• Mulberry Commons outdoor SSL transforms public space at night

    Newark has created a unique outdoor space as the centerpiece of a downtown revival, and innovative LED-based vertical luminaires blend into the landscape.
    Nov. 18, 2020
    4 min read
    Luminis’ Lumistik LED luminaires provide a friendly glow that enables visual acuity for park occupants and pedestrians in Newark’s Mulberry Commons Park. (Photo credit: Image by photographer Barrett Doherty via Luminis.)

    Luminis, an Acuity Brands Company, has published details on an outdoor solid-state lighting (SSL) project in Mulberry Commons Park located in downtown Newark, NJ. The park is the centerpiece of redevelopment surrounded by the Prudential Arena, transportation stations, museums, performing arts venues, and new mixed-use developments. The three-acre park serves as a gathering space and recreational area and is lit with innovative vertically-oriented, LED-based luminaires that multitask to accurately light faces and also the landscape and walking paths. Moreover, the park will anchor what will become a 22-acre greenspace and urban development somewhat akin to New York’s High Line across the river.

    Mulberry Commons was created by the Newark Community Economic Development Corp. Supermass Studio handled the landscape architecture and Arup specified the lighting and handled electrical and civil engineering. The project primarily relies on Luminis’ Lumistik CL640 luminaires. Those pole-mounted fixtures are cylindrical and essentially appear to be an extension of the pole, radiating 360° around the pole.

    Of course, the purpose of outdoor area lighting is safety first and then style, beauty, and other factors. “The goal was to encourage people to feel safe and to connect in the park not only during the day but also at night,” said Christoph Gisel, senior lighting designer at Arup. “It was important that the lighting contribute to that feeling of safety and comfort while creating an inviting environment.”

    Much of outdoor lighting in general is focused on horizontal illumination and the lumens projected onto a surface such as a road or walkway. And horizontal lumens are very important. Vertical lumens are also important, especially in pedestrian areas where people feel safer when able to easily see faces and avoid potentially dangerous encounters. Realization of these factors led to the specification of the Lumistik product. “It creates horizontal and vertical illumination on faces and feet as pedestrians move through the park,” said Gisel.

    Ironically, we just posted another news story on outdoor lighting research that reported minimal impact on sky glow by LED-based street lights. The Luminis Lumistik products would generate some amount of uplight and light pollution. Luminis did not release photometric details of the installation. But much of the uplight would actually be captured as lighting onto trees in the park and nearby façades.

    Indeed, the 48-in.-high columns of light were positioned in some cases adjacent to trees to light the canopy and yield indirect effects and also a more dramatic effect for the human eye. The fixtures themselves have dramatic form and at night that impact extends to the lighting and increased feeling of safety for people present in the park with landscape features, stairs, and other elements clearly illuminated.

    “Collectively, the Luminis fixtures become part of the larger space to form a unified field of lights,” said Taewook Cha, principal and creative director at Supermass Studio. “It becomes this nice warm space that wraps around you. The transformation of the space at night is quite magical.”

    Overall, we’d surmise that the Mulberry Commons lighting design fits a trend that we have previously noted about outdoor area lighting. Light quality has begun to become a guiding principle in such projects as SSL matures and energy efficiency is a given. For example, we noted that trend in our coverage of the 2018 IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) Street and Area Lighting Conference.

    The Lumistik family includes three types of products — relatively short bollards with the light column at the top, relative taller columns with the light column at the top, and pendants intended to be suspended with the light column at the bottom of a short pole or column. Pole height can vary. In the Mulberry Commons project, the pole height places the light at pedestrian scale while the diffuser delivers uniformity and prevents glare.

    For up-to-the-minute LED and SSL updates, why not follow us on Twitter? You’ll find curated content and commentary, as well as information on industry events, webcasts, and surveys on our LinkedIn Company Page and our Facebook page.

    About the Author

    Maury Wright

    Editor in Chief

    Maury Wright is an electronics engineer turned technology journalist, who has focused specifically on the LED & Lighting industry for the past decade. Wright first wrote for LEDs Magazine as a contractor in 2010, and took over as Editor-in-Chief in 2012. He has broad experience in technology areas ranging from microprocessors to digital media to wireless networks that he gained over 30 years in the trade press. Wright has experience running global editorial operations, such as during his tenure as worldwide editorial director of EDN Magazine, and has been instrumental in launching publication websites going back to the earliest days of the Internet. Wright has won numerous industry awards, including multiple ASBPE national awards for B2B journalism excellence, and has received finalist recognition for LEDs Magazine in the FOLIO Eddie Awards. He received a BS in electrical engineering from Auburn University.

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