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NYT · The D ig i ta l Magaz ine of L ight ing & a rch i tec tu re

No 590 • 2012

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P 5 • AP Møllerskolen

17 • Moments

22 • Blue Water

33 • Floral Emporium

48 • Ruby

59 • Kafferiet

pro jec ts

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AP MøllerskolenDown where the Schlei bends...

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AP MøllerskolenDown where the Schlei bends...

A. P. Møller Skolen in Schleswig has given the Danish mi-nority in North Germany a unique complex that is the focus of daily life for around 550 Danish-speaking pupils. The school was designed by C. F. Møller and the complex came into being thanks to a generous donation by the A. P. Møller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation. The new school was planned as a co-educational establishment covering pre-school to upper secondary level and enjoys a beautiful location on the northern outskirts of Schleswig by the Schlei, the narrow fjord that opens into the Baltic Sea.

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The complex forms a cohesive unit with a large, rectan-gular central building with a wedge-shaped roof, which is surrounded by three wings on three floors with flat roofs. The wings are built in yellow brick, giving the complex a distinctively Danish stamp, while the large windows in the façades offer pupils and teachers a wonderful view over the gentle landscape and fjord. The initial impres-sion made by the elongated shape from a distance is of the school being both low and quite small in the large, open landscape. But this perception changes as you get closer. The school grows and grows, and you rapidly be-come aware that you are entering an imposing building.

You only have to take a few steps inside before you sud-denly find yourself in the middle of the central building’s large main hall. It is an enormous space, with a large, double-height glass wall opposite the main entrance looking out on the open landscape. You are on the point of leaving the building again, but you stop and are com-pelled to take the room in: large wall surfaces of yellow brick, maple panelling, beech block floors, and the big staircase that both gives access to the upper storeys and acts as seating. And up under the sloping louvre ceiling, which is intersected by transverse light wells, hangs Olafur Eliasson’s light sculpture Tellurium with the eight

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planets of the solar system all in a line – plus the sun of course. You feel delighted and overwhelmed at the same time. It is in-telligent architecture.

A. P. Møller Skolen was envisaged as a town, the intention be-ing to create an open teaching structure with learning here, there and everywhere, and the main hall is the town’s market-place – or town hall square if you like – on three different levels with mezzanines, balconies and staircases. In addition to the main hall, the ground floor contains a canteen, reading areas and a student lounge, with a large sports hall extending from it to the west. From the main hall there is also access to the school’s south-facing assembly hall, which projects from the fa-çade in the form of a rectangular box to a height of two storeys. Part of the mezzanine is fitted out as a reading area and stu-dent lounge, with the rest being used as what is known as a knowledge centre. The three wings that surround the central building contain practical rooms and the school administration on the ground floor, while the other two floors accommodate classrooms, various special-subject rooms and conference rooms. There is also access from here to a couple of large boxes, which extend into the main hall and house a staff lounge, two rooms for IT lessons and a single classroom. The student cloak-room is on two balconies, which traverse the main hall and ad-join the sports hall. With their green lockers, they make a strik-ing impression in the overall picture.

But it is not just about intelligent architecture and good materi-als. To ensure a well-regulated working environment, the tech-nical side of things has to be up to the mark too, which is why architects C. F. Møller drew up a very detailed requirement spec-

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ification for high-quality lighting and ventilation with a special em-phasis on design. Louis Poulsen was involved in the process right from the start of course and developed an overall solution that ful-filled the requirements in every particular. In addition to the tech-nical specifications, the requirements covered everything from de-sign parameters, such as clean, continuous lines, to floating systems detached from the ceiling and longitudinal aluminium profiles with integrated lighting, ventilation, sensors, loudspeakers, transview-ers, signs, emergency lighting etc. The ventilation had to be con-cealed and have a large supply area with motor-controlled damp-ers, apart from which it had to be possible to adapt the system to at least 80% of existing ceiling systems on the market.

Louis Poulsen chose an overall solution using narrow aluminium service ducts, 120 cm in length, which can be installed regardless of the ceiling type and fitted with a number of different luminaires and other technical solutions. The actual lighting consists of double parabolic luminaires fitted with a 26W T5 fluorescent tube with 80% efficiency. For illuminating boards in classrooms and practical rooms, the luminaires have asymmetric shades, which concen-trate the light on the boards. Apart from the board lighting, all the luminaires are daylight-controlled with sensors mounted close to the back wall in the various classrooms and practical rooms. This means that the artificial light is adjusted automatically as the day-light changes, providing a comfortable lighting level in the rooms. The narrow ceiling luminaires are used throughout the building, but occur in different versions with Beat downlights and halogen spots, for example, and as a supplement to other types of lighting. Louis Poulsen fulfilled the requirement for floating lighting by hav-ing air gaps on both sides of the narrow luminaire and service ducts, which not only supplement the ventilation, but also create

