Let there be light

DP Architectural Lighting was launched in November 2006 by Designplan Lighting to provide specifiers with a wide range of standard and bespoke interior light fittings for commercial applications.

Roy Green, director at DP, says Designplan Lighting, which was founded in the 1960s, established its reputation as a maker of resilient exterior grade light fittings working mainly for councils and local authorities.

The firm wanted to create a clear identity for its interior lighting branch after winning high-profile contracts such as the Capital City Academy in Brent, designed by Foster and Partners, and Jazz at the Lincoln Center in New York, designed by Cline Bettridge Bernstein.

The manufacturer’s main factory is based in Sutton, Surrey and hires 200 people. The company also has an office in New Jersey and a network of agents throughout the US, branches in Berlin and Holland and is set to enter the Italian market this year while strengthening opportunities in the Far East and Middle East.

Here Green explains what DP can offer to specifiers working in the office market.

Q: What’s the state of the market?

A: Buoyant. There have been a few significant changes with the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers’ (CIBSE) new office code which came into force at the end of 2005. There is a greater need to be energy conscious and think about how and when an office should be lit. The new code says that light should not just be on the desk but around the walls and ceiling. Technologies have moved on to produce far more efficient light fittings. They are smaller, slimmer and more compact now.

Q: What are the current trends in office lighting?

A: There is a general trend towards design-led luminaires. Glass is coming back into use and plastic and polycarbonate are also in favour. A trend we’ve noticed is that specifiers choose lights suspended from the ceiling instead of modular fluorescent ceiling tiles. Architects and lighting designers are using drop down lights to make the ceiling feel higher than it really is.

Q: Where do you source materials from?

A: We’re mainly sourcing our materials – steel, polycarbonate and glass – from the UK, but the casting is made in China. Things have changed in the industry. Before, we would cast the aluminium in the West Midlands area but all these companies are now gone.

Q: What are your products’ lead times?

A: For a standard product, people can get it from the catalogue, off the shelf. We have three-quarters-of-a-million pounds of stock in the factory. For standard commercial applications, depending on what the product is, it takes from a couple of days to four to six weeks.

Q: How do you work with specifiers on bespoke solutions?

A: We try to develop a conversation with architects and interior designers to find out what they want the lighting to specifically do in the space, what the colour and temperature of the lamps need to be. It is never a one-size-fits-all solution. It can take several months because we have to look at the engineering solution and produce early samples. On a significant project we spend plenty of time on the development.

Q: Do you have an example of such a collaboration?

A: For the Treasury building by Foster and Partners we produced every fitting, which was completely unique. Nothing existed in the catalogue. These architects are very conceptual people. Their sketch came on a piece of paper and we developed their design together. The architects were more interested in the aesthetic aspect. We had to produce light fittings which had both form and function. We looked for the appropriate materials and created a prototype and a wide range of samples. It took six months.

Q: What ideas are you working on?

A: We’ve developed an automatic control panel called dpGreen through which lights can switch off automatically depending on the daylight and the number of people in the room.