Circadian-Inspired LED Lighting Transforms BASF’s Office

The BASF office located in Durham, North Carolina serves as the headquarters for the North American Agricultural Solutions Division. With many employees, industry stakeholders, elected officials and students visiting this location each day, the lighting and presentation of the office lobby is critical. With Color Kinetics LED lighting technology, the office is now able to control its ambiance to replicate the diverse hues and tones of natural circadian rhythms for employees and visitors.

With low ceilings and minimal natural light, the office lobby presented a challenge. BASF took initiative to elevate the current lighting technology to support the circadian rhythms of occupants. The goal of the Retrofit installation was to transform the BASF interior into an environment that replicates the ebb and flow of natural sunlight throughout the day. By employing Color Kinetics products, the redesign can display warm light in the mornings and cool light mid-day. This design effortlessly emulates the light of the natural world within the walls of the office.

Dynamic LED lighting allowed BASF to achieve their design goals. Color Kinetics PureStyle IntelliHue luminaires are uniquely designed to produce both high-quality tunable white, and colored light. The product’s range combined with its precision rendered the LED system the optimal choice for such a nuanced design approach. Ben Whiting, a Field Applications Technician and spearhead of this project, noted that PureStyle IntelliHue offers the “perfect blend of precise grazing optics and high quality tunable white” to achieve the desired effect.

The installation features eight 1.2 m (4 ft) Color Kinetics PureStyle IntelliHue luminaires controlled by the Light System Manager gen5 (now specified with iPlayer 4). The system uses Data Enabler Pro for power and data. To achieve the desired look, the luminaires are mounted to the lobby ceiling in an alcove. They are placed 15.2 cm (6 in) away grazing the textured wall below and maximizing the light projected into the space, allowing the whole room to take on the circadian ambiance. One year after this project, an additional set of the same luminaires were added to a second wall. This second set was able to be added to the same power and control system as the first installation. This saved the customer time and money, while also optimizing unified control of both spaces.