Lamborghini Showroom in Adelaide

This project involved the Zagame Adelaide building in South Australia, and included Bentley, Lamborghini and Mclaren new-vehicle showrooms and workshop areas. The project was carried out by James Wegener, Principal Designer TIES of Atmosphere Design for Zagame Automotive and was completed in February 2019. The building was a complete renovation with added structure, and took approximately 9 months to complete.

Project brief

The brief was to provide a lighting design that followed the stringent guidelines set by the car manufacturers in order to create a strong product presentation with flexible controls, plus control of audio. The lighting and audio should offer mood creation and facilitate client interaction within the space. The brief also included a future-proofed building control system that is open source and flexible in order to allow changes, upgrades and building management from a central location. In addition, the workshop lighting had to meet the requirements of the standard AS1680.4.

Solution

The solution comprised DALI-, DMX- and KNX-controlled lighting, incorporating KNX sensors and logic functions, and with audio distribution through KNX. KNX was the preferred method of lighting control nominated by Lamborghini Head Office in Italy and allowed for the flexibility required to operate the building.

One challenge was the colour changing scenes for the opaque ceiling structure within the Lamborghini showroom, and incorporating this within the lighting schedules at night. The solution used a Jing DALI gateway and Jung Visu Server for colour control.

The Jung Visu Server is used for colour-changing lighting scenes.

The solution has provided the client with excellent showroom lighting and highlighting of specific vehicles, with coloured lighting over the Lamborghini Hero Car, scene-setting throughout the day, daylight harvesting in low-usage areas adjacent to the showroom, highlighting alternate cars at night for short periods of time in order to garner interest from passers-by.

After 10 pm, the showroom remains dim with only coloured lights on, until KNX sensors at the window commence a night scene when activated by external patrons. This results in the car next to each window bay illuminating to 'bring each car to life'.

The workshop lighting is excellent and offers controllable dimming levels. As different paint finishes have different tones, when vehicles are hoisted, the KNX sensors enable control of the dimming levels so that there is no reflective glare through the clear coats, which means that on new vehicle deliveries, the client can check for defects and swirl marks of the paintwork. The system also allows for vertical lighting to create equal horizontal illuminance (Eh) and vertical illuminance (Ev). This would not be possible without KNX due to the luminaire addressing requirements, and it enables the mechanics to reduce glare and focus lighting onto the car in targeted areas.

More generally, twelve zones of audio throughout the property are controlled using via KNX audio using smartphone and KNX control applications. Areas such as offices, the café and toilets all benefit from controlled lighting scenes and audio, creating a bespoke and comfortable atmosphere. Car park areas are dimmable via a DALI/KNX network with soft dim up and down so as not to disturb the surrounding neighbours.

There is audio and customised lighting in all areas.

Installation

One of the problems to overcome was not being able to get clear containment paths for cabling within existing parts of the structure. To overcome this, we used more remote sub-electrical boards with KNX controls and networked the sub-boards back to the main communications room.

Several lighting scene changes have been made since the project was first commissioned to better meet the daily functions carried out by the client, and additional scenes have also been provided to assist with nighttime events.

During the opening celebrations, the lighting went from high illumination through to a one percent dim value by the end of the night through logic dimming set within the JUNG server. There have been no on-going issues since.

Benefits of using KNX

This project has received the 2019 Award of Excellence IES from The Lighting Society of Australia and New Zealand (iesanz.org). The judges made special mention of the lighting control which was provided by KNX.

Using KNX enabled the cabling infrastructure to be flexible and cope with the limitations of renovating an existing building, and allowed us to incorporate all of the required functions of the building into a single protocol. The ongoing advantages of using KNX are flexibility, reliability, low energy consumption and ultimate control.

Key products and technologies used

DALI gateways.KNX power supplies.Jung Visu Server with IP Gateway Interface.KNX sensors - 4-channel with daylight harvesting.KNX audio amplifier and distribution through Bang and Olufsen speakers.Jung SC5 colour touchscreens.

Project: Lamborghini Showroom in Adelaide

A project by: Atmosphere Design

Contact: James Wegener