The Argentine company RGB Lighting Systems, when intervening its façade, put a pleasant touch of good taste and lighting to two buildings of great trajectory on Buenos Aires soil, the Teatro del Globo and the Paseo La Plaza.
by: Santiago Jaramillo H.
Companies are always looking to take care of every detail in order to be more attractive in the eyes of their customers. A good option for this is to make the buildings where they have their headquarters an object of obligatory passage and reference, precisely an innovative way to do it is by implementing a conceptual lighting system to their facades.
"In the lighting of facades, be it a church, a theater, a corporate building, a casino or a hotel, the concept starts first by giving a visual impact that can be created with certain colors or with white light highlighting some moldings or some characteristic detail of the construction," says Edgardo Boqué, president of RGB Lighting Systems, company that was in charge of the light intervention of the Teatro del Globo and the Paseo La Plaza.
In the same way, an issue that is also of utmost importance in any intervention of this type is to offer mechanisms for energy saving, as Boqué explains, indicating that "there are many places that have a nice lighting plant, but they do not use it daily for the issue of maintenance and energy saving".
If we talk specifically about Argentina, as recognized by the representative of RGB Lighting Systems, the cost of energy is not as high as in other Latin American countries, but every day in this nation it feels more that people want to turn to the issue of energy saving, especially when talking about the use of LED technology.
This is a technology that has a long service life, there is talk of thousands of hours, 30 to 50 thousand hours depending on the equipment, then the change of lamps should be done at five or eight years according to the hours of use.
"Many times we talk about maintenance-free projects, but we must also consider that most of the time they are outdoors and external elements such as atmospheric dust, pigeon dirt, among other factors, make the equipment not so maintenance-free but require periodic cleaning every four or six months, depending on each specific case," says Boqué.
Details of the intervention
In the Teatro del Globo, which is located in the city of Buenos Aires, the plenums of the façade were illuminated with a mix of cold and warm whites, as well as the windows with RGB chromatic change system, mainly using Exterior Line II equipment.
In the case of Paseo La Plaza, located in the same Argentine city, only the access on Corrientes Avenue, which is considered the Argentine Brodway, was intervened due to the large number of theaters, therefore a great visual impact was required to accompany the architecture and corporate identity of the complex.
The lighting design was carried out by the Parisio Sánchez Izquierdo studio and the company RGB Lighting Systems carried out the technical consultancy, commissioning and programming of a high-power RGB LED system based on Exterior Line II RGB equipment of 600mm and controlled by DMX-512 system.
Evaluation and development of the project
According to the president of RGB Lighting Systems, in this type of interventions conceptually what you want to do is generate a visual impact and, obviously, to achieve this you must be clear about what criteria you want to achieve.
To exemplify, in the Teatro El Globo a particular situation is presented, it is a building that is located in a fairly quiet area of the city of Buenos Aires, where it is not competing with other corporate buildings with large lighting structures. It is really in front of a square with traditional lighting, in a street where there is no building that stands out notably for its lighting.
Due to the above, Boqué explains that together with Jorge Martínez, the specifier of the project, in this place "what we had to do was to be quite judicious and use the light as if it were makeup, that is, put just where it had to stand out and not overdo it, because doing so could degrade the design, make it ordinary," he says.
He also emphasizes that "it is not the same to illuminate this theater if it is located in its current headquarters, than if it were in Las Vegas, where everything is burned with lights, then that is an essential part of the study of what is going to be done, what is desired and interpret very well the tastes of the owners."
A second step in the development of the intervention, after the initial analysis of the work, is the demonstration that can be by computerized images or through an in situ sample.
"To expose to the client the magnitude of the intervention, what we usually do in RGB Lighting Systems is to elaborate through a series of virtual images, created by computer animation, or if the building is already built we install some lights and carry out a light test in a sector of the building, thus creating a live demonstration of the final result of the intervention", says Boqué, who also ponders that this makes customers appreciate for themselves the magnitude of the works, something that is almost impossible to explain in words and that can be done with a demonstration of this type.
The third step, after the investment is approved, is to make an analysis of the way in which the electrical installation is going to be carried out. "Although consumption is negligible in this type of installation, energy is necessary anyway, in the case of the Teatro del Globo, it has a façade that is considered historical heritage and it is not convenient to intervene or make any kind of change, that is, chop walls or pass pipes. In general, what is done is to carry out the work through the interiors or moving with the cables through certain cornices or moldings of the same building, "explains Edgardo Boqué.
Another aspect that is also an art, warns our guest, is to get the right angles in the installation of the luminaires in order to achieve the appropriate lighting effect on the windows or moldings that you want to highlight. "This is something that is thought from the design, but that also has a lot to do with the people in charge of the installation, in order to create the desired environment and not leave cables hanging or do some type of irreparable damage to the building," he says.
This type of luminaires have a special characteristic, they are dynamic, that is, at one point they are doing a light and five minutes later they have another. This feature is very easy to work since this type of equipment has the ability to emit red, green and blue lights, basic colors of lighting to generate the entire palette.
