HARMAN Professional Solutions recently teamed up with Swedish lighting supplier LiteNordic and Lighting Designer Johan Moritz to revitalise Malmö’s iconic Parking House Anna with a cutting-edge lighting design.
Built in 1978, Parking House Anna was the first public parking garage opened in the Swedish capital of Malmö. In 2019, the aged building was renovated with a new façade made of sheet metal, plant walls and solar energy panels. The renovation was ordered by the municipal company Parkering Malmö and designed by NIRAS Arkitekter. In order to visually enhance the building’s new façade with bright and dynamic colors, Parkering Malmö hired LD Johan to create a fresh and unique design using Martin Exterior Dot-HP fixtures supplied by regional distributer LiteNordic.
“The goal was to revitalize the iconic Parking House Anna with organic, beautiful lighting,” said Johan. “I wanted to show that we could use LED lighting in a dynamic way that evokes a calming, peaceful effect, even in the middle of a busy city. The Exterior Dot-HP fixtures have a very stable color consistency and are easy to install. The clients are happy with the results, and there’s been a lot of positive response from residents and guests in the area.”
Johan’s design includes 235 Martin Exterior Dot-HP fixtures installed along the corner building’s two newly renovated façades. The Exterior Dot-HP is a bright, outdoor-rated fixture designed to create media displays or perimeter lighting on large buildings for long-distance viewing. The Exterior Dot-HP allows for long fixture runs with variable pixel pitches for flexible designs.
“My job is understanding our customers’ expectations and taking care of their needs,” said Mikkel Toksværd, Business Development Projects Sales, LiteNordic. “I recommended the Martin Exterior Dot-HP for two main reasons—its size and its power. The fixture’s size allows it to be integrated nicely into the building’s existing façade, so that the fixtures are only visible during the night, and you can’t even see that they’re there during the day. It might be the most powerful product within this category on the market. It has a great impact in terms of brightness and quality of light provided, and you get a great amount of reliability for many years after installation. The Exterior Dots give Parking House Anna a unique expression that fits perfectly with the client’s budget.”
In order to accommodate the additional architectural renovations, the integration team had to adjust the physical placement of a few of the lights. Fortunately, Johan’s programming takes advantage of the Exterior Dot’s innovative Martin P3, RDM and DMX addressing system, enabling each fixture to be addressed and adjusted individually. This flexible routing is ideal for lighting designers, integrators and clients alike because it allows fixtures to be physically moved without losing their proper role and function in the overall design. This intuitive operation also has maintenance benefits, as fixtures can be added or removed without needing to adjust the previous programming.
“You don’t have to pre-address fixtures and put them in an exact location because you can always adjust the RDM values remotely,” continued Johan. “That’s a fantastic solution, because integrators can throw up fixtures wherever they want and I can patch them afterwards. It’s a very adaptive system, and Martin has been forward-thinking with this type of technology from the very beginning.”
