x MADE IN CHELSEA

MADE IN CHELSEA

A bespoke heritage lighting column, yet also totally up to date with cameras and Wi Fi, is at the heart of the public walkway illumination for the new Chelsea Barracks residential development in London’s Belgravia

By Nic Paton

Whatever way you look at it, Chelsea Barracks, the 12.8-acre former Victorian military barracks in Belgravia, is a seriously highend piece of London real estate.

The luxury residential development by Qatari Diar Europe relinks Chelsea Bridge Road with the streets behind it and brings people back to an area cut off from the public for more than 150 years.

When fully completed (probably by around 2025) it will include residences, penthouses, mews and townhouses, as well as amenities including a health club and spa, business suites, lounges and cinema within the site’s The Garrison Club, plus extensive car parking and M+E below ground.

When it came to lighting the public walkways and garden squares for the latest phases of the development, lighting design studio Nulty was brought in to develop a scheme in response to a masterplan by architects Squire & Partners and Dixon Jones and landscape architects Gustafson Porter + Bowman and Kim Wilkie.

SUBTLETLY AND USE OF DARKNESS

‘The key challenge was subtlety; not to overdo it,’ Nulty founder Paul Nulty tells Lighting Journal. ‘The brief was that we wanted people to feel they could walk into Chelsea Barracks from any of the other surrounding streets and, while it has its own identity – it is, obviously, newer – still feel like a traditional streetscape that has been there for a hundred years, yet which also employs the most up-to-date technology.

‘At the same time, we didn’t want that personality to be lost within too much façade or feature lighting. The focus was to let places be dark that should traditionally be dark, to make it a very considered space, and to use warm qualities of light and colour rendering to make it look its best,’ he adds.

Central to the scheme has been the development of bespoke, signature lighting columns, in partnership with design practice Maynard and manufacturer Neri.

The heritage-style columns (and see the panel overleaf for some of the technical features) incorporate CCTV and number plate rec ognition cameras, some static and others moveable, as well as Wi Fi access points. In total there will be 60 columns installed by the time the project is completed.

‘The entire Chelsea Barracks development is intended to feel like it is part of the

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Street lighting

Street lighting

traditional fabric of heritage London, so the luminaire is designed to reflect that; to be a modern twist on a Dickensian-style gas-lamp,’ says Paul.

‘You also can’t get, I don’t think, more multidisciplinary and collaborative than this project. Gustafson Porter + Bowman came up with the vision for the scale of the landscape. Neri manufactured the column after a tender process and to a brief written by us, Maynard and Gustafson Porter + Bowman. Maynard came up with the specification for the cameras, Wi Fi and the head design. The aesthetic of it was Gustafson Porter + Bowman and the performance was by us.

‘There was also a question of how we integrated the column into the deck. It is not just a dug pole in the street; the deck is a sealed membrane, and there is a car park beneath. So, we had to work with the structural engineers and the architect to create a plinth. The plinths were then cast in place really early on. There was a very close attention to detail.

‘Then there were issues such as making sure each column was neatly aligned and not, say, sitting outside the front door of someone’s property. That level of co-ordination is a bit heart-in-themouth when you actually get on site and see them up,’ says Paul.

UNDERSTATED ILLUMINATION DETAILS

Within the development’s Mulberry and Whistler Squares, the priority was to preserve the architecture of the buildings by incorporating understated illumination details to minimise the impact of the lighting design. Entranceways therefore feature subtle uplighting and there is integrated lighting underneath the canopies.

Within the gardens, vertical lines of light have been created by positioning uplights in trees and illuminating water features to create a softly lit environment that feels both welcoming and safe.

To illuminate the development’s dark stone water feature, the team decided against lighting the body of water itself and instead have used a combination of light from the entranceways of surrounding buildings and uplights in trees to create a mirrored effect.

In Bourne Walk, one of the development’s main thoroughfares, a 150m rill has been illuminated with rhythmic, low-level lighting to create an intimate walkway that doesn’t impact on the neighbouring park.

To honour the only surviving structure from the original barracks, The Garrison Chapel, the bell tower has been lit and a blade of light added beneath each brick façade window to subtly pick out the inset detail. Handrail lighting has been positioned underneath the chapel’s new-build stairs to aid wayfinding.

All of the amenity lighting within the lighting design scheme has zero upward spill and under-canopy uplights reduce sky glow. After 10pm all of the lights automatically dim to about half of their output, while the tree accent lighting and uplighting switches off to create a more low-level scheme.

NEED TO BE COMMITTED TO THE LIGHTING

‘The experience I have taken from this is you need a team that is totally committed to it. If you’re not careful, you can end up with a separate column for cameras, a separate column for lights, and maybe a standard luminaire that has been just slightly customised,’ says Paul.

‘Gustafson Porter + Bowman and Squire & Partners were hugely committed to not wanting too much urban furniture – all those extra bits – they were quite purist. They put pressure on the consultants to achieve that but also into ensuring the client bought into the vision as well.

‘For some people, it is just a hole in the ground with lighting on it; why is this so complicated? And, while you may want to say “yeah, I agree”, I wish it were the case. For you to have, essentially, a unique or bespoke luminaire which has input from different disciplines and different needs, the client needs to understand what they are buying into and the cost of that,’ Paul adds.

INSIDE THE COLUMN

The Nulty/Neri column head has the form factor of a traditional glass-enclosed lantern. However, the sides are not enclosed, as this (especially with LED) will cause mirror reflections of the LEDs within the glass and the light to scatter in unwanted directions as the glass gets dirty over time.

The light source is therefore fixed beneath the cap of the column head, aimed downwards and the fixture is open-sided. There are three optic variances designed for asymmetric distribution with backspill control. These are: Type II (134W, 700mA, 8,500 lumen); Type II (47W, 700mA, 2,885 lumen) – lower output adjacent to apartments; and Type IV (100W, 525mA, 6,750 lumen).

The lamp comprises a 20 LED array from Cree, and has colour temperature of 4000K. This is warmer than most street lighting but is designed to complement the stonework of the development, argues Nulty. There is designed to be no upward light spill. Controls are DALI, CRI is 85 and UGR is 28.

PROJECT CREDITS

Designer: Maynard Design

Lighting designer: Nulty Lighting

Landscape architect/ designers: Gustafson Porter + Bowman; Kim Wilkie

Architects: Squires & Partners; Eric Parry Architects; Paul Davis & Partners

MEP engineers: Atelier Ten

Security consultant: Control Risks

Highways engineers: WYG

Manufacturer: Neri