The Sloane Stanley Estate, one of the most prestigious landowning estates in Chelsea, owns and manages hundreds of commercial and residential properties. The Estate is proactive in its approach and always puts the needs of its tenants and residents first. This has been underlined in a lighting project for a parade of retail outlets at 300-348 King’s Road where KNX lighting control technology, developed by KNX Consultants, has been used as the backbone of a highly innovative facade lighting scheme.
To support a number of individual high end retailers based in the parade, the Sloane Stanley Estate wanted to use an innovative facade lighting scheme to attract potential customers to an often under appreciated part of the busy Kings Road. This would be achieved by using the lighting scheme to create a distinct visual identity for the red brick Victorian parade and also to allure potential customers with an eye-catching long distance view.
Designed and installed in time for the busy Christmas and winter 2013/4 shopping season, the facade lighting scheme uses a combination of low energy, individually controllable RGB multi-coloured light sources. The lighting can be configured into a variety of eye-catching lighting scenes. For the backbone lighting control element of the scheme, Sloane Stanley specified KNX and called upon the services of KNX Consultants, a KNX UK Association member.
The Estate had previously installed KNX technology within some flats and had come into contact with KNX Consultants through that project – but this was the first time the Estate had specified it for extensive commercial lighting control.
“KNX has proven to be extremely effective for this project. One of its beauties is its flexibility,” says Richard Everett, Estate Manager for Sloane Stanley. “It can be easily linked to other protocols such as DALI and, as a globally accepted technology, KNX is fully supported by many manufacturers and will be right into the future. This is the kind of long term stability that Sloane Stanley needs when it comes to specifying building services and home automation products.”
KNX DALI interfaces provide the link between the lighting and the KNX backbone structure. This gives Sloane Stanley complete control over the lighting both from the Estate Office and also remotely using mobile devices. It includes the ability to set up lighting scenes for specific buildings in the parade and timers can be set to automatically turn the lighting on and off or change the lighting scenes at preset times.
Wherever practicable, Sloane Stanley is standardising on KNX technology in its properties to provide the high quality experience expected nowadays, especially in residential properties where it can offer prospective tenants something extra in terms of a versatile, easily expandable home automation technology.
Richard concludes: “The 300-348 King’s Road project has made this parade part of what makes this area different and its distinctive lighting can now often be spotted in programs such as Made in Chelsea. The decision to use KNX Consultants’ expertise for the backbone infrastructure has made a significant contribution to its success.”
