A new exterior lighting scheme at Chichester College is using a combination of floodlights and in-ground uplighters from Holophane Europe to improve the night-time appearance of the college's façade.Chichester College opened in 1964 and has recently undergone a major expansion of its facilities. As part of this work a decision was made to improve the lighting of the main building's façade.
"The building has a pre-cast concrete panel façade and looked quite bland at night," explained consulting engineer Ian White of Ian White Associates. "In conjunction with Harding Neill and Watson architects we were keen for a lighting system that would give the façade more life and highlight the ribbed texture of the panels. We were also eager to incorporate uplighting to the main colonnade to provide a floating effect," he added.
The lighting scheme comprises Holophane's Hydrel 7100 floodlights with metal halide light sources, mounted on the walls. Hydrel floodlights offer six different light distributions, so the designers were able to direct the light to precisely where it was needed.
Supplementing the floodlighting are Hydrel M9000 in-ground floodlights and LED3 in-ground uplighters using LED light sources. These are used to direct light up the building's columns to give a floating effect.
"We specified Holophane for the quality of the products and the company's ability to quickly produce visuals for the architect and client," Ian White continued. "Holophane also worked closely with us on the production of sample uplighting to demonstrate the concept of the design," he added.
The Hydrel M9000 in-ground floodlights were fitted with blue lenses for this project, matching the blue LEDs used in the LED3 fittings. This blue hue serves to complement the colour of the façade. The exclusive double lens optical arrangement of the Hydrel M9000 helps to reduce lens temperatures, as the initial lens absorbs much of the heat and reduces the temperature of the surface lens.
LED3 fittings use three Luxeon Star LED light sources, providing high efficiency with a cool beam and safe temperatures on the surface of the luminaire.
