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Four Seasons Riyadh
Saudi Arabia
Each hotel of Four Seasons is uniquely designed to capture the nuances of the region in which it is located. Overall, the lighting design was created to be reflective of a modern oriental style that represents the local culture and creates a unique setting in harmony with the interior design.
The lighting strategy used, provides a modern twist on oriental lighting, consistent with regional traditions and light culture.
The minimal use of visible downlights throughout the project is of special character and emphasizes the simplicity of the design but focus on finer details can be appreciated in every area. Working closely with the interior design team allowed us to ensure that the lighting was an integral part of the design since day one. We had multiple collaborative sessions to ensure the lighting is fully integrated within the interior details. When looking at the typical guestroom, majority of the overall lighting is integrated and creates a very soft indirect lighting effect.
Our team of experts coordinated all the decorative fixtures to ensure the lighting of these fixtures were in line with the lighting intent and integrated within the lighting control system. We used warmer color temperatures for majority of the decorative fixtures to further enhance the atmosphere of each space.
This refurbishment project was challenging due to existing MEP allocations and multiple structural elements, which could not be changed. The limitations of the project pushed our team to explore innovative solutions, thinking outside the box, finding creative ways to solve issues and achieve the overall intent. During the construction phase, multiple issues came up that required additional collaboration and coordination to ensure the original intent could be retained.
Four Seasons Riyadh
Saudi Arabia
An Iconic brand in an iconic building, the Kingdom Tower.
Each hotel of Four Seasons is uniquely designed to capture the nuances of the region in which it is located. Overall, the lighting design was created to be reflective of a modern oriental style that represents the local culture and creates a unique setting in harmony with the interior design.
The lighting strategy used, provides a modern twist on oriental lighting, consistent with regional traditions and light culture.
The minimal use of visible downlights throughout the project is of special character and emphasizes the simplicity of the design but focus on finer details can be appreciated in every area. Working closely with the interior design team allowed us to ensure that the lighting was an integral part of the design since day one. We had multiple collaborative sessions to ensure the lighting is fully integrated within the interior details. When looking at the typical guestroom, majority of the overall lighting is integrated and creates a very soft indirect lighting effect.
Our team of experts coordinated all the decorative fixtures to ensure the lighting of these fixtures were in line with the lighting intent and integrated within the lighting control system. We used warmer color temperatures for majority of the decorative fixtures to further enhance the atmosphere of each space.
This refurbishment project was challenging due to existing MEP allocations and multiple structural elements, which could not be changed. The limitations of the project pushed our team to explore innovative solutions, thinking outside the box, finding creative ways to solve issues and achieve the overall intent. During the construction phase, multiple issues came up that required additional collaboration and coordination to ensure the original intent could be retained.
Project Gallery
A Lutron DALI control system was used for all areas. The public areas feature automated scenes based on the time of day with PIR sensors to enable power saving scenes if area is unoccupied.
The guestrooms follow the Four Seasons brand standards for keypad and scene requirements, but we took it one step further to create one set of scenes for daytime and another set for night. This allowed us to perfectly adjust each scene for each space based on the time of day. The scene setting of the bigger suites managed to reach the scene limit of the Lutron system of a 100. We had to make some clever programming tricks to still achieve the requirements.
As most of the scene setting took place during the COVID lockdowns, I had to create an entire scene setting documents for all areas based on “blind” intuition. This was then implemented on site and reviewed via video calls. Once I could physically travel to site these scenes were verified and adjusted where required. I believe that my theatrical lighting experience greatly helped this process as the adjustments required at site were very minimal.
This project had been completed in different phases as it is an operational hotel, adding to the complexity of the overall project timeline. The guestrooms were done in 3 phases divided by floors, with the first phase completed at the start of 2021 and the last phase completed in Mid-2022.
Our team also designed the public areas as well, and refurbishment of these areas will commence by the end of 2022 with an expected completion of mid-2024. Considering that the design started mid 2018 the overall project timeline is expected to amount to 6 years.
Understanding the typical timelines of large-scale hospitality projects, our teams had to think years ahead with regards to specifications and technology at the start of the project to ensure the technology would still be still relevant at the time of opening.
With regards to sustainability, the hospitality market is a difficult segment to implement a highly efficient lighting system. The guest experience is at the forefront of the design process and a sustainable lighting system should be designed with a careful balance to achieve both.
Utilizing dimmable LED fixtures throughout the entire project and a high-end Lutron control system with DALI protocol, we were able to program lighting scenes to operate at lower percentages based on the time of day to ensure minimal power is used. The system also enabled us to program unoccupied scenes that controls Lighting, AC and window treatments to ensure maximum energy savings are achieved. I used narrow beam fixtures over task areas to balance the task and ambient lighting.