LEGAL HIGHS

Designing and installing the new lighting scheme for the high-rise offices of legal firm Freshfields at 100 Bishopsgate in London created an array of logistical challenges – and that was even before the sudden arrival of Covid-19 restrictions

JUNE 2021 LIGHTING JOURNAL 7

Architectural lighting

Main image: the illuminated spiral staircase at the new Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer offices in London. Above: one of the team-meet points. All photographs by Tom Lee

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, better known simply as Freshfields, is one of the world’s leading legal services firms. Founded in the eighteenth century, it is a member of the prestigious ‘Magic Circle’ of top London-based law firms.

Having previously been headquartered on Fleet Street for some 30 years, the firm has now moved to the prestigious 100 Bishopsgate and we at 18 Degrees were asked to develop a new lighting scheme for the office space, working in close collaboration with the interior architect ID:SR.

The project, which began about four years ago, is all part of a wider drive by the law firm to modernise and bring the business into line with its guiding principles, which are very much focused around energy and sustainability.

As a business, it also needs to be sure it keeps on attracting and retaining the best staff, both graduates and at more senior levels. So our brief was very much about creating a space that is enjoyable to be in, healthy but also collaborative and multi-functional.

It also needed to be a space where the firm could bring its clients to hold meetings. This can bring its own complications, for example if there are people coming to same space who can’t meet each other for legal reasons. So, again, it was about having and creating spaces that worked through the day and into the night. 100 Bishopsgate, developed by Brookfield Properties, consists of two mixed-use buildings, situated right on the eastern edge of the City, one 40 storeys high and the other over 32 floors. Because they are such tall buildings, and right in the Square Mile, organising the fit-out was quite challenging, because there were so many lifts, something that, as we shall see, became a bit of an issue as the project progressed and Covid-19 appeared.

EXTENSIVE GLASS FAÇADES

When you walk around the building the first thing that strikes you is the most incredible, panoramic, views. You can look out and see right across the Houses of Parliament or right down to the bridges around London. That was a blessing and a curse, in that it was both an amazing space but also very distracting!

On top of this, with the extensive glass façades, a huge amount of daylight comes into the space every day. Daylight is wonderful of course – until it is a bright sunny day and it is hitting you right where you are trying to work and focus. Having said that, the floorplate is not ridiculously deep, so you get excellent daylight availability most of the day.

To help with daylight glare there are solar blinds in all of the offices. However, being such a tall building and surrounded by so many other tall buildings, you also get sunlight shafting in from other buildings, too.

As the sun moves and hits the building opposite, suddenly you have got direct light on a north elevation, which is strange, but is just the way the buildings are. In the client spaces, or spaces where they needed even more control, there are blackouts and solar binds, and in some cases sheer blinds too, helping to vary and filter the amount of natural light.

ADAPTIVE EQUALITY

When it came to the lighting, it was about creating different spaces that could be adaptive. We did a lot of engagement with the partners and staff, and what became very clear was that some people liked to work in an almost candlelit room while others like to sit directly under the sun. And those people all need to work in a similar sort of space. So, it was about trying to find a way of dealing with that.

Another impact aspect for Freshfields was equality. Its partnership with Stonewall and other equalities and civil rights groups flows into its everyday practice. They wanted to ensure that, while this is a prestigious space it is also a very equal space. For example, if you go to the print room, it actually has some of the best views in the entire building.

It was important that every person in the business was treated equally right down to the type of light everyone has. People in support functions are treated the same way as those in a fee-earning position. This was something we strongly supported, as great lighting should be for everyone.

For the office spaces, we used a core palette of luminaires including the Erco Compar and iGuzzini Laser (round and blade). The majority of the staff work in two-person cellular offices. The system is designed to only provide lighting when

Architectural lighting

Two views of the bespoke spiral staircase. A custom linear LED has been fitted to the timber handrail. With the spiral curving in two directions, this was a challenging piece of engineering to get right

you ask for it. So, if you go into your office, the lighting doesn’t come on unless you ask for it and then it will detect if you are not there and switch it off.

