The RheinMain CongressCenter In Wiesbaden

The illumination of the RheinMain CongressCenter (RMCC) in Wiesbaden at night is perfectly coordinated with the building’s architecture and the listed buildings nearby. WE-EF inground luminaires precisely highlight the pillars of the colonnades.

The RMCC opened in April 2018 with 45 halls, conference rooms and studios, and space for up to 12,500 potential visitors in the building overall. In view of its dimensions – the event area alone covers 20,000 m2 – the integration of the new building into the fabric of the city necessitated very careful planning. The architecture firm, Ferdinand Heide, decided to separate the building into two parts, with an outside flight of stairs between them that can be used by the public and which continues the city centre axis. There are striking colonnades in front of both parts of the building. The row of exposed concrete columns in front of the large Hall 1 provides a view of a wall that is clad in warm natural wood inside the building. The columns in front of Hall 2, on the other hand, are clad in natural stone in warm colours and are lined up in front of a black surface.

In order to lend depth and three-dimensionality to the night-time look of the building, the lighting designers from Day & Light Lichtplanung deliberately worked with these contrasts and coordinated the light colours of the luminaires with them. The colonnade pillars are continuously illuminated with WE-EF ETC100 and ETC300 inground luminaires. In Hall 1, they highlight the columns in front of the wooden panelling in the interior in a neutral white (4000 K). In contrast, the pillars against the black background of Hall 2 are accentuated with a colour temperature of 3000 K.

“The ETC range from WE-EF offers a wide variety of light distribution, light colour and luminous flux”, says Stefan Vetter from the firm Day & Light Lichtplanung. “Thanks to the flexibly exchangeable lenses, it was a simple matter for us to select the optimum light characteristic and verify it during sampling.” The ETC330-GB LED, ETC340 GB LED and ETC140-GB inground luminaires were chosen, in all cases with extremely narrow beam ‘sharp cut off’ [EES] distribution. The different sizes and luminous fluxes of the luminaires are matched to the different dimensions of the columns in Halls 1 and 2, as well as customer specifications such as a shallow installation depth in Hall 2. The very narrow beam (11°) distribution with very sharply defined edges reliably minimises scattered light. “The gimbal version proved to be particularly advantageous for this project with one light spot per pillar,” Stefan Vetter adds. “In the gimbal versions, the lighting insert can be rotated by 360° and swivelled by 30°. As the light cone is aligned in fixed steps, it was easy to align the large number of luminaires identically.”

As an important element of the outdoor lighting concept for the RMCC, the ETC inground luminaires boast precise optics together with simple installation and alignment. Further advantages are their energy efficiency and long service life as well as fitting perfectly into the sustainability concept of the congress and event centre, which has been platinum certified by the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB).

Principal: TriWiCon, Wiesbaden, Germany
Architecture: Ferdinand Heide Architect BDA, Frankfurt am Main
Lighting design: Day & Light Lichtplanung, Munich
Photos: Frieder Blickle for WE-EF