Lighting for Commençal

One of the most recognised brands in the world of MTB is moving its headquarters to a construction typical of the country, an old “Borda” (shepherd’s hut) (which had a services annex constructed a posteriori) and a building of more recent construction and design, known as “The Mallador”. Both buildings are protected by Historical Heritage.

The first challenge was to unify the two buildings, the “Borda” and the Mallador, by the lighting. In this way, during night time, we achieved that the two buildings (plus the annex) are perfectly identified as belonging to the same company. To do this, we used a single luminous language, in order to unify the two buildings with warm LED light. On the façade, we used the same effect, marking the volume of the building through LED projectors, with a sharp optic, integrated under the roof that marked us all the vertical axes, and we highlighted the construction and the stone of the country of the Borda and the Mallador.

On the inside, we find different uses in each space: on the ground floor of the Mallador is the workshop: a hexagonal space, wherein the work area is distributed perimetrically in a workbench and in the central area, a free bench for repairing bikes. So the light had to be regular throughout the space, and what we did is to repeat the same distribution on the floor with the lights using LEDs profiles, tailor made with a suitable colour temperature for working.

On the ground floor of the Borda, we have the COMMENÇAL showroom/shop: a space three floors high and the ceiling with a structure of wooden beams. We chose to create a sense of lightness/darkness in the shop, spot lights where space allowed to highlight the bikes exhibited as in a gallery; we achieved it with an LED rail projector with a very warm temperature and excellent colour rendering to faithfully highlight the product. On the first floor, we have an open work table area (Open Space), with a gabled roof that gives us a considerable height, which we used to suspend lighting profiles over the work places, that will give us the feeling that they are floating in the air and, at the same time, we get the amount of luxes needed on the work surface.

On this floor we have another big challenge, a glass walkway connecting the two buildings. Without a ceiling for lighting, nor floor to build into, we decided to make a “U”-shaped profile located on one of the ribs of the walkway where we place an LED strip, as a wall washer (glass) fully integrated into the structure.

On the first floor of the Mallador there are closed and open offices, but having ceilings and walls at standard heights coated with plaster. In this case, we solved the lighting with LED screens on the work tables with the power and colour temperature required to enhance the workers’ performance.

On the second floor of the Mallador, with connection to The Borda, we need to light a meeting room having a heptagonal floor and a dome-shaped wooden enclosure; the lighting chosen is a cement suspension lamp taking advantage of the entire height that we have and so complement the meeting table designed and tailor made for the project.
Undoubtedly, it has been an exciting project with many challenges that have tested our creativity.