Responsible Lighting Using Ideas & Innovation For Nightingale Housing

Nightingale Village - Leftfield W Kennedy Nolan Image: Tom Ross

Exploring Illumination at the Intersection of adaptability & accountability

Whether it’s your space or footprint, we like working with ideas in mind.

ambience has been lucky enough to collaborate on the lighting across numerous Nightingale Housing projects including Nightingale Bowden, Nightingale Village, Nightingale Ballarat, Nightingale Anstey with Nightingale Brunswick and Preston to come. A lot of these projects involved innovating and exploring aspects of lighting at the intersection of sustainability, responsibility and adaptability.

DEVELOPING LUMINAIRES SPECIFIC TO NIGHTINGALE’S NEEDS

Across the Nightingale projects we developed with the likes of Breathe Architecture custom wall lights, pendants and even dreary old downlights. Hallmarks of the customised fixtures include the use of recyclable steel, minimal use of materials, uncoated finish as to not use toxic materials, local fabricators and assembled locally.

"AUSTRALIA’S MOST SUSTAINABLE APARTMENT BUILDING" - Parklife w/ Austin Maynard Architects

Nightingale Village - Leftfield W Kennedy Nolan

LET’S GET ON THE RIGHT WAVELENGTH – CUSTOM PENDANTS

We created custom grow light pendants. The LED grow modules are calculated assessing spectrums and wavelengths to supplement plant growth. They are also modified to meet the health requirements of the specific plants species in the area they are illuminating.

The angles of the shroud are even designed to not interfere with the module, ensuring the distribution is optimum. The engineering even goes down to the reflector being modified and selected to meet glare requirements.

WHERE THERE’S A WILL THERE’S A WALL LIGHT

Wall lights with customised angles have intentional material allowance to minimise thickness (as to not make unnecessary waste), are uncoated and designed with ease of replaceability of the light source.

MADE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE ANDRO TRACKLIGHTS

We’ve spruiked the awesomeness of Andro before – you can read about it here. But the Andro nude is non-brushed, uncoated and not full of bad bits…just how nature (sort of) intended. Concrete walls are a feature of many of the Nightingale spaces and the Andros are specifically prepared for those surfaces including having caballing entry points in the fitting modified.

The balcony and outdoor areas also feature mixes of standard IP rated andro and we should also mention the Levitas, which makes a cheeky appearance or two. But then again it’s not from the andro family so maybe we shouldn’t.

iPhone flick of specially developed andro raw

DOCILE NO MORE – DOWNLIGHTS

Even the dull old downlight gets a makeover. Normally the docile dependant of design, downlights in these projects are engineered and developed to solve problems on site. A prime consideration is integrating into existing features (cable trays) and mounting where you normally would not even consider putting a downlight. So, a custom steel body was created to solve two problems – ease of installation and the ability to be inserted into those existing cable trays.

Nightingale Village - Parklife w/ Austin Maynard Architects

Andros have always come in recycled packaging, with no plastic inserts and paper less intro guide. But did you know we created specialised packaging to site, so that Nightingale could reuse the delivery boxes as welcome packs for new residents? Oh and we even had sees for Australian Natives you could plant into your andro boxes. Niiiiice.

You know what they say, from little things big things grow (and not just the plants) But’s nifty little ideas like this that makes these community and environmentally-led projects so unique.

CREDITS:

Nightingale Photography: Kate Longley, Derek Swalwell, Tom Ross. Andro Photography: Ben Glezer – Dig further, explore more