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distance to the ceiling surfaces. It is a very ingenious solution that visu-ally separates luminaires and ceil-ings in a well-thought-out manner. In the large main hall Louis Poulsen chose a special solution using the Beat downlight luminaire, integrat-ing three downlights in a rectangu-lar stainless steel plate and then fit-ting them in the large, sloping louvre ceiling. The idea was to accentuate the luminaire instead of concealing it, but effort was also put into dis-tributing the luminaires in such a way as to give the big space visual tranquillity and regularity. This, it has to be said, has been achieved with great success and with respect for the architecture.

The student cloakrooms on the first and second floors are a chapter in themselves. The green painted wall elements encircling the black var-nished metal boxes of the lockers are very visible from the main hall and represent a bold, refreshing fea-ture in relation to the large surfaces of yellow brick and maple panelling. In order to create extra depth in the spaces between the lockers, the cor-ners between the partition walls and

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back wall are fitted with vertical LED lighting strips. This gives the partition walls the appearance of free-standing units that do not join up with the back wall. This produc-es a very striking effect – or rather: a clever optical illusion.

The lighting in the large sports hall is provided by louvre ceiling lumi-naires in accordance with the cur-rent regulations for sports halls, but the height chosen for the room means that the technical fittings are almost camouflaged and so more integrated in the overall pic-ture. Together with the transverse light wells, the luminaires provide a soft, pleasant light in daylight hours, as well as even, soft lighting of the yellow brick walls and maple pan-elling. The sports hall is also used for large events, so grandstands can be erected at the sides without the lighting having to be changed. The lighting system is therefore equipped with dimming facilities, which can, for example, be used when concerts or theatrical perfor-mances are put on in the hall.

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Moments

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The feeling of experiencing a moment of eternity. Pictures of the here and now which are burned into our memories. Beautiful, grand mo-ments which we treasure in our souls and carry with us the rest of our lives.

The best photographers capture these moments through their lenses. A vast number of pictures are taken during a photo session, and yet a few stand out strikingly. We believe the photographer has captured such unique moments in the pictures of Aeros and Snow which fill these pages.

It all began when Jesper Ray suggested this location to Louis Poulsen. It is a hotel in Phuket, Thailand, which he was covering. The pictures he showed us ignited the dreams and creativity of the staff in our marketing and product department. There was no question about which lights we should portray in this location. Everyone suggested

Moments

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the new white edition of Ross Lovegrove’s organic Aeros pendant and Louise Campbell’s controversial Snow room light.

The results are surprising, almost liberating. Everyone had a clear ex-pectation of the result and felt they were familiar with the pictures be-fore they were taken. When we saw them we knew we had helped to create a magic moment.

One location, two light fixtures, a photographer and an idea – and a result which inspires imagination and dreams.

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Blue Water

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Blue Water

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Blue Watershipping & transport

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One of the few Danish cities with direct access to the North Sea, Esb-jerg used to be known as one of Denmark’s largest fishing ports. To-day, it is rather the offshore industry and shipping that characterise the docks in Esbjerg, but with the wind in a certain quarter, there is still a faint smell of fish in the air. This never bothered the inhabitants, though. For more than 100 years their comment on the special fra-grance, expressed in the best West Jutland dialect, was “it smells of money”.

Docks have their own characteristic skylines with silos and warehous-es, and Esbjerg docks are no exception. It has not gone unnoticed, however, that one particular firm is setting its stamp on many of the dock buildings with its logo: the Blue Water shipping and transport company. And then there is the company’s striking new headquarters,

Blue Watershipping & transport

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designed by architect Flemming Hansen, who is also responsible for Blue Water’s regional offices in Odense and Greve. It is an imposing six-storey building in black with mirrored glass on all its façades, which in daylight reflect the sky, the water in the dock and the ships by the quay. In the evening the building is lit by buried spots, which focus on the rough concrete surfaces between the glass façades, pro-viding illumination that appears both dominating and fascinating in the dock area.

The new headquarters has 10,000 m2 of floor space and is bristling with hi-tech energy-saving and ecological solutions. Through its links

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with the transport industry, Blue Water knows all about the savings that energy optimisation can bring and so aimed to show forethought right from the outset. The entire concept for the new headquarters is therefore based on green thinking, with no detail being overlooked.

Blue Water’s headquarters stands well above the surrounding ground, with broad steps leading up to the main entrance. The steps are flanked by Rubbie bollards designed by Peter Bysted and fitted with a 19W light source. The bollard emits a uniform, circular and symmetri-cal light, and the vertical light is optimised so as to illuminate a per-son from top to toe at close quarters.

