Siteco falls in with the Salvation Army

Lighting by Siteco has helped Sheppard Robson architects meet a challenging brief for the international headquarters of one of the world's leading charities.

Lighting by Siteco has helped Sheppard Robson architects meet a challenging brief for the international headquarters of one of the world's leading charities.

The brief from The Salvation Army was to display its core values in three dimensions, and to design a building where transparency is a theme and nearly half of the space is dedicated to public interaction.

Sheppard Robson partner and design director Martin Sagar said: "For us it was the perfect brief - unusual, clear, and most importantly, driven by an ethos".

Lighting designers Indigo Light Planning were themselves briefed to differentiate the lighting from typical task areas and to create some visual interest without making the design conspicuous.

The system also had to take into account capital cost, energy use and cost-in-use.

Electrical engineers Derry Building Services installed Siteco's minimalist Lunis R circular recessed downlights in the restaurants that run alongside exhibition space on the lower ground floor.

This system is capable of being incorporated with modules for air handling, fire detectors and sprinklers and PA arrangements.

At The Salvation Army HQ in London, Lunis uses the latest generation of fluorescent lamps, the T5 circular lamp, as a less formal but highly efficient alternative to modular louvred luminaires that are often viewed as utilitarian and bland.

It is also a system that is energy efficient, low maintenance and dimmable.

The site of the building that had been the charity's international headquarters since 1881 has been reduced by two thirds in a unique GBP30million 17,000ft2 property development that has provided the new, five-storey HQ at virtually no cost to the charity.

Officially opened by HRH The Princess Royal, its sits alongside a speculative office building that will be leased by a developer, radiating an extraordinary glow onto what Sheppard Robson have called the "Route of light" - the walkway from Queen Victoria Street and St Paul-s to the Tate Modern.

Paul Traynor of Indigo Light Planning said: We believe the lighting provides the quality and flexibility which the client required as well as visual interest without being overtly trendy and thus inappropriate to the client's business.

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