Because of the amount of daylight in the space, most people won’t need the lighting on in the day and that helps with the building operation; it doesn’t really matter who comes in when, the system is regulating what light is where. This helps to reduce the energy consumption.

We chose the Erco Compar light fixture because it could be used both as an uplight or downlight and could be controlled independently by the staff member. For those who therefore like it brighter, they can have it all on and for those who just like candlelight they can have a little uplighting.

BRINGING DIVERSITY TO THE SPACE

A lot of the work outside of meetings or going to court is of course screen-based; people spend a lot of their working day at their computer and looking at screens. It was important therefore within the functionality of the office space to create spaces where there aren’t any screens and where the lighting can be very different, less task-based and more enabling of interaction and collaboration.

For these more collaborative spaces, we chose luminaires such as Lumino’s linear range, Radiant Lighting Centura 40, Viabizzuno custom fixtures and decorative lights from Marset, Grok and Roll & Hill.

We were throughout very much trying to bring diversity to the spaces; so it is not just lots of tiles everywhere and feels flat. The team-meet points feel very different, for example, they feel much more like a hospitality space. The front-of-house spaces, too, feel much more like a hospitality space, and that helps to give it a bit of variety, so it’s not just ‘oh I’m in the office all day’.

The Freshfields tenancy is powered from 100% renewable energy and the LED system and associated controls helped the project achieve a BREEAM ‘excellent’ sustainability rating and SKA ‘gold’ rating. In fact, the new fitout has resulted in a 30% energy saving compared to their previous accommodation.

BESPOKE SPIRAL STAIRCASE

One particularly challenging area was the spiral staircase. With the handrail, which is where the lighting is, we didn’t want to put any electrics up through the steelwork because it is sheet steel that makes the balustrade. So, the whole staircase was made in the Netherlands and then cut up, brought to site, taken up in the lifts, and then fitted back together again.

The Light Lab worked with the stair manufacturer, EE Stairs, to develop a custom linear LED that was fitted to the timber handrail, which itself was fabricated

Architectural lighting

Freshfields wanted spaces that felt inclusive and welcoming as well as functional. It was important every person in the business was treated equally, right down to the type of light everyone has

on a a six-axis CNC machine. With the spiral curving the handrail in two directions; that was a really challenging piece of engineering to get right. Light Lab worked with EE Stairs to share models and work out exactly how it was all going to be put together on site once it had been rewelded together.

COVID COMPLICATIONS

The other massively challenging element, at least logistically, was the small matter of the sudden arrival of a worldwide pandemic.

The building was completed in sections, going downwards, just because of trying to get stuff in and out of the lifts. We were due to complete in October last year and so, when Covid hit in March 2020, we were right in the thick of it. There was an average of 600 people a day on site when it hit; so it was then a very challenging process of how to manage everything.

It was often seemingly stupid things, like you work in a tall building and normally you can get eight people into a lift. To go from the loading dock to the 21st floor, which is where the site office was, took 60 seconds. But suddenly we could only do one person per lift car. So just getting the right number of people on site each day was a logistical nightmare.

There was a point where we had to say to people they could only take an elevator up and then had to walk down. For the contractors it was really difficult; no one at the time knew what Covid was or how long this was going to go on for. We also knew that you can’t fit a glass partition with people standing 2m away; that’s not possible or safe.

In fairness to ISG, which was the fit-out contractor, they really took it on board and you were greeted; there were videos on how to get in, masks, glasses, the works. But it was very challenging conditions.

For me, apart from Covid – which was a seriously steep learning curve in itself – the main learning point from this project was that, when you’re working with a hugely tall building, the logistics can be phenomenally complicated. A lot of the things you can often get away with on other projects in terms of fixing you just can’t in a tall building. For example, the tolerance on the floor plates is actually quite high. As the building goes up, obviously, it gets heavier, and therefore you get a greater level of deflection as the building rises.

Even just things like being able to go in and get a laser survey and then use Revit to work out where there are or aren’t clashes. All that pre-planning process right through to how do you co-ordinate everything – there are some 1,200 lights per floor across 13 floors, for example – even just in terms of managing that it is hard. How do you document something in a way that is manageable and work it out?