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Inside the building there is a large double staircase, which encir-cles a central elevator tower and connects the six stories of the building with each other. The structure is built from steel and, de-spite the size of the members, gives an impression of lightness in the large central space, which goes right up to the roof. The space

occupies the full depth of the building, with a large canteen with a view of the quay and docks being lo-cated behind the staircases and elevator tower. The general lighting over the entire length of the lower floor is provided by the large Enigma 825 designed by Shoichi Uchiyama and fitted with a 70W HIT light source.

The office areas are ranged along the façades and surround the central space in a large U. This means that all the floors look onto the large space, which helps to give a greater feeling of airiness. Conference rooms of many different sizes, as well as washrooms

and copy rooms, are located on corridors running off the open-plan office areas. The smallest conference rooms are used as a kind of telephone box and for brief conversations, among other things, so it is important for the light to be absolutely optimal when the room is entered. LED is unrivalled as a light source in this respect compared with compact fluorescent lamps (name of luminaires).

It was decided at an early stage that all office lighting should be LED-based. Louis Poulsen was entrusted with this task, and light-ing consultant Flemming Wolf immediately set about designing a

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product that could be fitted in a standard modular ceiling while guaranteeing high-quality general lighting. This meant that a size-able portion of Louis Poulsen’s lighting philosophy truly came into play, including comfort parameters such as good colour tempera-ture, no glare and ‘instant on’, all of which were integrated in the solution. Louis Poulsen also managed to optimise the distribution of ceiling luminaires, in terms of both design and lighting, from one every 2 metres to one every 3 metres, giving a calmer and smoother ceiling surface.

The new built-in luminaires are fitted with (number and wattage) LED light sources, which actually represents an over-dimensioning of the lighting capacity. This solution was chosen in order to achieve more economical and regular lighting, with the LEDs being dimmed to the desired lighting level. This means that the LEDs last longer, as they are not working to maximum capacity when in use. The LEDs were also shaded in such a way as to both reduce glare and soften light emission, producing an attractive, comfortable space effect. All the luminaires are easy to service from below, while the surplus heat from the light sources is recycled to heat the building using a CTC system.

There was a strong emphasis on light quality at Blue Water – in more secondary areas too. It is quite common to use compact flu-orescent lamps in washrooms, but in this case LEDs were chosen for mirror lighting in order to ensure the best possible colour ren-dering. This resulted in the development of a brand new Louis Poulsen luminaire that can be used in two different ways. The lu-minaire can be positioned outside the mirror area – the solution chosen by Blue Water – but it can also be mounted directly on a

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mirror. The luminaire produces a low-glare reflection in the mir-ror, which illuminates the face directly from the front, providing a true, shadow-free reflection of the person with optimum col-our rendering.

Efficient surroundings create efficient employees, so comfort and a good working environment were key concepts throughout the planning phase for Blue Water’s new headquarters. Employee well-being and efficiency were given high priority and there was no compromise when it came to finding the optimum solu-tions. Energy optimisation was another key concept, and to this end Blue Water invested in a computerised CTC system, which controls heating, ventilation and lighting around the clock, as well as harvesting the heat of the sun from the façades and heat from the new ceiling luminaires in the office areas. And then Blue Water had a quick look in its crystal ball and made sure that it had a couple of unoccupied storeys for future expan-sion. Now that really is being prepared.

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Floral Emporiuma mix of Japanese and Danish minimalism

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East Meets West in Florist Nicolai Bergmann’s Stylish Tokyo Shop.

To say that Nicolai Bergmann is anything but a superstar florist would, quite simply, be an understatement; with seven shops and some sixty employees spread across Japan, Nicolai Bergmann Flowers and Design is known as one of the country’s foremost destinations for extraordinary floral creations.

Floral Emporiuma mix of Japanese and Danish minimalism

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Since moving to Tokyo in 1998, the native Copenhagener has garnered endless attention and a cult following for his exquisite flower designs that combine both Danish and Japanese aesthetic traditions.

Arguably, this meeting of Eastern and Western design principles is most evident, and literal, at Bergmann’s

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Minami-Aoyama flagship store. Here, extraordinary blooms in every imaginable shade are crafted into elegant and sur-prising designs that sit, gently aglow, beneath the light cast from a selection of Louis Poulsen lamps.

From the playful LC SHUTTERS cast in aluminum and de-signed by Louise Campbell, to the simple TOLDBOD 120 pen-dant and the classic PH 50, throughout the shop LP classics provide the gentle spotlight for Bergmann’s exquisite de-signs.

