble in order to balance diverse needs, while accommodating cutting-edge technologies and new models of working and thinking. CA

Sources listed below are linked at commercialarchitecturemagazine.com/

1904koman.

CO Architects, coarchitects.com

• Koman Family Outpatient Pavilion, health.ucsd.

edu/locations/Pages/outpatient-pavilion.aspx

Human-centric lighting (HCL) uses smart-controllable LED lighting systems to simulate the characteristics of natural daylight, giving something back to us that we often lack indoors. Field studies show that all age groups can benefit from HCL solutions.

Today’s LED and lighting-control technologies are making it possible to do much more with lighting than illuminate a space.

Alberto Pierotti, LEDVANCE

“ H uman-centric lighting” is an emerging best practice in lighting design that leverages the full capabilities of the LED light source to serve occupant needs in terms of visual and non-visual well being. It may have the ring of a marketing buzzword but, in reality, it is founded on solid science, actionable, and shown to produce tangible positive outcomes. In short, it is a revolution in how lighting systems are designed to serve people.

For most of history, lighting was designed without knowledge of the non-visual effects of illumination. As a consequence, lighting systems were fixed in light output and color once installed, and lighting design focused illumination on horizontal work surfaces.

Then everything changed: • LED systems offered easy and cost-effective dimming in addition to the ability to adjust shades of white light, emit saturated colors, and even produce unique spectral recipes for special applications. • Lighting-design best practices recognized the importance of vertical illumination to creating bright, open, and visually comfortable spaces. • Scientists discovered the presence of photoreceptors in the eye that connect to the body’s circadian system, which regulates bodily functions—such as the sleep-wake cycle—based on 24-hour cycles, or circadian rhythms.

This has given rise to the unified concept of human-centric lighting (HCL), which LightingEurope, Brussels, and the International Association of Lighting Designers, Chicago, jointly defined as lighting that “supports health, well-being, and performance of humans by combining visual, biological, and emotional benefits of light.”

Visual benefits include the industry’s traditional focus on good visibility, visual comfort, safety, and orientation. Biological benefits include alertness, concentration, cognitive performance, and stable sleep. Emotional benefits include improved mood, increased energy, better relaxation, and impulse control.

LightingEurope quantified the economic value of these benefits for various building types in a landmark 2015 study conducted by A.T. Kearney, Chicago, in which HCL was estimated to offer significant potential cost savings related to enhanced worker productivity and fewer errors, absences, and accidents.

ENABLERS What makes HCL possible is technology properly applied to spaces through design best practices that, in turn, are promoted by standards.

First, let’s look at technology. Traditionally, aside from special applications such as boardrooms, lighting systems were installed as static light producers. After installation, light output and color quality more or less remained fixed. Aside from changing failed lamps, lighting was largely forgotten.

With LED technology, this has changed.

Most LED luminaires are either dimmable as a standard feature or a standard option, with a negligible cost premium. This dimming provides inherent flexibility in adjusting light levels in response to daylight or occupant needs. Further, it allows control of the luminaire’s color output through: • separately dimmable arrays of warm- or cool-white LEDs • color-mixing arrays of red, green, blue, and amber LEDs • adding separately dimmable LEDs to white LEDs.

These approaches provide a range of capability from limited adjustment of correlated color temperature across a set of channels to producing any shade of white light (from very cool/bluish to very warm/reddish), plus a virtually limitless range of saturated colors.

Various general lighting products are now available that provide manual and programmable color tuning, imitate the warm color of incandescent lamps while being dimmed, and/or offer precise color matching between LED products and calibrate to maintain constant color output over their life. What all of this has in common is that how a space appears depends on how it’s lighted. Change the color quality of the light source, and you change how the space appears, with associated effects on visual rendering, perception, and mood.

Now let’s switch to application and design. These capabilities could be applied in many ways, ranging from the cosmetic to utility: • changing color output to accommodate changing retail displays and to ensure merchandise appears visually vibrant and appealing • signaling time for different activities in a classroom • using saturated color to indicate occupancy and availability of private office users • changing color, or CCT (correlated color temperature) to adapt lighting to different situations for the medical environment, e.g., examination rooms versus reducing patient stress in a hospital • tuning color to saturated colors to transform a functional space into an entertainment venue • altering color output to precisely match space decor after final materials and furnishings are installed in a hospitality space, with future retuning available if new furnishings are installed • adjusting white-light temperature to adapt a restaurant space based

The A.T. Kearney 2015 study shows a number of micro and macro benefits for the medical sector. For a hospital with 1,000 beds and 1,500 employees, the study indicates that human-centric lighting can increase capacity utilization through higher attractiveness for new patients and can cut treatment costs through reduced treatment times. In addition, sick leave taken by care staff could go down, and employee satisfaction, and therefore staff retention, could go up.