Media Harbor - Düsseldorf, Germany

In an elegant ambiance, the visitor who interested in art strolls along the Düsseldorf Parlamentsufer, which runs along the Rhine between the Landtag and the MediaHarbor and each day lures hundreds of curious people onto its promenade. No wonder, since the headland is surrounded by places of interest: On the one side is the marina with Frank O. Gehry’s characteristic buildings, while opposite opens up a magnificent panoramic view of the other bank of the Rhine.

Particularly at night, when one after the other, the buildings around the Media Harbor are immersed in artificial light, the Parlamentsufer now also shines out against a stylish backdrop. But this was not always the case. Before the summer of 2010, when the new luminaires were installed in the area, the place mostly stayed in a shadowy dark and the sparsely placed spherical lanterns threw glaring areas of light onto the otherwise gloomy paths. But with the highly efficient LED exterior lighting, the park and the paths are now illuminated in a targetted way – without glare and with natural colour rendering as much as possible.

The city of Düsseldorf deliberately went for modern technology: Due to a municipal resolution of 1997, it is committed to promoting environment-friendly and innovative technologies and to send a signal when it comes to sustained developments. The new luminaires at the Parlamentsufer not only save 50 percent of the previous energy consumption, they are also progressive in their design and their concept. With their slender shape, the small luminaire bodies and the subdued colouring, they discretely blend into the tree-lined avenues while attractively staging the green spaces and the network of paths.

The urban planners not only succeeded in integrating the high-performance LED technology into the traffic area in an exemplary way – the city of Düsseldorf now has one of the first functioning LED street lighting in Germany. This strengthens the overall concept of the former industrial port which was only given a new life at the beginning of the nineties thanks to the targeted new development by such well-known architects as Steven Holl, David Chipperfield or William Alsop.