USM Show Office: Light follows architecture and use

Flexible office lighting with track downlights from ERCO

The world-famous USM brand, an icon of modern design, has redesigned its German head office. Offering New Work workspaces, it is also a showroom. The set-up allows for several applications to take place simultaneously in an open space, ranging from concentrated individual work to collaborative exchanges and customer consultations. Following its update, the multi-space now benefits from flexible ERCO track lighting that fulfils all lighting tasks and meets the needs of users.

USM’s modular furniture systems are characterised by a clear, modular design. The Swiss company's German head office is located in Bühl near Baden-Baden. The industrial hall’s architecture is distinguished by 5m high ceilings and a glazed façade front. The open-plan area of 800m2 on the ground floor is designed for workstations and serves as a showroom. ERCO realised the complex project with spotlights and downlights for track. Just as USM furniture itself is designed for flexible use thanks to its modularity, the same demands were placed on lighting. Maximum customisable workplace lighting was implemented, which provides uniform ambient lighting and accentuates USM furniture with additional spotlights.

Tracks as the basis for a dynamic office

Axel Stollberg, Head of Modular Interiors and Area Sales Manager at USM, describes this multifunctional space as a show office. It provides space for some 50 employees and enables customer visits and training for about 240 dealers. As many team members continued to work primarily from home after the corona pandemic, USM wanted to fundamentally rethink and adapt the design and structure of its working methods. "As the planning department, we then developed a work concept that provided 37 digitally bookable workstations with reorganised storage space and living areas in addition to the showroom." Ricardo Estellé, Regional Manager at ERCO for the Stuttgart area, supervised the project. "The old luminaires were no longer up to date, as they were mounted on tracks at distances that were too large, so that lighting was insufficient. USM again wanted to integrate the new lighting into the ceiling structure. We focused on glare-free, DIN-compliant office lighting to accentuate USM furniture," he explained. An ideal lighting solution was realised with just two product families: the Jilly track downlights - in compact rectangular and in elongated linear form - and the Parscan InTrack spotlights. Utilising existing connection points, ERCO condensed the arrangement of the tracks to create adequate and balanced illumination.

Customised light for changing working environments

Workplace lighting is provided by Jilly track downlights in two sizes. Well dimmed, they offer a high level of visual comfort. Thanks to the lens system, there is both oval and rotationally symmetrical light distribution. The extra wide flood light distribution creates homogeneous ambient lighting, while the oval wide flood light distribution is ideal for directing light onto desks, particularly if they are positioned in a row. Depending on requirements and furniture position, Jilly can be easily repositioned in the track in just a few simple steps. Jilly linear luminaires are particularly suitable for offices with a room height of up to 5 metres. Parscan InTrack spotlights emphasise the furniture and create accents. All luminaires have a light colour of 3500 Kelvin to highlight the brilliant colours of the furniture.
Parscan InTrack wallwashers generate vertical lighting, creating a better balance between daylight and artificial light and ensuring a higher impression of brightness. A room will only look really bright when the walls are evenly illuminated, as they are in the direct field of vision. This requires comparatively far less light and energy than full-surface illumination of the floor for a similar impression of brightness. If the walls are illuminated with 100lx instead of the floor, the room appears brighter – simply because a larger area is in the field of vision and a surface with a higher reflectance is illuminated.

Sustainable and customisable light

USM products stand for durability and quality, which is perfectly in line with ERCO's corporate philosophy. At the production site in Lüdenscheid, durable lights are developed that meet the needs of users in the long term: Lighting Durability describes ERCO's development goal, which states that all newly developed luminaires are designed for a service life of at least 20 years. This allows resources to remain in their highest value-added stage for as long as possible. In buildings that are designed to be used for many decades, this also cuts the costs for maintenance and follow-up investments. When it comes to sustainability, light should only be used where truly necessary. Precise light control, cutting-edge LED technology and people-focussed zonal lighting design form the foundation for this approach. The connected load per square metre is thus significantly reduced. On the ground floor of the USM building, this value is only 6W/m² with a standardised illuminance of 500lx.

Control via DALI was another important aspect of the lighting concept with the programming of a daytime scene and a dimmed night scene. "This project allowed us to ideally combine our expertise as interior designers with ERCO's lighting expertise", said Axel Stollberg. "More employees are returning to the office, which has led to a better working atmosphere. We are very satisfied with the overall result."