KYKLOS will bring international art, learning, and green space to Piraeus, located a few kilometers from the heart of Athens. It is a new cultural center currently under development, near the Neo Faliro metro station. Instigated by the Dinos and Lia Martinos Foundation (DLMF) and designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, this project will host art collections and cultural programming with a global outlook. It will contribute to the urban and cultural fabric of the greater Athens area through its architecture and its local integration.
KYKLOS, standing in a generous Mediterranean garden, is designed as a shelter for art. Approximately 62% of the area will be given over to public, planted spaces designed in collaboration with landscape architect Camille Müller. A careful lighting concept for the landscape and the surroundings of the cultural center will balance the garden atmosphere and the role of a public place.
The building, housing the fully glazed exhibition galleries, faces one of the city’s largest avenues on the western side and a quiet garden on the eastern side. The structure will rely on natural light and energy-efficient materials to minimize its environmental footprint and achieve a high standard of environmental performance and resilience. The interior layout and lighting structure is flexible, allowing exhibitions, events, and learning spaces to co-exist and evolve over time.
In the fully glazed exhibition galleries, natural light plays a central role. The lighting concept, designed in close cooperation with all participants, integrates daylight and artificial lighting throughout the entire building. It is also part of the shading strategy for all necessary adaptions to weather and natural light conditions, as well as to the requirements for varied use of the spaces. Accompanying the planning processes, we are applying our special expertise and innovative tools to get a deep understanding of these complex processes and to create optimized solutions.

The lighting design firm Lichtvision was commissioned to develop a concept to illuminate the facades of the Humboldt Forum. The result was an intentional lighting of the facades in terms of intensities of illumination and their distribution.
The lighting design bathes the building in a uniform light. It accentuates the mighty presence of the Royal Palace in the heart of Berlin. The flat evenness of the light without much shadowing places priority on the building's three-dimensionality over its details so that it appears imposing and grand, especially from a distance. The height of the light points is necessary to avoid casting hard shadows and to create a uniform lighting.
The designers' lighting specifications were based on standard luminaires. Their design then needed to be integrated into the light columns that also illuminated the exterior areas. KARDORFF was commissioned with achieving these two tasks by using one type of light column.
First, the positions for the light columns were chosen by Kardorff Ingenieure to ensure that the entrances and views of the palace remained unobstructed. The desired light distribution at the defined positions had to be recalculated for the luminaires that can be used in Selux's LIF light column. The LIF light column was custom designed by Kardorff Ingenieure and has highly complex facade modules which can precisely aim individual LED using many separately adjustable deflective mirrors.
This made it possible to achieve the same lighting effect even with another product and at other positions than Lichtvision had originally designed.
As a result, the illumination of the square and the facade have been integrated into one luminaire.

Next to Hamburg's City Hall is a special kind of art museum: The Bucerius Kunst Forum does not have its own collection. It hosts temporary exhibits of loaned artworks and thus requires completely flexible lighting. The museum was advised for many years by Harry Mayer on all aspects involving light. He wished that the special spotlights be retained in the new rooms. So we integrated spots into recessed light channels alongside the luminous ceiling panels. We designed the light channels to have full access to the spotlights so that they can be optimally adjusted. A specially designed extruded aluminum sheath integrates the mounting positions for the luminous ceiling panels making it possible to achieve very fine and precise details. A 3-D spatial analysis has found that it is possible to perfectly illuminate every artform and arrangement.

Liljevalchs+ in Stockholm (architect: Wingårdhs) is the extension on the renowned Liljevalchs Museum for Contemporary Art.
The interplay between daylight and artificial light with the pronounced roofline design posed a particular challenge. The 170-square-meter roof sits atop the building above the two large exhibit halls like a crown with its 166 exposed concrete skylights.
The aim of our lighting design was to achieve the required high flexibility to light the exhibits while, depending on angle and position in the room, concealing the busbars and spotlights. Due to the skylights' height and geometry, direct sunlight is blocked out in the exhibit halls when the sun is low. We intensively analyzed the positions of the luminaires using simulations and 1:1 model tests (see graphics), so as not to disturb the clarity of the skylights' form.
In the absence of daylight, the exhibit halls are lit flexibly using spots on busbars and in the more level rooms using an additional linear lighting system that sits parallel to the walls. In the café and museum shop, backlit cloth panels hang under the ceiling.
Liljevalchs+ is the culmination of a holistic approach and close collaboration between all participants, in which every aspect concerning light in its complex relationship to architecture could be addressed.

Another milestone for our team: the lighting of a world heritage site and a large, internationally famous collection. In 2009, after ten years of intensive planning, we were able to handover the realized lighting concept in the restored Neues Museum. The discreet light atmosphere and the soft, yet precise
illumination of the objects – particularly Nefertiti – are highly admired by museum specialists and visitors. For the overall architecture, David Chipperfield received the 2011 German Architecture Prize, among other recognitions.