LIGHT AND TRANSPARENCY

FOR THE BUILDING:

The Hans Sachs House in Gelsenkirchen is the city’s new city hall following its renovation by the architects of Gerkan Marg und Partner (gmp). The expressionist brick façade by the architect Alfred Fischer from the 1920s has been retained as the envelope. But on the inside, the city hall has been converted into a modern administrative building down to the last detail.

The atrium, which is flooded with light through a large glass roof, creates an impression of size and transparency. The office floors are arranged in a circle following the historic outer wall and have glass balustrades on the hall side; the walls facing the atrium are also of glass. This means that even the offices on the inside get their fair share of daylight.

THE LIGHTING SOLUTION:

To make the best use of the daylight, the specialists commissioned for the lighting system, Winter Ingenieure, Berlin, planned the lighting in the offices with a daylight-linked control system, which at the same time is connected to a presence detector. The architects’ concept also envisaged a bright and uniform illumination of the rooms as well as ceiling illumination using luminaires with a high proportion of indirect light. A lighting solution that combines direct/indirect distribution luminaires with variants that in turn achieve a high proportion of indirect light (over 90 percent) were used: The procube pendant luminaire from Regiolux with high-quality T5 technology. This one single luminaire satisfied all of the project’s requirements for the offices because even the control components and light management sensors are already integrated in the procube. The luminaires provide ergonomic lighting with glare suppression suitable for VDU workstations and are efficiently controlled via daylight and presence sensors.

The intelligent control system alone achieves energy and costs savings of at least 30 percent. The specialists responsible for the technical planning and property monitoring at Winter Ingenieure received an overwhelmingly positive feedback from the building owners:

"The office lighting meets the high demands down to the last detail, from its general appearance, the quality of the light generated through to the easy handling of the control system. The bright and uniform illumination can also be seen from the outside in the evening through the window openings in the façade."

Regiolux developed a variant of its procube luminaire specially for use in the Hans Sachs House that achieves the required high proportion of indirect light (90 percent). With the help of integrated diffusers, almost all of the light is deflected to the ceiling so that this is illuminated uniformly. The room, walls and ceiling are brightly and uniformly lit. The light thus contributes to good vision and well-being at the workstation. The arrangement of the luminaires as planned by the gmp architects placed the variants with predominantly indirect light in the middle of the room above the desks and luminaires with a “normal” direct/indirect distribution of light alongside these.

With their linear, unobtrusive design, the "procube" luminaires blend harmoniously into the architecture. They are even used in the mayor’s offices, guaranteeing lasting energy-efficient and economical office lighting in the Hans Sachs House.