I also realised that a cellular office space is harder to illuminate than an open-plan office because you lose the efficiency of doubling up your lights. Lawyers read a lot of papers and books and so you end up having to go for a higher light level because they do so much fine detailed work.

So, you have these conflicting requirements; you need the lowest possible power density and usage but you also want a really high level of light. Getting things like power density right was quite challenging, because you don’t some of the efficiencies you would normally have in an open-plan office.

Christopher Knowlton MSc, BA(Hons), IALD, MSLL, AILP is director at 18 Degrees Below

SPACE FOR RECOVERY

If lighting wants to be at the forefront of the ‘connected place’ (as we might be better off calling ‘smart cities’), it needs to get serious about adding intelligent controls as standard to LED upgrades as well as more savvy about recognising the opportunities that may come from post-pandemic recovery strategies

By Mark Cooper

As most lighting professionals will well know, the concept of ‘smart cities’ has been with us for some time now. Yet there is still some hesitancy in deploying the technology, either because of lack of funding, unclear strategy, failed leadership and unclear vision, or just down to not knowing when and where to start.

In this article, therefore, I will try to help you to overcome some of those barriers, including how and where to start, what technology choices should be made and how to recognise that you are on the path to a smart city, as we are not going to complete this journey in a single article or a single project!

So, let’s make a start. First of all, can we agree that there is a lot of hype around smart cities and most people can’t even agree on what constitutes a smart city?!

UNDERSTANDING ‘THE CONNECTED PLACE’

This is maybe because it means so many different things to so many people. In fact, do we want it forever linked to ‘a city’? Personally, I am tending to move away from the term smart city; it is too big a concept to describe what most of us are trying to achieve. I prefer the term ‘connected place’. I define a ‘connected place’ as an area that is commonly used in terms of human and social interactions and indicates somewhere with an ambiguous boundary. Connecting people, things and places can do several things: • Improve services (for people) • Reduce impacts (on the environment, on society, on people) • Reduce the cost of delivery (for taxpayers, for customers, for society) In short, connecting people improves the outcome; it improves the quality of life; and it pays back in spades!

By creating a series of connected places, be these a village square, a park, a road or highway, buildings or campus, we will eventually have a large enough volume to have created, yes, a smart city.

Critically, it is important from the outset to have a clear vision of what we want our outcomes to be for each connected place and what, in turn, the big-picture vision might therefore be for the authority as a whole. Once we have joined these projects together, then we can identify the goals, departmental interactions and how to judge the success of each project and how they connect as a whole. This, in turn, enables a business case to be developed for each project, whilst at the same time maintaining the overall vision for the authority, where it is going and what it is trying to achieve.

Up to now, most projects we have seen developed for smart city applications can be grouped into one strategic area of ‘smart highways’. These projects are usually easier to quantify in terms of return on investment (ROI) and have a shorter-term payback period. These applications include (but are not limited to) smart: • Street lighting • Bins • Gullies • Parking • Air quality/environmental monitoring • Traffic/people counting

BARRIERS TO GROWTH AND EFFICIENCY

So, it makes sense that, if we can keep all of the data displayed in one system and connect all the sensors to one network, then that’s what we need to do – right? Wrong! Why? Because it is almost impossible, and certainly not efficient, to have all sensors on one network.

There is no one single network for a smart city or connected place; whatever you’re putting in place, you’re going to dealing with and navigating a blend of different networks for the right applications.

Therefore, trying to make a sensor fit on to a network that’s not optimised for the application it is monitoring is setting the project up to fail before it has even started. Each of the above applications, for example, has very distinct needs based upon the amount of data, speed of response and network transmission capabilities required.

It is the same for the data that is generated by these sensors; having smart parking data and air quality information displayed in your street lighting CMS system is, in my humble opinion, pointless!

In 2006, the mathematician and entrepreneur Clive Humby coined the phrase: ‘Data is the new oil.’ Many people took this to mean that, to generate wealth, all you need to do is control and collect data. However, to my mind, that’s only half the picture. Data has no value unless you do something with it. You need to be able to visualise it, analyse it and, crucially, generate actions from it.

