Thornico is a diverse family-owned business based in Rotterdam with a penchant for green values and doing good as well as doing well.
The Thornico Group is made up of a variety of companies working in a broad array of areas from food to finance to fashion, with the Thornico Building comprising a large complex of office spaces, shops, dining and cultural facilities, atriums and large parking garage located in central Rotterdam.
Danish design office Kollision, together with Martin Professional, developed and implemented a complete exterior lighting design for the Thornico Building.
The program included covering large parts of the parking facility with live plants and integrating energy-efficient LED lighting as a communication tool for green values. Dynamic light sources that emphasise the company’s green values are used throughout the complex, including some of Martin Professional’s latest energy-saving luminaires.
Compact Martin Exterior 100 IP68 LED wash lights and Martin Tripix Wash LED lights are used to enhance the car park entrance while Martin Exterior 400 LED fixtures wash the walls of two indoor atriums. More Exterior 400s are used to illuminate outdoor flag poles. In the reception area, Martin Easypix LED strip lights add colour to the reception desk.
The most significant aspect of the LED lighting installation however is 170 metres of vertical LED tubes mounted on the building’s 4,000 square metre facade. The full-color RGB LED tubes with individually controllable LEDs delineate the architectural form. Lines of LED lighting not only emphasise where the building starts and stops but also indicate the locations of the main entrances – all supported by a dynamic lighting design.
Nuanced shades of green slowly travel up the LED tubes, gradually giving way to rhythms of sine-like curves of green that travel across the facade’s 200 metres. More ambient and sparkling expressions then take over, which give the concrete building an almost ethereal look. The new lighting design has the effect of lightening the appearance of the building and helping it to better stand out in the urban space.
Kollision developed the main lighting design and layout for the project, as well as the dynamic content and player system, controllable via a web interface. Martin Professional handled all lighting hardware supply and technical planning, as well as all commercial aspects of the project. Installation was completed by local supplier WL Techniek.
