Lippe Bridge in Luenen

You will look in vain for light poles on the new Lippe Bridge in Lünen. Nevertheless, the building, which opened in spring 2016, shines in a brilliant white at night.

The 44-meter-long river crossing is intended to contribute to the enhancement of inner-city bridges — particularly for pedestrians and cyclists — and to create an attractive vantage point. Consequently, the City of Lünen places great emphasis on the structure’s architectural grandeur. For this reason, in addition to meeting the statutory requirements for illumination levels on the traffic routes, the lighting technology employed was also required to ensure an aesthetically striking appearance for the architecture at night. By day, all lighting fixtures are designed to recede unobtrusively into the background, thereby allowing the architecture to take center stage. With the instalight 4020 handrail system, InstaLighting rises to this challenge: a total of 42 meters of this robust LED lighting insert have been integrated into the bridge’s handrails, remaining virtually invisible.

After dark, these fixtures ensure a pleasant distribution of light across the walkways while casting accentuating grazing light upon the railing elements. This general illumination is complemented by targeted accent lighting, which lends a floating appearance to the benches positioned at the center of the bridge. This effect is achieved by the LEDLUX LH linear LED line system. Thanks to their integrated power supplies, these compact modules can be powered directly via a 230 V connection. This not only saves time and effort during installation but also minimizes the required mounting space.

The central arch of the bridge can be seen from afar. With a rise of 4.35 meters above the road, it forms the supporting element of the river crossing. When it is dark, the 60 centimeter round tube of the arch is illuminated by "instalight 3065" LED spotlights. Just four of these extremely narrow-beam compact spots are enough to maintain the long-distance effect of the bridge even at night.

In addition to high energy efficiency and the ultra-compact design, the LED technology used on the Lippe Bridge has another advantage: With a colour temperature of 3000 Kelvin and a high colour rendering index of more than 90, the LEDs produce a pleasantly warm light. This in turn offers users of the bridge a high level of visual comfort and a feeling of safety that could not be achieved to this extent with conventional lighting.