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Glamox has delivered lighting for an extraordinary renovation project in Finland, where an old military barracks has been transformed into a modern learning facility for children with sensory sensitivities.
The Valteri Centre for Learning and Consulting provides services for children and young people who need support in their education. In September 2024, Valteri opened a renovated school for lower and upper elementary school students in Oulu, Finland, where the lighting can be tailored to meet the needs of individual students.
Glamox has delivered more than 1,000 LED fixtures to the school, which is equipped with double the number of luminaries of a regular school.
The renovation was undertaken by Senate Properties, with electrical contractor Sweco responsible for the electrical design and lighting design for the project. Both the building and the light installations cater to students with visual, hearing, attention, and mobility impairments.
Lighting in the corridors involves luminaires which work together to provide a uniform light distribution, with a light source that is not visible. Harsh lighting, which can flicker and hum, can distract and even be painful to students with autism, resulting in increased anxiety and irritability.
“Our main starting point was to design a supportive and good learning environment for students. The design of the spaces emphasised accessibility for all senses,” says Riina Kittilä, lighting designer at Sweco.
To achieve this goal, classroom spaces have been shaped to add ample light to the teacher’s face so that students can read facial expressions. It was also important to avoid high-contrast areas on the walls and to use uniform illumination without light and dark areas in the same space. Specifically, the chosen light fixtures avoid strong surface brightness that causes glare.
“We chose Glamox as a supplier because its products meet our strict technological requirements and include tunable, white lights. Another advantage is that the product family can be installed in various ways, which is more cost efficient,” notes Kittilä.
“Every classroom has lighting that can be adjusted individually for the students. The teacher can adjust the light intensity and colour temperature on a fixture-by-fixture basis in the classroom. In that way, the teacher can increase the light with a cooler colour temperature to raise alertness or use warm and dim lighting to calm the mood in the classroom,” Kittilä explains.
Glamox is proud to have contributed to this unique project and hopes that others will be inspired by the tailor-made learning conditions at the Valteri School in Oulu.
“We have amassed years of experience providing Human Centric Lighting that can help improve learning environments and we understand the psychological and biological impact of light on pupil performance. I can’t think of a project where those factors are more important, and this school project raises the bar in creating lighting conditions suited to the needs of individual students,” says Simo Kari, Sales Director at Glamox Oy Finland.
Images credit: Photo: Marko Kallio, Skyfox