Mulberry Commons outdoor SSL transforms public space at night

Luminis, an Acuity Brands Company, has published details on an outdoor solid-state lighting (SSL) project in Mulberry Commons Park located in downtown Newark, NJ. The park is the centerpiece of redevelopment surrounded by the Prudential Arena, transportation stations, museums, performing arts venues, and new mixed-use developments. The three-acre park serves as a gathering space and recreational area and is lit with innovative vertically-oriented, LED-based luminaires that multitask to accurately light faces and also the landscape and walking paths. Moreover, the park will anchor what will become a 22-acre greenspace and urban development somewhat akin to New York’s High Line across the river.

Mulberry Commons was created by the Newark Community Economic Development Corp. Supermass Studio handled the landscape architecture and Arup specified the lighting and handled electrical and civil engineering. The project primarily relies on Luminis’ Lumistik CL640 luminaires. Those pole-mounted fixtures are cylindrical and essentially appear to be an extension of the pole, radiating 360° around the pole.

Of course, the purpose of outdoor area lighting is safety first and then style, beauty, and other factors. “The goal was to encourage people to feel safe and to connect in the park — not only during the day but also at night,” said Christoph Gisel, senior lighting designer at Arup. “It was important that the lighting contribute to that feeling of safety and comfort while creating an inviting environment.”

Much of outdoor lighting in general is focused on horizontal illumination and the lumens projected onto a surface such as a road or walkway. And horizontal lumens are very important. Vertical lumens are also important, especially in pedestrian areas where people feel safer when able to easily see faces and avoid potentially dangerous encounters. Realization of these factors led to the specification of the Lumistik product. “It creates horizontal and vertical illumination on faces and feet as pedestrians move through the park,” said Gisel.

Ironically, we just posted another news story on outdoor lighting research that reported minimal impact on sky glow by LED-based street lights. The Luminis Lumistik products would generate some amount of uplight and light pollution. Luminis did not release photometric details of the installation. But much of the uplight would actually be captured as lighting onto trees in the park and nearby façades.

Indeed, the 48-in.-high columns of light were positioned in some cases adjacent to trees to light the canopy and yield indirect effects and also a more dramatic effect for the human eye. The fixtures themselves have dramatic form and at night that impact extends to the lighting and increased feeling of safety for people present in the park with landscape features, stairs, and other elements clearly illuminated.

“Collectively, the Luminis fixtures become part of the larger space to form a unified field of lights,” said Taewook Cha, principal and creative director at Supermass Studio. “It becomes this nice warm space that wraps around you. The transformation of the space at night is quite magical.”

Overall, we’d surmise that the Mulberry Commons lighting design fits a trend that we have previously noted about outdoor area lighting. Light quality has begun to become a guiding principle in such projects as SSL matures and energy efficiency is a given. For example, we noted that trend in our coverage of the 2018 IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) Street and Area Lighting Conference.

The Lumistik family includes three types of products — relatively short bollards with the light column at the top, relative taller columns with the light column at the top, and pendants intended to be suspended with the light column at the bottom of a short pole or column. Pole height can vary. In the Mulberry Commons project, the pole height places the light at pedestrian scale while the diffuser delivers uniformity and prevents glare.

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