TridonicAtco’s Hi-Power LED’s have been used to great effect at the new head office of Allied Irish Banks PLC in Ballsbridge, Dublin, one of the largest and most prestigious projects to be undertaken in the Republic of Ireland in recent years. Integral to the three, seven storey high, elliptical core architectural features of the project are 2,300 custom built, sub-miniature LED luminaires using TridonicAtco White Light Hi-Power LED’s. In addition to this, custom built, integrated handrail LED luminaires have been used on the five ‘jewellery box’ staircase architectural features, incorporating 37,350 Tridonic COB (chip on board) White Light LED’s configured on 1,729 linear PCB arrays from the TALEXX range. 
The AIB Centre was originally designed in the early seventies as an open arrangement of campus buildings.  In 2003 they were asked to look at ways of doubling the floor space available and as a result came up with the ‘One Building’ concept, whereby the existing and new build structures were amalgamated under a glazed roof to create an internal core to the buildings.  Lighting Design Concept Consultants Pritchard Themis were brought in with a brief to look at the lighting across the site, giving particular consideration to this central space with its powerful, monolithic stair cores at the heart of the site.                                      
Peter Pritchard, of Pritchard Themis, commented: “From the outset, we realised that a clean and striking treatment to these towers was going to be the key to the design. They face each other from each end of the main space, standing over six storeys high and hold the main stair, lift and toilet cores for each floor.  Each of them stand half within the atrium space and half projecting onto the floor plate of each level, and as such they are read from all parts of the development.  We wanted to find a treatment that would enhance their corporate mass and one that would be homogenous across the whole surface and decided to lay a grid of white LED sources across the face of the panels, to create an effect that was all-encompassing across the surface. We felt confident that the TridonicAtco LEDs were now far advanced enough to provide an economically sensible solution as well as providing a very pure and consistent white”. 
Installers and commissioners on the project, Emcon designed a neat fixing channel for the individual LED sources, as well as providing a control system that gave a flexible and dramatic ability to make the towers dim and gently pulse in unison which helped to further emphasise the distinct volume of each tower. The LED lighting pulse effect has been achieved by mapping the waveshape of the arterial blood pressure of a human heart at different bpm rates and converting to a DMX 512 data stream. The lighting control system then outputs this to the individual LED’s via PWM constant current electronic drivers, all designed, manufactured and programmed by Emcon.
Peter says: “The LEDs have given us exactly what we were after; emblazoning the towers with a second skin of light that really highlights the curve of the cladding and immediately animates the cores with a unique energy.  The towers seem to communicate with each other across the atrium space.  Like two huge Van der Graff generators you almost expect sparks to fly when you stand immediately between them.”