Taking Care of Business: New German Office Building Uses GE Lighting to Create Productive Working Environment
The primary design concept for the new office building on the Novartis campus was transparency and spatial flow. A continuous flexible office space features ceilings sloped at different angles and office floors interlinked by double-height spaces. To stress the open and flowing character, the main objective for lighting designers, Andreas Schulz, Martina Weiss and Thomas Möritz of Licht Kunst Licht AG, was to internally illuminate the building by indirectly highlighting the ceiling surfaces. Specially designed luminaires for the open office areas provide a softly uplit space.
"In coordination with Novartis project manager Beat Brunold, the lighting design implemented for the Maki Office Building reveals the open and flowing architectural design while providing a visually comfortable and productive working environment," says Mary Beth Gotti, manager of the GE Lighting & Electrical Institute.
In the lobby area on the ground floor, linear lighting slots with GE 39-watt T5 Starcoat® Ecolux® 3500 K fluorescent lamps are recessed between wood ceiling elements in an alternating rhythm. The same lighting scheme is carried out in the adjacent conference rooms, although specific lamp types are altered to adjust required illuminance levels.
To preserve the clean ceiling lines, the main objective in the open office areas was to highlight the sloped ceiling with indirect lighting. A custom workstation luminaire combines an individually-controlled LED task light with a GE 54-watt T5 3500 K indirect lighting component for the ambient illumination. The prismatic top cover provides a glare-free, comfortable environment.
Small meeting rooms are designed as single, oval-shaped, closed-off spaces within the center part of the office floor. To reinforce the architectural concept of "transparent glowing boxes," the canopies of these "private rooms" are designed to appear like glowing luminaires that float in between the open-office spaces. Luminaires with GE 21-watt and 28-watt T5 lamps are fitted with a laminated glazing and translucent interlayer to direct an upward lighting component to the ceiling. Working areas within each "room" and the adjacent circulation zones are uniformly lighted.
In a two-story conference space, custom-designed pendant luminaires with GE 54-watt T5 lamps fill the space with indirect light while dimmable, 20-watt low voltage halogen lamps provide direct lighting for the table.
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Media Contact: David Schuellerman, 216.266.9702 or david.schuellerman@ge.com
