THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

By Nic Paton

How long should a lighting project last for before it needs to be ripped out and replaced? With the three Rs of ‘reuse, repair, recycle’ of the circular economy ringing ever-more loudly in our ears, this is a critical question that lighting engineers, designers, manufacturers and specifiers all need to be considering.

It was also a question wrestled with by an expert panel at last year’s LiGHT22, as part of the two days of high-class CPD discussions organised by [d]arc media, of which the ILP was a partner.

The discussion, ‘The lifespan of a project’, brought together Carmela Dagnello, principal lighting designer at WSP and a UK ambassador for Women in Lighting; Kristina Allison, senior lighting designer at Atkins Global and co-author of the SLL/ CIBSE TM66 technical memorandum; and Colin Ball, lighting director at BDP.

The panel was first asked what they felt was the average age of a project and did that differ for different sectors?

‘The lifespan of a project is not the lifespan of the lighting or lighting systems; they are two separate things,’ emphasised Carmela Dagnello. ‘If you look at our current industry, for a commercial building, my projects last between 25 and 50 years. Because it has been designed to be for that lifespan.

‘But not all the systems within the buildings are going to last 25 to 50 years. It’s not just lighting; we can think about electrical systems. At a certain point they will need to be replaced; they need to be modernised. So we need to distinguish between these two elements,’ she added.

A retail project, for example, could be replaced in as little as one to two years, she highlighted, while an office scheme could last a decade or a train station scheme (for example, Old Oak Common in London, as shown left and overleaf) could be meant not to be replaced for 120 years.

‘Of course, not all the components are going to last that duration, but the intention is that the length of a project really depends on its use, its purpose, on the final users, and on the expectation of the client,’ Carmela added.

Colin Ball pointed out that the very first project he did by himself was a short piece of corridor right under Canary Wharf 24 years ago. ‘That little bit of corridor, my first project, it had halogen and compact fluorescents in it. That was only LED’d and the fittings were only changed last year. That shows, architecturally, that if you’re not in a fit-out or a space where there is retail or turnaround, for just architecture or background space for a city, you can expect it to be 20 or absolutely maximum 25 years.’

For the practice’s work on Paddington Station (shown overleaf), the team came back to it in 2018 after first relighting it in 1999, so again nearly 20 years. In fact, the blue LEDs specified in 1999 were still operating in Paddington Underground. Equally, the plaza at Canary Wharf still has its first-generation blue LEDs. ‘And they are still working,’ he added.

‘When I first started in lighting, I used to do a lot of surveys, but they were more with the view of energy use,’ said Kristina Allison. ‘It wasn’t a case of anything looking particularly beautiful, it was about how can we reduce our energy consumption, our carbon footprint? And this was before what we are looking at in the environment now – it was 15 or so years ago.

‘So this isn’t a new story. When technology wasn’t about LEDs, it was about T5s, it was looking at the next evolution of fluorescent lamps and the savings that were available then. Architecturally, you were quite limited to linear lengths. But, again, the life of the installation was really down to the detail but also the life of the lamp, which was very short.

‘So, when LED came around it was “wow”, look what we can do now, we can do so much more. But I think we are now leaving a legacy for the long term, which we’re going to have to deal with in perhaps another ten years or 50 years,’ she added.

As Carmela had highlighted earlier, the type of project was often key in this conversation, agreed Kristina. ‘What am I going to specify? Do I need it to last 50,000 hours? If it’s a retail project, probably not, because they’re going to rip it out in probably less than five years. It is about specifying, from a lighting designers’ point of view, a product that is going to go for the duration that’s required,’ she said. ‘Talking about it from an embodied carbon point of view or a circular economy point of view, you’re saying, “OK, is there any part of that product or this array or installation that can be retained or used somewhere else?”. There can be electrical difficulties with that, but that’s a different story, in terms of transferring equipment to different premises.

‘But I think this is a different way in which we can look at the length of a project overall but also address some of these other issues when we talk about the environment. I think that is a responsibility that we all have,’ Kristina added.

The panel was then asked for their thoughts on lighting’s propensity, at least in previous decades, to rip out and start again from scratch when beginning a project. Was the industry getting better at, and getting a better handle about, managing and reducing waste?

‘I was on site last week and it is not only a lighting problem,’ pointed out Carmela. ‘It is everything. Everything is discarded on site, for any reason – a design change, anything. It’s just destined to go to waste and it’s too expensive at the moment to go there and collect these items, whether lighting or another element. We are getting there but we are not there yet.’

‘I think it is about the clients recognising that lighting is an asset and that it holds value,’ agreed Kristina. ‘You go on site and people are chucking stuff in skips but if they saw the value in the asset then maybe they would say “hang on”.’

