C&A Eindhoven

project credits

Design: UNStudio, Arnout Meijer & Si-X

Supplying & engineering: OneEightyOne

Control: DiGidot

location

Eindhoven, Netherlands

photography

Arnout Meijer

Retail & Stand Design

About the Project

The story

This unique lighting installation on the facade of C&A in Eindhoven is designed by UNstudio and Arnout Meijer.

The concept was to create light boxes of etched glass that played lighting dynamics behind it. "The original design motif of protruding glass windows is used to emphasize the heritage of the C&A Store, whilst strongly identifying it with The City of Light", explains the designer Arnout Meijer.

Because of the etch, the light would break into multiple lanes, which creates an impressive light show. For this installation, four bay windows were placed on the facade for which we delivered the LED lighting. This project is a perfect example for Facade Lighting applied in a creative way.

THE
PROCESS

Play the designed content

For this impressive Facade Lighting, we used dynamic DiGi LEDs. The lighting goes up and down, but also to the left and the right. The LED strips consist of white light in two shades, also called adjustable white. It can be varied between warm white and cold white and everything in between. With the DiGidot LED control system, different light scenes are played. This facade lighting always turns on an hour before sunset and off an hour after sunrise. This way, the owner of the building doesn't have to switch it on and off manually.

All materials in the same color as the window frames

For this project, we used LED profiles that are attached to the window frames. There are 16 fixtures provided of digitally controlled LED strips for each glass light box, which means 64 strips in total. Because it's about glass bay windows, only the light itself could be visible, and not the materials around it. That's why the cables, brackets and profiles were made in the same color as the window frames. We made these LED lines plug & play in our workshop. In addition, we had already cut the cables to the right length, which resulted in a quick installation on location.

The greatest challenge

Despite the pluggable installation, the mounting of the LED fixtures was a big challenge because the fixtures needed to be installed at the same time as the mounting of the glass bay windows on the facade. One of the value-added services of OneEightyOne is assistance on location. With climbing harnesses, our professional service engineers hung out of the window of the third floor to assist with the installation. The end result was truly magnificent!