Tokyu Plaza Ginza
- Japan
- Commercial Facility
- Commercial
Lighting techniques enhancing Ginza's true beauty.
Tokyu Plaza Ginza
Ginza is Tokyo’s largest-scale shopping area, with an abundance of global fashion brand storefronts and distinctive department stores. Tokyu Plaza Ginza is a re-developed commercial complex composed of retail stores, restaurants, and a parking lot, facing the Ginza-Sukiyabashi intersection.
With its façade modeled after Edo Kiriko cut glass traditional craftwork, it aims to become a new landmark for the Ginza-Sukiyabashi intersection.
Tokyu Plaza Ginza – a “vessel of light” that shimmers in the Ginza cityscape.
With its concept of Edo Kiriko cut glass, the façade is integrated with the lighting, and the building itself gives off light like a living organism, continuing its existence as a Ginza symbol long into the future.
A new evolution in dynamic LED performance was essential to realize this architectural concept.
The light intensity presents the 3-dimensionality of the glass and a glow that transmits through the transparency from within and without.
The glass façade that encloses the entire building has an area of approximately 6,000 square meters.
Modeled after the 3-dimensional ridges of Edo Kiriko cut glass, the glass face softens the enormity of the façade and gives it a gentle aspect. The concept of the lighting design is to retain a transparency that allows light from within and without to work in concert, while also highlighting the 3-dimensional ridges of the glass. Panasonic repeated mock-up experiments and tests to realize this concept and proposed an optimal light intensity backed up by numerical values.
Optical design reduces glare from internal lighting while evenly illuminating the glass face.
LED devices were embedded in mullions that supported the glass curtain wall to hide tenant interior light sources from view. Panasonic developed details to illuminate the glass face evenly while embedding LED light sources within this limited space to hide them completely from view, achieving façade lighting that appears as if the glass face itself is giving off light.
LED devices are embedded in mullions. The devices include a parabolic reflective plate for optical design that reduces glare from internal lighting while effectively illuminating the glass face.
Rather than a strong primary-colored light, the light features elegant hues that suit Ginza and a distinctively Japanese saturation.
Panasonic added W (white) to the conventional primary colors of RGB (red/green/blue) to fine-tune color generation to 256 to the fourth power, reproducing subtle hues. We devised a method to extract white light from the RGB colors. Adding white made it possible to control the paleness of the color. We were even meticulous about the arrangement of the RGBW bulbs within the LED devices.
Approximately 2,000 devices are controlled in 41 x 22 blocks, changing their appearance based on a combination of “Sekki” (24 traditional seasonal divisions) and weather.
96 performance patterns shimmer elegantly. The light moves slowly and continuously, like a living organism.
The organically-transforming light performance was realized by converting video into lighting data. Panasonic developed software that adjusts coloring in real time to make it possible to control intuitively.
We also developed unique color transitions that feel comfortable to humans, rather than a theoretical light modulation curve. This achieved natural light brings the building to life through transitions that compel the viewer’s gaze, like the flickering of a flame or the rippling of a water surface.
This program adjusts the light transitions in real time.
It layers RGB (red/green/blue) color video and W (white) monochrome video and converts them.
Tokyu Plaza Ginza
- Client
- Tokyu Land Corporation
- Architecture/Exterior Design
- Nikken Sekkei Ltd.
- Exterior Lighting Design
- LIGHTDESIGN INC.
- Construction
- Shimizu Corporation
- Electrical Construction
- Kinden Corporation