The need to educate, even challenge, clients therefore needed to be a key circular economy conversation, ideally right from the outset of a project (assuming lighting is around the table at this point), the panel agreed.

‘I would say that, at the moment we have two means of leverage on clients,’ said Carmela. ‘One is simply to talk about sustainability. If the client is sensible enough then we can build on this. The other one is cost. If we can build the arguments around how you can save money, you can save energy, you’re going to have a return on investment if you do this or that, we can try to use that to “win” the client round.’

‘For developers who are promoting and selling on a new building, they want LEED Platinum, they want the best of BREEAM,’ agreed Colin. ‘But we’re finding, with deep analysis of the WELL Standard and all of these things, the client wants gold on everything. Because they can charge more for their building or promote it more.

‘We’re seeing there are a lot of conflicts between each of the different standards. But, WELL in particular and LEED, we’re seeing a good virtual loop, let’s say, of getting the recycling and the entire idea of packaging and embodied carbon as part of those standards,’ he added. ‘As soon as you meet a client, it is about understanding ‘what is their genuine level?’. [That] it is not just the tick box exercising,’ Colin continued.

‘We’ll negotiate with them from the beginning about how carbon zero or energy exemplar they want to be. Because we can introduce them then to different levels of energy “fascism” and say, “look you could have a really unpleasant building here that argues with all the occupants but you save lots of energy”. Or do you want to put the occupants first? Do you want a comfortable space? Where are your priorities Mr Client?

‘And that will tell us we can deliver a darker project, one with more daylight, but it is that attitude to energy and strictness and policy of the client to its occupants that is the first thing we need to know about,’ Colin added.

‘Some people might say metrics might kill creativity but I quite like a metric! It gives you the boundaries from which to work within,’ agreed Kristina. ‘And then, as you say Colin, you can describe what that might look like if you’re looking to implement “this” metric for example, and what you’re going to achieve within that boundary.’

It also needed to be about managing clients’ expectations, emphasised Carmela, especially when it came to money. ‘A client comes and says, “we want to have everything environmentally friendly”, all the materials, all the lighting. And so you spend lots of time and then you arrive at the cost point, and the client says, “oh let’s just buy something cheap from China”,’ she said.

‘Hopefully, if you can get them on board with your principle, your philosophy of your design – almost like brainwashing them as you start at the earlier stages – that can filter through right down to the end, which is the tricky part,’ agreed Kristina.

‘If you can get them onboard with your idea, your journey – and that term journey can be helpful because a lot of the time even when you’re just describing the way the space is going to look, but when you start talking about some of the technical aspects,’ she added.

‘That’s the thing,’ echoed Colin. ‘You must have the architects and the clients signing up to this and wanting it. If you’re the lighting designer being the only one going “oh but what about TM66?” you’re going to get steamrollered. It’s not going to work.’

As the discussion came to a close, the panel emphasised how genuinely committed the industry is to pushing and embracing the sustainability agenda. ‘No one asked for TM66,’ pointed out Kristina by way of example. ‘Us, as an industry, wrote it for the industry because we knew it was needed. And we’re leading it from every other discipline. So, we’ll take that, we’ll have that!’

‘I actually think this is exactly the right time to be thinking about systems that are going to last longer,’ agreed Carmela. ‘In general, in periods when you have recessions, wars, of course goods cost more. But people do start to think more about the long term. With lighting design, we can push for this at the moment. We can say, “look you’re going to buy this system, but it allows you to have a lot of flexibility, it is going to last you for a long time, it is good materials, it is recyclable and you don’t need to think about it anymore”.

‘Yes it is harder now to buy high-quality systems, but I also think clients are a little bit more careful about throwing things away on day two. So it is probably the right time to talk about quality and sustainability.’

‘One thing we’re trying to stress is the use of less,’ said Colin. ‘We’re trying to use it to assist with our campaign of using fewer light fittings. But it does mean actually having to challenge and interpret slightly different standards. But again doing that in negotiation with the client.

‘If we’re able to say, “use less but of higher quality” that is something that we are finding clients are happy to take that on board. We’ve even been able to have ring-fencing of lighting budgets,’ he added.

Kristina Allison then concluded the discussion by returning to the fallacy that metrics kill creativity. ‘Our metrics [within TM66] enable you to assess some of the proposals of a design, for example, and therefore achieve lower energy, lower carbon, all of these other things. But also create beautifully lit environments – and it is all about that, right?’ she said.

• Kristina Allison, senior lighting designer at Atkins Global and co-author of the SLL/CIBSE TM66 technical memorandum

• Colin Ball , lighting director at BDP

• Carmela Dagnello , principal lighting designer at WSP and a UK ambassador for Women in Lighting