For example, every street lighting CMS system I have seen is little more than an asset management system. Don’t get me wrong, it can display your asset data in nice graphs but it is far from the machine learning and artificial intelligence systems needed to collect

An illustration of a ‘ReCharge Parklet’, as envisioned by Susan Claris of Arup. See overleaf for Mark Cooper’s discussion of how these might work for smart cities

data from multiple sensors on various networks and combine this with historic records held by the authority and then add in other open-source data sets from national agencies. Yet it is this combination that provide a complete picture and actual valuable data-driven insights for the authority.

The good news is that, not only do these systems already exist, they can output the data in many various forms and to many different places. These could be a series of live dashboards for the highways office, a website for public consumption, or a complex set of tables or charts for the management team. It could even be generated as tailored and individualised sets of data and dashboards for each user, be they lighting engineers, energy managers, traffic engineers or planners.

So, having looked at some of the pitfalls that stop connected places from becoming a smart city and driving the maximum value from your investments, let’s now look at how we might maximise those investments. I’d suggest two key solutions. 1) Don’t get hung up on the technology or the network that’s going to be used. As already highlighted, different technologies and networks will all have to come together at some point. I would, however, recommend that, when it does come to networks, you specify the use of standardised and open-protocol systems and avoid proprietary technology; both these will minimise vendor lock-in.

2) Use a specialised smart city consultant to help develop the technology solution and guide the development of applications and overall strategy for the authority. Don’t rely on manufacturers solely to shape your project. Manufacturers, of course, can bring a lot of expertise to bear, but they can and will only provide information from their point of view. So, seek some independent information and advice.

CREATING THE CONNECTED PLACE

Let’s now look at some simple solutions that can be implemented quickly to help you develop your connected place project: adding intelligent controls to LED upgrades as standard, and maximising the opportunities that may come for regrowth, renewal and regeneration post pandemic.

We are all familiar with the benefits that moving to LED street lighting can do for an authority, with 50% energy savings and the ability to introduce part-night dimming lighting levels through programmable drivers. If you add intelligent lighting controls to this set-up there is a possibility not only to be able to refine those lighting levels to provide a potential of an extra 15% savings but also to reduce maintenance operations and the carbon footprint through reduced patrolling, and maintenance operations.

To me, it seems a no-brainer to do this; the business case is proven and the payback period when these controls are implemented at the same time as replacing the lantern is greatly reduced.

Did you know, according to the latest UK Roads Liaison Group State of the nation report, in the UK we have replaced nearly half of our lighting stock with LED lanterns, but only 50% of those new LED units have had intelligent street lighting controls added to them [1]?

What this illustrates is that, despite the progress that has been made, we are missing out on the potential of extra energy savings, the increased efficiency of the operational service and, if chosen correctly, the ability to create a network that could support the deployment of other smart applications using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors.

With the development of more sophisticated integrated connection and control systems in street lighting, devices such as the ZHAGA book 18 socket and D4i drivers, we can add even more intelligent control options. Innovations such as radarbased dynamic lighting sensors can provide an additional 25% energy saving above and beyond those of just swapping to LED lighting by providing full lighting output as and when it is needed.

Or take dimming to 20% output when there is no pedestrian or vehicular activity detected. These units don’t even need connected lighting controls to work; they can be complete standalone systems and will still provide that additional 25% energy saving, reduced light pollution and increased safety of full lighting output when needed.

Here I want to add a note of caution, however. Although I applaud the development of the Zhaga book 18 socket and the dedicated control units for outdoor lighting, it does not make the connection of IoT sensors any easier or simpler to deploy.

The voltage restriction on the D4i driver (24v dc) means there are a limited number of outdoor sensors for this system. Ultimately, this system will make connected street lighting system cheaper to deploy, but it does nothing to aid a smart city deployment. Indeed, you can even argue it could actually hinder the ease of deployment by rendering one of the most valuable assets an authority owns (a street lighting column) more expensive because of the extra cost required to utilise and maintain it if that authority wishes to pursue a smart city plan.

