As an introduction to a series of articles about the role of lighting in the regeneration of the Docklands, Thomas Paterson of Isometrix gives a personal account of his involvement in several Canary Wharf projects, both as lighting designer and as project manager...

My involvement with lighting design at Canary Wharf has been a remarkable learning experience, both as a designer and as a project manager. I joined Isometrix in 2001, when the scheme for the HQ5 (10 Upper Bank Street for Clifford Chance) shell and core was at the beginning of Stage D. The design intent was in place and it was time to begin to develop the scheme towards documentation.

Even as we began that process, we were appointed in quick succession on HQs 3 and 4 with Cesar Pelli, Jubilee Park with Barry Chin and Associates and Jubilee Square with Skidmore Owings Merrill. These five projects were developed each with a different Canary Wharf Contractors Limited construction team, leaving us spanning all of the projects in one corner of Heron Quays. The design and project management of Canary Wharf projects was to dominate the next two years.

HQ5 was an interesting project - the largest commercial lobby in the UK, a project with a tenant on board from the start, and a team of architects from Kohn Pedersen Fox of New York who were keen to push the limits of construction techniques. Three aspects of the design stand out as challenges that tested our ability to deliver buildable design.

The most challenging was the atrium lighting. The atrium runs five floors up and one down, with the building wrapping around three sides and the fourth being glazed to the exterior. It was recognised that the floor planes would form dark bands against otherwise bright spaces, a feature of all building construction techniques. To eliminate this effect, a study was made of techniques for illuminating the shadow boxes (the sections of curtain wall that mask the floor slabs behind). Maintenance in these boxes was difficult in the extreme, so side-emitting fibre was selected. Trips were made to Scheldebouw in the Netherlands to pre-test the installation techniques and validate the approach. When finally constructed, numerous commissioning problems with the orientation of the fibres were discovered and it took several goes for the contractors to optimise what was an extremely challenging bit of work. The final effect when all up and commissioned softens the space and adds drama from the exterior.

The architects designed the scheme with five and a half metre high cast glass slabs at each corner of the lift lobbies. The logistics of handling and installing the glass was a massive complication and several lighting schemes were tested before the final scheme was selected. Channels with three strips of end emitting fibres were integrated into the clamps that support the glass from the side, limiting maintenance to lamp replacement only. The glass has proved an ongoing problem with some slabs spontaneously cracking or delaminating, but the effect is sensational.

Finally, the bathroom designs are subtle, minimalist and yet dramatic. Limestone lined, the vanity and mirrors floating on backlighting and a double-sided slot running from one end mirror to the other, creating an infinite cove reflected between the opposing mirrors and flooding the space with light.

It is unusual for a shell-and-core designer to also work on the fit out; however, Isometrix was fortunate and was offered the lighting design for the Clifford Chance fit out. This is a fantastic opportunity for a lighting designer as it allowed us to control the interaction between the two designs, to create a coherence between the two approaches and to manipulate the exterior view of the interior spaces. The interior designers were Gensler.

HQ3 and HQ4 are designs very much of a family. The architect, Larry Ng of Cesar Pelli was asked to design two stone-clad buildings for the space between HQs 2 and 5, glass-and-steel clad buildings. He opted to integrate glass clad corners to one side of each building, reflecting the glass clad buildings to their sides and the stone cladding then merging the buildings into a single medium. The exterior lighting was to be confined to the canopies, rear retail promenades and the crowns.

In the interior lobbies, very similar design details were used, however, as the buildings were managed by two separate teams, and on slightly different schedules, the documentation of the two buildings was not synchronised and different contractors built each package. The dominant feature of each space was the pendants, stainless steel and featured glass rafts, each weighing several tonnes. To make tonnes of glass look light and effortless is a challenge in the extreme. A central spine supports the bays defined by fins. Fluorescent lamps were mounted to the fins running into the spine, partially visible through the featured glass. To make the lamps appear impossibly long (four metres, the full width of the pendants), the lamps were run into mirrors mounted to the sides of the spine. The effect is one of an infinite lamp.

Unfortunately, many of the things learned on the first design implemented (HQ4) could not be implemented on HQ3 as the pendants went into construction just as the HQ4 fittings were completed. Nonetheless, the lighting in the lobbies meet the specification within a few percent, nicely matched the original renderings and has proven a dramatic element in the space.

The security guard on reception said he felt it was a much softer space than one expects. Walking in from the concrete and steel jungle outside, the softer curved glass panels feel more like being in a tent than a hard building.

Jubilee Square, designed by SOM, was intended to have a distributed series of four-colour (RGB + White) LED colour mixing points in-ground on a grid, creating a broken up video wall. At the time, we researched many manufacturers, produced a performance specification and sought a manufacturer who was able to implement such a design. We were unable to find anything off the shelf, and custom products were far beyond the budget. That aspect of the project was eliminated from the scheme. I mention this aborted design to show just how far LED control, particularly, and lamps in general have come since 2002. At PLASA, I counted at least six manufacturers with such systems ready, off the shelf. Maurice Brill's scheme at Broadgate demonstrates that the capability was there, as a custom brief, but only with a very serious budget behind it. I enjoy that space very much. Ultimately, however, Canary Wharf is a commercially driven environment and the risk associated with high cost custom items is rarely acceptable.

Canary Wharf exposes lighting designers to commercial pressures of the highest order. Cost is an essential part of the design brief, but quality is also important, as Canary Wharf also has to maintain the buildings. The organisation is inherently conservative, so proposing complex design can be an issue, but when they accept a design, it is generally well supported. Ultimately, about eighty percent of our concepts were built, and given the nature of the organisation, that was a pleasing result.

www.isometrix.co.uk