The first men­tion of a royal garden in Stuttgart was in 1350. Today the Schloss­garten with its upper, middle and lower gar­dens acts as the green heart of Baden-Württemberg’s cap­i­tal city. Since Autumn 2020, new light­ing has adorned the upper pala­tial garden. For this light­ing con­cept, Studio DL used more than a hun­dred pole-top lumi­naires by Selux – a con­tem­po­rary rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the famil­iar spher­i­cal lumi­naire that dated from the 1960s.

The pre­vi­ous path­way light­ing in the upper pala­tial garden stemmed from 1961 when the National Hor­ti­cul­tural Exhi­bi­tion was held there. Spher­i­cal lumi­naires, in fash­ion all over the world at the time, were installed in the park grounds for the occa­sion. Almost 60 years later, the Studio DL team was on the look­out for a suit­able exte­rior lumi­naire that would blend har­mo­niously into the his­tor­i­cal sur­round­ings. ​“While search­ing, we came across fea­tures of the land­scape plan­ning such as rounded walls that matched the round shape of the spher­i­cal lumi­naires,” explains project man­ager Johannes Käp­pler. It was there­fore thought it would be a good idea to use spher­i­cal light­ing once again for the new light­ing con­cept. The light­ness and trans­parency of the Aira con­vinced the plan­ners, who thus opted to con­tinue with the tra­di­tion of spher­i­cal light­ing.

When plan­ning the light­ing, besides aspects of well-being and tra­di­tion, the needs of nature con­ser­va­tion were also taken into account. Since the Schloss­garten also acts as a habi­tat for bats and hermit bee­tles, cre­at­ing insect-friendly light­ing was impor­tant for the light­ing con­cept. With its effec­tive upward shield­ing and pre­cise light guid­ance, light pol­lu­tion can be pre­vented using the Aira Tritec optic.

All light points have been inte­grated into a cen­tral, web-based light man­age­ment system that enables remote con­trol of exte­rior light­ing. Dimmed light can be increased to full lumi­nous inten­sity for safety rea­sons if required. As a result, the new Aira lumi­naires have ensured an improved feel­ing of safety while enhanc­ing qual­ity of urban life for the cit­i­zens of Stuttgart.

With its trans­par­ent, almost imma­te­r­ial dif­fuser Aira demon­strates how nat­u­rally modern light­ing can blend into urban envi­ron­ments such as here in the Schloss­garten. The luminaire’s appear­ance is dis­tin­guished by its dual Tritec Optic. The golden reflec­tor has a par­tic­u­larly warm­ing effect, which links to the his­tor­i­cally founded sen­sa­tion of com­fort­able out­door light­ing and trans­forms the park grounds into a loca­tion where people can simply relax.

client: Vermögen und Bau Baden Württemberg

lighting designer: Studio DL

photographer: Juliane Eirich