The Royal Bank of Scotland Headquarters has been conceived as a small town with high street, squares and neighbourhoods - the business houses, each with its own landscaped courtyard.  The street acts as the main circulation spine, the social focus for the building and unlike many ‘street’ buildings is actually designed to perform as a working street with a number of retail units.  There are three main sections of street linked by knuckles creating changes of direction along a general East West axis with the Westerly end forming the atrium to the executive wing for the building. The street has large glazed skylights along the main runs and large areas of vertical glazing in the knuckles providing a sufficient daylight factor to minimize the requirement for additional lighting during daylight hours.

The electric lighting to the space is predominantly used to supplement daylight when required during the winter months; during the spring and summer lighting is provided to shaded areas including the colonnades on the South side of the street.  The lighting is integrated with the building fabric as far as possible minimizing visual intrusion in the architecture. To optimize energy use the lighting is controlled by a combination of daylight sensing and time clock control. This allows the quality of light to be varied at the beginning and end of the working day creating a dynamic feel on dark mornings and a more relaxed feeling at the end of the working day. The control system also has special scenes programmed for evening functions and events that will be organized in the street. To provide flexibility for event lighting the knuckles have theatrical type lighting bars equipped with Source 4 pars that can be adjusted to highlight specific areas as required.

Additional drama is brought to the street with cold cathode articulating the edges of the bridges at the knuckles. In the evenings gobo projectors create foliage patterns around the trees. A combination of tungsten halogen and metal halide Source 4 profiles are used to give controllability and a subtle colour and pattern variation across the width of the street. The warmer and softer TH is used to light the seating areas while the crisper metal halide lights the paved areas.

KSLD have designed the lighting for other parts of the development including the restaurant, executive offices and boardroom, conference centre, leisure centre and swimming pool as well as the landscape and historic Gogarburn House

Careful consideration has been given to selection of light source and colour temperature throughout the scheme. The client indicated a desire for a warm colour appearance throughout the building however this had to be balanced with the natural light and the colour imparted by the solar control glazing. After site trials all the fluorescent lamps were chosen to be 3,500°K to provide a degree of warmth and the cold cathode as 4000°K to provide a crispness to the edge detailing. All tungsten halogen lamps, including infrared coated lamps, are high efficiency types. All are operated between 80% and 95% to optimize lamp life and minimize maintenance. The scheme has been delivered to programme within a tight budget.