BUILDING BACK BETTER?

Let us move on to our second simple connected place project solution: piggy-backing on, but also driving forward, the government’s post-pandemic recovery agenda.

In March this year, the government published an infrastructure policy paper entitled Build Back Better: our plan for growth[2]. This aimed to establish growth funds and frameworks to help the UK bounce back after the Covid-19 pandemic. Several areas directly relate back to our struggling high streets and communities and how investment in these areas can have a very real impact on people and places.

For example, the paper states that: ‘High quality infrastructure is crucial for economic growth, boosting productivity and competitiveness. More than this, it is at the centre of our communities.’

Critically, it adds: ‘Infrastructure helps connect people to each other, people to businesses, and businesses to markets, forming a foundation for economic activity and community prosperity.’

Digital connectivity – as we have all discovered over the past year – is unlocking new and previously unimaginable ways of working and is now essential to facilitate public services, including healthcare and education.

Alongside this, the rise in publicly provided Wi Fi for access to these services and opportunities is something that every authority, from a town council to a county authority, should have included in its vision for a connected place.

Indeed, the government in the same Build Back Better report has recognised this and plans to stimulate short-term economic activity and drive long-term productivity improvements via record investment in broadband, roads, rail and cities, all as part of capital spending plans worth £100bn next year.

There are funding options within this to aid authorities to meet this challenge, to boost infrastructure investment in all parts of the country, help people connect to opportunity across the UK and assist areas in levelling up. The aim/hope is that people will see tangible improvements in their local area; feel pride once more in their communities. Indeed, four funds – Levelling Up, Shared Prosperity, Towns, and Future High Streets – have been created precisely to invest in local areas and local infrastructure [3].

One way to meet these challenges has grown from the necessity of meeting the social distancing challenges of the Covid 19 pandemic: ‘parklets’. These are parking space-sized gardens or seating areas in cities and town centres that could have furniture, such as seating, plants (including a herb garden), bike parking or anything else you can fit into a car parking space or two.

One way to take this innovation further, and bring in an opportunity for lighting professionals, has been mooted by Susan Claris, associate director in Arup’s Transport Consulting Group. This is the idea of ‘ReCharge Parklet’, where USB charging for things like e-bikes and e-scooters is incorporated into these spaces [4]. Susan’s original idea was born of frustration at electric vehicle charging posts going in, in the middle of, the footway.

There are now systems available that can utilise free solar energy from panels integrated into benches and street furniture. These provide USB and wireless charging points for phones and tablets whilst you sit and relax drinking your coffee and taking advantage of the free public Wi Fi provided by this connected place.

If you add an e-bike or e-scooter charging system, you suddenly have a sustainable urban mobility hub that can provide a combination of connectivity and a place to rest whilst enjoying the beverage purchased from the adjacent high street outlet. In other words, you very much have a hybrid connected place.

Importantly, these connected places meet all the objectives of the Build Back Better policy and ambition. They provide many of the features that are most likely to help the high street recover from the pandemic. Crucially, they can provide a crucial stepping stone, and enabler, for a local authority to meet its vision for a smart and connected future.

Mark Cooper IEng MILP is director and founder of consultancy Smart City Products

[1] ‘State of the nation: 2020 street lighting report’, UK Roads Liaison Group, Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation, UK Lighting & Technology Board, Streetlighting Advisory Services, January 2021. Available online at: https://ukrlg.ciht. org.uk/media/12713/sotn-report.pdf [2] ‘Build Back Better: our plan for growth’, The Treasury, March 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/build-back-better-our-plan-for-growth [3] ‘Levelling Up’ fund, https://www.gov.uk/ government/publications/levelling-up-fund-prospectus; ‘Shared Prosperity’ fund, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8527/; ‘Towns’ fund, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2020-0176/; ‘Future High Streets’ fund, https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/future-high-streets-fund [4] ‘Five fantastic parklet designs and why we need more of them’, High Streets Taskforce, January 2021, https://www.highstreetstaskforce.org.uk/resources/ details/?id=438cc9f4-4698-4d31-bdd5-13cb27c2fb98