Swiss Re Headquarters, London 

30 St Mary Axe, Swiss Re’s new Headquarters, is London’s first environmentally progressive tall building and, at 180m, the second tallest building in the City of London.

The building is radical – technically, architecturally, socially, and spatially – and the design minimises energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions by maximising natural ventilation and daylight penetration. The striking lightwells, which curve round the building on a five degree rotation draw fresh air up through convection enabling natural ventilation cooling for up to 40% of the year and reducing the requirement for conventional air conditioning. The lightwells also bring natural light deep into the office areas enabling artificial lighting levels to be reduced.

The lighting management system is as innovative, flexible and efficient as the building that contains it. Controls within the shell and core areas provide individual addressable switching of lighting circuits through a combination of automatic based commands and presence detectors within lobbies and toilets. The shell and core controls were extended seamlessly into office areas as part of the Swiss Re and tenant fit-outs create a single, building-wide integrated system.

Delmatic DELi (Dali) modules individually switch, dim and monitor each luminaire within the office spaces while low-profile multi-sensors throughout the offices measure both occupation and light levels, and provide daylight-linked dimming and presence-related switching of lighting.

The system provides innovative programmable testing and monitoring of emergency lighting via the Dali network and logs the the pass and fail characteristics of each emergency lamp and battery. The lighting management system integrates with the disabled call alarm system: pull-cord alarms are connected direct to the Delmatic control modules which broadcast alarm messages across the lighting management network for display at the head-end PC and on the security room alarm panel.

Lighting within the entrance lobby and plaza benefits from scene-setting switching and dimming with custom scene-set panels providing a selection of five lighting scenes with master raise and lower features. The complete lighting management system is managed and monitored through graphical network software which . Custom graphics detail the active status of every office lamp and core lighting circuit, while changes to switching and dimming arrangements are effected through the graphical software.

Consultant – Hilson Moran

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