Vialume – designing good light

But there is another side to it. Why create the perfect street light luminaire and not do it properly from the start? Why strive to create the perfect light distribution, focus on visual comfort in the outdoor room, work hard with thermal issues and so on and not go all the way? At fagerhult we agree and believe that an outdoor fitting should also be beautiful to look at. If you are going to put the effort in, surely design and shape have to be involved the start of the project!

It stood to reason we would go for LED, and we also had a good idea of how we wanted the luminaire to perform. There was a clear picture about performance, comfort and life length. To realise this vision Fagerhult and Christian Klinge at AF Lighting assembled a strong team, also encompassing Tuxen Design, each bring their own level of expertise to the table.

One issue to resolve was the light itself. How many of us in the lighting industry have found ourselves looking at LED street lights wondering what the designers were thinking when designing this fitting, with its glaring diodes? The solution was to develop large lenses, placed closely together, forming a cluster that the eye will see as one lit surface. To take it one step further we raised the lenses within the luminaire, allowing some light spill on the inner part of the luminaire. This created a larger lit surface and also made the luminaire visible from a distance. Flexibility was another advantage to the lenses; different types can be used depending upon the type of street you want to light. There are also several options for the number of diodes and lenses used depending on the light output you want or need.

One major issue was the actual shape of this new luminaire. Street lights are expected to have a long service life and a design that feels up-to-date today, may be out of date tomorrow. Also design trends differ in various parts of the world. Christian Klinge from ÅF Lighting explains the difficulties:

“First and foremost the design task consisted of coming up with a luminaire that seemed new and fresh while also clearly expressing the qualities of Nordic luminaire design; simplicity, precision and an eye for detail. A number of crucial design objectives were also set which were intended to guarantee that the luminaire would be perceived as harmonic and suitable for not only a classic Scandinavian urban environment but also a modern urban environment. Equally we wanted to ensure it would immediately be identified as a professional luminaire. What’s more, a tilt function would be integrated without compromising on the design of the luminaire.”

Marianne Tuxen put a lot of work into determining the surfaces and finishes with each detail of the visual appearance carefully considered. The overall shape has an organic feel that seems to change when Vialume is viewed from different angles. Seen directly from below, it appears perfectly round, expressing calmness and balance. Viewed from a distance, it appears elliptical and elongated. This adds interest and evokes the viewer’s curiosity. 

So, how did the project team succeed with this quite difficult task? Very well based on the early impressions. Vialume 1 was presented to the market at the beginning of this year and received at lot of attention on the Fagerhult stand at the Light and Building Fair in Frankfurt.

“There were high set demands on all the various areas in this project and late changes in one detail created challenges in other parts. We had to develop a holistic knowledge of each intertwined part i.e. regarding materials and how different materials act when they fluctuate in heat in order to keep the tight tolerances required in a high quality optical solution. I’m very proud of the result, the visual comfort of Vialume is well worth experiencing.”, Nils Stjernman says.

“We as a team are just as proud of the actual design as we are of the light. We feel that we have succeeded in finding the exact combination of innovation and classic features to express the essence of Nordic design. A great deal of effort was put into getting the multi-curved shape to appear as a single cohesive and organic shaped entity, just as it took a lot of work to get the soft curves to take on strict geometric shapes. We also succeeded in integrating a stepless tilt function without compromising on the design”, Christian Klinge rounds up.