Lighting designers Light Bureau and landscape architects The Landscape Partnership worked in conjunction with CU Phosco Lighting to redesign the lighting in Lewisham's newest public space.
London Borough of Lewisham's Fordham Park has just completed its £4 million rest rejuvenation. The London Borough of Lewisham has seen a number of parks improved and remodelled, Fordham Park being the latest. Situated between New Cross and New Cross Gate stations, the park is a large and popular green space and thoroughfare. There is a community centre in the park and schools on the northern and southern boundaries.
The Landscape Partnership's concept was to create a play park with active zones and also to improve legibility and interest for park users and commuters. The London Borough of Lewisham wanted an exemplary space and encouraged the design team to push the boundaries for this project.
Light Bureau's architectural lighting response to the brief was to create light for recreation areas, very much at a human scale, extending the use after dark. To improve legibility and orientation on pathway lighting, illuminated colour coded lantern markers were designed, each primary route identified with a primary colour of red, blue or green.
The design concept for the lighting centred on the playful theme of the park and drew inspiration from the environment; A major innovation was the design of bespoke slender profiled lanterns using solid state (LED) sources. Rather than having big, bulky lantern head, they wanted the light source to be integrated into the pipe design. These are very efficiently designed, lensed in a way which places light where it is needed and also extremely long life and energy efficient. Based on 70,000 hours, service life of the diodes should be well in excess of 15 years. The colour appearance is cool white, unusual for public areas but research carried out by Light Bureau reveals that visual acuity is improved with a combination of good colour rendering sources with cool white temperature based on studies into mesopic vision. Unlike normal discharge sources, solid state lighting is dimmable, so further efficiencies can be made in future as dimming control can be added.
Design-wise, the lanterns and columns are of a functional style and lanterns have been installed at a height of between 5 and 9 meters in galvanised steel columns based on the design of ventilation tubes. According to Paul at Light Bureau "Because of underground gas venting, there were a number of pipes coming up in the corners of the site - some rusty, some tall, some short - we felt this was a good theme to play on."
