Although many consider that the lighting of the façade of a building is expensive and unnecessary, it is a segment that has been growing strongly in Latin America. Today the facilities are not only of government initiatives.
Richard Santa
To strengthen night tourism in Córdoba, Argentina, the local government decided to invest about eight million Argentine pesos in the lighting of buildings and monuments that are part of the city's tourist corridor, with a set of RGB system lights, coordinated from a central command that allows different scenes to be played every night.
This installation, which began operating last July, is just one case that shows the importance that architectural lighting has been taking over the last few years in Latin American countries.
Creating identity, nocturnal representativeness, landmarks, urban images, or even for the safety of the environment, are some of the reasons that motivate the intervention in lighting within traditional, emblematic buildings or that house recognized companies, as well as in monuments and bridges.
In this regard, the architect of the Mexican company Techno Shine, Alberto Botello Gutiérrez, highlighted, in conversation with AVI LATINOAMÉRICA, that architectural lighting is also given to rescue public spaces giving them life through the lighting of facades of buildings or important constructions within the city.
Dependent on the budget
Lighting manufacturing companies develop state-of-the-art products that allow lighting intervention in exteriors of excellent quality, but unfortunately not all projects have them.
Alberto Botello Gutiérrez stressed that in Latin America there are many cases that, for budget reasons, continue to use conventional lamps to carry out these effects on the facades of buildings such as discharge lamps and halogens.
As it is in most lighting interventions of a building today, whether internal or external, the most used lamps are LED technology, due to their efficiency compared to other light sources and their great benefits.
But, according to Ivonne Cifuentes, lighting designer at Luxycon, there is no technology required specifically for façade lighting, "the idea is to achieve the required effect with the source that helps this purpose. However, the idea and the trend guides us to illuminate with LED, since it is the most suitable source to achieve color changes or color saturation essential to stand out from other buildings. "
He adds that in addition to LEDs, Halide Metal luminaires and in some cases fluorescence have also been used, everything depends on the application or necessary effect, the height of the building, the height to be illuminated, the color, the intensity. "All the factors that influence to define the concept of façade lighting. What is least used or least recommended, is luminaires with halogen light source for their short service life and high maintenance cost."
For his part, the architect of the lighting area of Novotech, Roberto Gómez, indicated that it depends on the size of the building and the characteristics of the elements to be illuminated, the materials are sought, but generally use metal additives, fluorescence and LEDs.
Public and private initiatives
Most of the cases of lighting on the façade of buildings, bridges and monuments correspond to government initiatives, but the number of private initiatives in this regard is also growing.
Corporate buildings, which usually belong to large economic groups, are those intervened by private initiatives. One of the most significant cases for the region is the Torre Colpatria, the tallest building in Bogotá, Colombia.
For the lighting of this building, 36 xenon luminaires were used, which meet the necessary specifications to illuminate the exterior with a projection distance close to 100 meters, and thus cover the 48 floors that the tower has.
"Lighting in the private sector has a very important game since through it it is possible to create an identity within people associating as a reference of brands or corporations," said Alberto Botello Gutiérrez.
But whether in the public or private sector, façade lighting projects have a problem, as many people consider it a high-cost investment for something that is supposedly not necessary.
The lighting designer of Luxycon, said in this regard that "in Latin America, lighting or lighting design has been growing but with some prevention, it is an issue to which there are some restrictions. There are buildings that make some investment and have the intention but there are still very few projects that dare to make lighting design on the facades".
The countries in the region that have the greatest progress in this area are Peru, Chile and Brazil, and the trend is increasing.
Overcoming difficulties
Recently Techno Shine made the lighting of the façade of a hotel in an area of Mexico City with some restriction because it is considered as historical heritage. This installation sought to highlight the architecture of the building with the use of new technologies of low energy consumption and with the control of light to avoid pollution towards neighboring buildings.
"We opted for LED luminaires as they give us great benefits in both lighting effects and energy saving. In this case, only the shades of warm white and amber were considered to put together a sober and elegant solution without attracting much attention for being a hotel within a restricted area, "said Alberto Botello Gutiérrez.
And there are many considerations that must be taken into account when these interventions. The main thing is to define the allocated budget before making any proposal.
Also, it is necessary to make a study of the urban context to know what can be proposed and what can not, as well as the intensity of the reflectors, quantity and location of luminaires.
When it is a historic building or a monument, they take special care not to mistreat it and there are regulations to continue depending on the country in which it is located. There are cases in which the age of the building is also inconvenient because they cannot be modified.
Ivonne Cifuentes indicated that other drawbacks may be in the height of the building or sometimes in the points of support for lighting. The idea is that a project contemplates this installation from the initial design.
Maintenance is another limitation, since when making an investment in the lighting design of the façade, the idea is to permanently maintain the effect since the moment a luminaire fails, it creates an effect totally contrary to the initial one.
Finally, Roberto Gómez said that the most complicated thing is to fix the luminaires in a historic building without piercing the original structure. "Sometimes it is difficult to find the best location of the luminaire to do the right job so that pedestrians do not see the light source."
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