Business in white

Recently opened, the Market Center Madrid of Engel & Völkers features classic office lighting with modern and efficient lighting tools supplied by ERCO. The lighting solution demonstrates masterfully how to combine visual comfort with economic efficiency in a progressive and dynamic office setting.

Founded in Hamburg in 1977, real estate agency Engel & Völkers today is a global leader in its field with offices in nearly 40 countries on five continents and a workforce of around 5500 people. The success of the franchising business is due not least to a distinct and coherent corporate design that underlines the strength of the brand as much as its high recognition factor. ERCO has drawn alongside the Engel & Völkers Group for many years as an approved partner in shop and office lighting. In 2013 the company established the Market Center concept as an innovative business model. Behind the MC concept are estate agencies with around 200 employees in major cities across the world, which are operated by Engel & Völkers directly or by franchise partners and are each responsible for a specific metropolitan area.

The first Market Center was opened in Barcelona in 2013, followed by New York, Bogotá, Vienna and Malta. A few months ago, the new MC in Spain’s capital Madrid was the latest addition to open for business. Dynamic and steadily expanding, the offices exude an atmosphere of lively and productive working and communication. Once again in this project, Engel & Völkers opted for light provided by ERCO. Deciding factors that gave ERCO lighting tools the leading edge were their visual comfort coupled with flexibility and efficiency.

Bright white rooms illuminated in uniform, brilliant light
The MC Madrid occupies a central location in the city, on the fifth floor of a modern office building on Calle de Génova. Extending over some 1300sqm, it accommodates a reception area, an open-plan office, a number of separate offices and a lounge area that serves as a point of contact with clients and doubles as a common and break room for office staff. Similar to the Engel & Völkers shops, the office architecture of the MC Madrid is dominated by a largely white brand environment. White features include the room surfaces – with the exception of the open-plan office, which has a hardwood floor – along with the built-in furniture and the desks. An ambience such as this makes it vital for the rooms to be illuminated uniformly using a homogeneous light colour to ensure that it projects a high-quality brand image. These challenges in Madrid are mastered perfectly by recessed ceiling luminaires from the Compact range in combination with Opton spotlights, which both demonstrate excellent performance due in no small part to precise LED selection and ERCO’s refined lighting technology.

Flexible ERCO light system for different work situations
Whereas Compact and Skim were installed in the reception area and hallways, Opton is used for the open-plan office and the lounge. In the reception area as the primary point of contact reflecting on the office, Compact with wide flood characteristic ensures optimal visual comfort. In the hallways, meanwhile, the recessed ceiling luminaire is used as a wallwasher. Vertical illuminance creates the impression of width in the long, narrow rooms and facilitates orientation. Thanks to oval flood characteristic, only a few additional recessed luminaires are required to illuminate the elongated circulation areas adequately. In special situations where built-in cupboards take up one side of the hallway almost floor to ceiling, the light is focused asymmetrically onto the cupboard surfaces. Brilliant vertical LED light directs the attention automatically onto the file storage spaces that are a staple of every office and provides the necessary visibility for the files.

In the open-plan office and the lounge area, for which the client requested an exposed ceiling construction, the choice was made for track provided with spotlights. Opton lent itself for use here primarily because of its low height and high luminous flux. Thanks to the conveniently variable ERCO Spherolit lenses, the lighting tool enables different light distributions for a variety of work situations. Opton spotlights in the open-plan office of the MC Madrid ensure direct illumination of the workplaces while adding vertical illuminance to the wall surfaces. Long desks are staggered back to back here, accommodating six employees on either side. For their illumination, track are mounted along the centre line of the desks. This is where ERCO lighting technology developed in Lüdenscheid comes through in all its efficiency: A single Opton spotlight is enough to illuminate two adjacent workstations. The economy of this lighting solution results from the use of oval flood lenses, which illuminate the work spaces very efficiently and evenly using a linear beam.

Wallwashing for efficiency and light quality
Another reason for the impressive efficiency of the lighting concept lies in the specific use of vertical illuminance. The side walls of the open-plan office are defined by the window front of the building and an opposite wall. Since the impression of brightness in a room is largely relative to its vertical surfaces, Opton wallwashers were installed along this wall. The brightness impression achieved by illuminating the wall surfaces with a much lower connected load compares more favourably than using purely horizontal illumination. In addition, the combination of wallwashing and horizontal desktop lighting creates the perfect basis for concentrated office work, as low contrasts help to minimise the strain on the eyes. The illuminated wall not least facilitates clear spatial orientation. The lighting concept in the Madrid office of Engel & Völkers encourages modern, swift and communicative working in a sector where attentive, service-oriented dialogue is interspersed with concentrated mental work.

ERCO lighting tools, however, create the basis not only for perception-oriented lighting concept; their excellent glare control also complies with the standards required for office lighting. The example of the Engel & Völker MC in Madrid demonstrates once more that the synergy of proper lighting design and highly efficient ERCO lighting tools pays off several times over – with lighting solutions that excel in efficiency as much as in functional aspects – and that for years to come.