“The shop really is a mix of Japanese and Danish minimal-ism,” explains Bergmann of the 450-square-meter boutique that also includes a Scandinavian-style cafe, a floral design school, and an event space. “There are 5.5 meters to the ceiling so light falls beautifully here and the LP products give off this warm, gentle glow that highlights but doesn’t over-power the flowers’ natural beauty.”

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Welcome to

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RubyWelcome to

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Gammel Strand in the heart of Copenhagen. A quarter that enjoys ful-ly protected status, where the façades of the historic buildings pro-vide the backdrop for a fascinating and vibrant urban area. Here on the famous quayside, where the fishwives sold the day’s catch, cranes and heavy pile-drivers are hard at work on the long job of building a new metro station for the modern metropolis.

If you go past the building site, right down to the southern end of Gammel Strand, you will find yourself outside the Ruby cocktail bar. Passing through a shiny black door with brass lettering, you step into another world. Ruby has an intense historical atmosphere, so when

A cocktail with style

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A cocktail with style

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spring came and we wanted to launch two new lamps, the mod-ern classic Aeros in white and the exciting new Doo-Wop, we were in no doubt that the cocktail bar formed the perfect setting.

At Louis Poulsen there is a tradition of making launches a fun event. We try out the new lamps in different environments and get an immediate response, as well as an indication of their po-tential uses. Challenging the products tells us a lot about their abil-ity to harmonise with environments and styles – including those that are a long way from a lamp’s most obvious surroundings.

Doo-Wop is actually a relaunch of the Navy Pendent, which was in our range up until the 1980s. The lamp was originally designed for Royal Danish Navy premises in the 1950s and came into being through close collaboration between the Navy Buildings Depart-ment and Louis Poulsen. The result was convincing, and the lamp soon proved suitable for a wide variety of applications in offices, canteens and corridor areas – far beyond naval precincts.

Ruby condenses the concepts of comfort and atmosphere with great respect for the heritage of the premises – a classic apart-ment with small, compact rooms, where light comes in from both courtyard and street, and the shadows change in a manner remi-niscent of an Eckersberg painting. In such surroundings Louis Pouls-en’s lighting philosophy really comes into its own. Apart from their adaptability in terms of architecture and style, the products help to create a reality that combines comfort and atmosphere in a sur-prising and attractive way.

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At Ruby, Doo-Wop provides the bar area with optimum lighting that helps to make the bar the visual centre of the room. In this way the event underlined once again that lighting is of vital im-portance to an interior design concept and with it the whole per-ception of the room and atmosphere.

Aeros was used in the more parlour-like parts of the bar, over a sofa group and in the library on the lower floor. Aeros is a lighting statement that was created by designer Ross Lovegrove in 2008. The original colour is Gold Sand, which, just like the new white version, has a special ability to fit into the environment in a pleas-ant, unassertive manner.

So, if you are in Copenhagen, drop in at one of the city’s small wa-tering holes and feel just how much atmosphere the lighting adds to the place. Sit back and indulge in a dream – but just for a mo-ment. Because as the Rolling Stones sang in Ruby Tuesday: “Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind”.

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Kafferiet– big atmosphere, tiny space

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Kafferiet

This small café on the fringes of historic Copenhagen is living proof that a project does not need to be big in order to be re-markable.

An Esplanaden address has a distinguished and exclusive ring to it, but then Esplanaden is a very special place in Copenha-gen. It is the dividing line be-tween the old Frederiksstaden quarter and the ramparts around Kastellet, and has Churchill Park and the Museum of Danish Re-sistance as its closest neigh-bours.

And here, at this classic address and squeezed in between the stately buildings, stands a pretty little house. It is easy to miss when you are rushing by on all your daily errands. But once you spot the little house with its characteristic turquoise façade, it is difficult to understand how you could ever have overlooked Kafferiet.

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Everything is small in Kafferiet, but the best possible use is made of the space. Right from the pavement seating area to the space on the counter, where you will find a discerning mix of items to go with the main attraction – the coffee. The smaller places are, the more aroma and atmosphere are concentrated, and here the at-mosphere is as strong as black coffee made in an old-fashioned ‘Madam Blå’ coffee pot.

The PH 2/1 pendants are both a functional and a highly atmos-pheric element in a room that contains so many perceptions and

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objects that the eye is constantly wandering. Many people associ-ate atmosphere with taste, but they could not be more wrong. At-mosphere is a multidimensional experience that is impossible to describe and measure with the eye alone. It incorporates all the senses – smell, touch, sight and hearing. Kafferiet has it all, and, helped by a good cup of coffee, the place is an exquisite experi-ence for all the senses when you need a break from your sight-seeing, Sunday outing or everyday life. I’ll have a cup of coffee, please.

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