Enjoyable night and day

A multilayered lighting design concept

The lighting design of the Sant Cugat del Vallès City Hall`s Square is based on the idea of enabling the visually clean and mainly pedestrian space created by the new architecture to be perceivable and enjoyable also by night.

The lighting concept was developed as combination of two different layers. Firstly, a functional white lighting applied all over the place, with subtle levels of light and high uniformity, in order to create a homogeneous light layer. The intention was to enable the addition of stains of coloured light at certain rhythm. To achieve that dual effect, keeping the central area free of urban elements, a new luminaire was designed to illuminate the centre from a lateral placement.

Rhythm of luminances

Together with the urban elements ordering plan, it was also a lighting design target to incorporate the rhythm of luminances from the light-sources on the columns to the rhythm of coloured light created on the ground, creating a double layer of luminances in a perspective view, as what one sees while travelling though a highway with slopes and the light points are seen oscillating in height. In that sense, the pole was designed with multiple heights, in order to enable a dialog bet ween the ground rhythm and the “top” rhythm.

Four season lighting

This light situation makes the square composition vary accordingly to the observer´s position. To that, a colour gradient is added based on four main colours, varying in relation to the four seasons. Each colour gradient is applied to a cycle running in time with very subtle changes, inverting the position of colours from beginning to end of the promenade, generating an effect of multiple luminous sensations along the square, depending on the dweller´s position and the passage of time.