St. Jodokus Church in Saalhausen
Sustainable lighting renovation under monument protection
Place: Saalhausen
Category: Temples & Churches
The Church of St. Jodokus in Saalhausen has changed fundamentally during the intensive 15 months of core renovation. The first thoughts about the renovation date back to 2011 and there was a lot of planning and clarification with the monument protection authorities and the diocese of Essen before the first work began in the summer of 2022. Once again in trusting collaboration with the architectural firm Clemens & Maas Architektur, KOBER LICHTPLANER planned the lighting from scratch as part of the renovation and converted it to sustainable and energy-efficient LED lighting technology.
As part of the renovation, one church service room has now become two, in which a glass wall separates the “old” church from the 14th century from the “new” church (around 1900). Like the entire church building, its theme as a “media church” is unusual: at a terminal in the left aisle, every visitor can choose meditative texts and music and put together their own devotion. The lighting concept also takes these requirements for flexibility and individuality into account.
For basic lighting, circular pendant structures were developed as individual products, which accommodate independently controllable uplights and downlights with warm white LEDs with very high color rendering. The uplights make the vaulted structures and ceilings appear light and flying and the downlights ensure glare-free, uniform general lighting and orientation. The additional accent lighting of sculptures, paintings or architectural details with narrow beams of light creates exciting focal points and plasticity through the emphasized brightness contrasts. For special occasions, the choir room behind the altar can be bathed in colorful lighting with RGBW-DALI lights. Through a subtle color temperature shift, these lights also enable the interplay of very cool white color temperatures in the choir room in contrast to the warm white basic and accent lighting. The lighting concept for St. Jodokus convincingly demonstrates how important the interaction of basic lighting, accent lighting and decorative lighting approaches is in the “grammar of light”. As part of the “illumination” process, the lighting planners created different light scenes for weekday services, Sunday services and special occasions such as baptisms or cleaning in the lighting control system and stored them in an automatically retrievable manner.
The renovation of the church came at exactly the right time for lighting, as many of the lights used in the existing building were no longer available due to various EU lamp bans and were no longer up to date in terms of energy consumption and sustainability. The new light in St. Jodokus looks fresher and thanks to modern lights with LED lens technology, colors, structures, materials and details, for example of wall and ceiling paintings, can be experienced in a completely new way, without the church losing its original and contemplative atmosphere. Conservation aspects to preserve old colors on the ceiling and wall paintings could also be implemented by reducing harmful UV and IR light. In addition, the new lighting system is maintenance-free (no more lamp replacement necessary), digital and individually dimmable and saves up to 80% energy compared to the previous lights. A successful example of sustainable LED renovation in an existing building.
Images: A.Miolan I KOBER LICHTPLANER