Ahead of this summer's Paris Olympics, design firms Concept and Studio 5.5 installed 350 streetlights in the Olympic Village made from salvaged scaffolding posts and streetlights.
The lighting project is part of a plan overseen by Solideo, the Olympic Games' governing authority, with the aim of reducing carbon emissions by 47% compared to traditional projects.
Landscape architecture firm Agence TER, which was responsible for the master planning of the public areas, worked with Studio 5.5 to create a low carbon materials charter for these spaces, including lighting and street furniture.
To put this sustainable design challenge into practice, the street lighting was designed to be manufactured using components sourced from decommissioned lampposts and construction sites.
“We had to convince policy makers and local authorities that repurposed streetlights represent the future of aesthetics and strong sustainable development policy,” says Studio 5.5 co-founder and co-founder of Studio 5.5. partner Anthony Rubose told Dezeen.
“It's easy to pick novelty from a catalog, but when we were building the Olympic Village, we wanted to show an example of a different design.”
Lighting design company Concepto was tasked with creating a plan to illuminate the village. The plan included defining the location and orientation of each of the 350 streetlights to ensure they provided light where it was needed.
Lubose and his colleagues worked with Concepts to develop a proposal for a lamppost that is easy to maintain, yet can be produced on a large scale using salvaged parts.
“Lampposts typically require significant investment in molding and custom manufacturing, and are expensive to maintain,” Rubose pointed out.
“We aimed for maximum reuse while ensuring maintainability by local authorities. The assembly is mechanical and reversible, making it economical and long-term maintenance possible.”
The common, standardized shape of old light poles is being phased out by many local governments in favor of more architecturally innovative designs made in a wide range of colors and materials, Luboce explained. .
The lampposts built for the Olympic Village vary in shape, size and construction, with the tallest ones made entirely from recycled galvanized steel lampposts and the lower ones made from laminated wood. pole is used.
Each streetlight has a rung made of salvaged scaffolding poles that supports one or two energy-efficient LED light sources.
The rungs are angled to illuminate the road, while being tall enough to avoid trees and allow taller vehicles such as buses and fire engines to pass underneath.
Where additional lighting is required for pedestrians, a second light source is placed at the lower edge of the rung. This doubling allowed us to reduce the total number of fixtures that needed to be manufactured.
The 350 lampposts will remain in place after the Olympics and form part of a legacy phase that will incorporate new neighborhoods in the towns of Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen.
