Lighting for shopping and entertainment centers on the example of LETO Mall
For residents of modern cities, the role of shopping and entertainment centers has changed significantly, and long gone far beyond consumption. Today they are one of the most popular community and recreational centers. Lighting plays a key role in a process of building visitors and costumers loyalty - if nothing is visible or the lighting accents are not right, then nobody is going to buy anything. In this case, both it is important not only the internal, but also the external lighting of the facades and the surrounding area.
About the project
Mall “LETO” on Pulkovo highway in St. Petersburg is unique in its own way. Its architecture reminded us of a gift box that was hidden in a tall grass. On the main facade you can see a floral ornament, consisting of metal decorative elements in the form of branches dotted with petals.
Pic. 1 LETO Mall during the day
During the day, such a large-scale and original facade solution attracts potential customers to the shopping center, but in the dark it is lost against the backdrop of the bright advertising signs. Therefore, the architectural lighting of the shopping and entertainment center was supposed to solve this problem - to emphasize the unique appearance of the building in the evening and at night.
Lighting concept and goals
During our work on the overall concept, we decided not only to emphasize the facade solution, but to make the lighting dynamic.
Pic. 2 Vizualization
The idea to create a media façade was inspired by the construction of the building itself. The grass at the mall is made of narrow perforated panels mounted on a metal frame, which are attached directly to the facade of the box. The petals are made of matt green polycarbonate and repeat the metal elements. As soon as it became clear that they were hollow, the idea was born to make them glow from the inside. Since the thickness of the petals is only 150 mm, it was necessary to choose a low-power small light source with a wide angle. The IntiDOT series luminarie was perfectly suited for this.
This decision made it possible to control each light box individually and allowed us to “revive” the petals. A high degree of protection of the IP65 and IP67 luminaire for the driver ensured a long service life (at least 50,000 hours) of the product in temperature ranges up to -40 ° C.
Project Implementation
We did not have enough information about the object during the first stages, our sketches did not correspond to reality and we were forced to draw a concept without technical details. In this regard, field modeling was required for each individual part of the facade. Petals were modeled in the office, where we tried to use different polycarbonate, to select the optimal IntiDOT step and chose the thickness of the petals. As a result, in order to avoid pixelation on the outside of the petal, we stopped at a step of 100 mm. The polycarbonate on the outside was replaced with another, softer version that allowed us to achieve the most even light on the entire surface of the petals, without dark spots.
Pic. 3 Petal
To choose perfect dimensions and characteristics of the LED garlands of IntiDOT luminaires we carried out field modeling which also helped us to It was on the field simulation that we finally decide a place of installation of the equipment. Initially, several methods for attaching IntiDOT to perforated strips were proposed. We wanted to install garlands of luminaries behind the perforation, but only after full-scale modeling it became clear that the its holes did not transmit light.
