Our success on a previous project, Southwater One in Telford, gained Spurlite an invitation to be involved with the design and supply of luminaires for the Towcester library. The end client had been taken to see the library facility within the Southwater One project and were impressed with the feel and design of the lighting.

Via the Electrical contractor, Dodd Group, Northampton, a client meeting was convened to discussed the requirements of the project and create a design brief. Spurlite then developed a design utilising similar themes to those adopted at the Telford project.

The building was developed to use natural cooling techniques so there were no suspended ceilings and also interspersed across the space were large circular acoustic rafts to ensure the acoustic requirements associated with a library were achieved.

The Spurlite design utilised the acoustic rafts to accommodate the Crystal LED downlight, a series of 8w LED downlights being used to highlight specific areas and desk positions within the design.

The main lighting across the space consisted of the PAP-DRUM range of luminaires, 500mm diameter and 700mm diameter suspended drums with high efficiency opal diffuser and an upward lighting component provided high vertical levels of illuminance required by libraries to ensure that the book shelves were well lit to aid the library users to identify book titles, with the indirect component of the lighting adding to the overall visual scene by brightening up the ceilings.

Within the space a display wall has been created and here Spurlite used the Lambda Line product to create an interesting zig-zag installation which not only illuminates the display wall very well but also created an interesting lighting feature, the same product illuminates the main library counter to increase the illumination level at that point to allow staff to carry out office tasks and library user sufficient lighting for checking books in and out.

The last area to be considered was the parents waiting area adjacent to the children’s library, here Spurlite used a PAP-CYL luminaire, a suspended Opal cylinder with 7w LED module laid out in a random pattern to provide a more subtle level of luminance for this more relaxed space.

Spurlite worked to ensure that the end client, and end users had a lighting installation that was both interesting yet still delivered the technical requirements for a library installation, at a cost that proved acceptable to the project team as a whole.