Words Lawrence Carlos
Images Greg Mayo (Green Group Inc.)
Green Group Inc. (GGI) barely waited for the work on their new headquarters to be completed in late March 2024, when their over thirty-strong staff moved in right away. On the swift transition, GGI’s president and CEO, Leonardo Atienza (Leonard, as he is more commonly called), emphasized, “The move-in was immediate…From there, we could already see what needed to be fixed.” One could already sense that GGI’s meticulousness is part and parcel of the process of why they have established themselves as a frontrunner in supplying best-in-class architectural lighting design in the Philippines since 2011.
Unlike their previous office—tucked away in a nondescript structure on a one-way street in San Juan—GGI’s new space has a prime address (on the eighth floor of Santolan Town Plaza), is accessible, and has amenities and restaurants at its doorstep. With their philosophy of the ‘language of light,’ GGI then sought to collaborate with an architect who already understood what they offered, and Arkisens was the ideal fit. Having previously worked together on residential and commercial projects, Leonard had already shared with Arkisens that their old office was not suited to showcasing lighting products in the best manner possible. Soon after, Leonard asked Arkisens to develop the plan for the new office space in April 2023.
The reception area’s curved form guides you into the main spaces, which showcase different partner brands. From left to right, a COLORS LED strip light marks the entry to the office space, the Experience Room entrance showcases Delta Light products, and the Gallery has Linea Light directional track lights.
Experiencing light
Upon entering the new showroom, the reception feels diminutive, but this was intentional; Eds Rivera, partner at Arkisens, expounds, “We wanted the reception to be compact, and then you have a feeling of release when you move to the rest of the spaces.” The new 316-square-meter showroom consists of the reception and waiting area, the Gallery, the Experience Room, the main office area, a conference room, and executive offices. Rey Zabala, GGI’s in-house lighting expert, outlines, “In comparison to the old office where we had an array of different products here and there, what we decided to do for the new showroom was to feature the best products from each partner brand per room; we seamlessly integrated them with our standard office lighting like we would in an actual project. So, the Gallery features one brand. The Experience Room has another brand…it becomes a showcase of the brands’ lighting.” Zabala had previously been affiliated with GGI as they had encountered each other on projects over the span of 10 years. Since February 2023, he has been directly advising the GGI team and clients on all technical aspects with all their brand partners as their in-house lighting consultant. Over 130 lighting products and over 50 accompanying components make up the entire showroom setup—each can be tinkered with to achieve the desired outcome.
As you move through the funnel-shaped hallway to the rest of the spaces, the light settings are set in relation to the activity it illuminates, with the flexibility to adjust depending on what’s required at any given time. The Gallery space, which wraps around one side of the main office, is sheathed in a silicone material to accentuate its length; here, you already get to experience how customizable the fixtures installed are. One of GGI’s technical engineers was on hand to demonstrate different scene settings of the Linea Light track lights, from evenly washing light across the five paintings on display, highlighting individual ones, or even a cycle through spotlighting each painting in sequence, all through the Lutron smartphone app. Moreover, the Gallery lighting levels are programmable to respond to the position of the Lutron shades on the windows adjacent to the Gallery (which are also fully operable or can be driven by a daylight sensor); as the shades come down, the interior lights brighten. The vast majority of what you can see in this showroom can be modified with nuance to balance interior illumination and viewing conditions with daylighting.
Coming into the Experience Room, designed as a café-dining meeting space and one of GGI’s key showroom spaces, Leonard explains, “We invite designers to come here and work together with the client. You can chill here. It’s comfortable, there’s coffee…we have wine…we have music. We have product samples here so we can showcase the product. I think it’s better to present [to] the client [in] this way. So why not create a room so that they can feel the mood here [and] see how good the lights are.”
Co-developed by GGI and renowned Belgian brand Delta Light, numerous detailed iterations of the Experience Room were explored to determine what lighting fixtures to install and their precise placement. Beyond the technical minutiae of light, “The conversation was always about light quality first and the experience of different types of lighting coming to the fore in this room,” sums up Sales and Project Manager from Delta Light, Nicholas Ong-Lewis. “We really believe in Green Group Inc.’s values…they are a family-led company just like Delta Light,” he furthers, having established a relationship in the Philippines for a couple of years already.
The lighting on show in the Experience Room is specifically curated. A suspended directional track uplighter casts non-directional, soft shadows and avoids high-contrast sharp shadows where the coffee setup is. You can also adjust a whole series of fully recessed downlights, whose tunable white color temperature range is from 2,700K (warm) to 6,000K (cool), including a 10-millimeter pinhole light which, despite its minuscule appearance, has a beam angle range from 15 to 50 degrees. When demonstrating the wall washers across the neutral wall, one can clearly see minimized scalloping and dark spots and the vibrant color rendering of sample materials under different temperature settings. All in all, the Experience Room has offered Delta Light a perfectly controllable environment to convey what quality of light brings to a space.
It was also important that the working spaces—namely the main office area, the executive rooms, and the conference room—were suitably lit in their day-to-day operations for all staff. Between 6:00 am and 7:30 am, the main office scene settings are such that the shades are fully drawn to let daylight in. From 10:00 am onwards, as staff settle into their working day, the shades fully close, and the intensity of the interior office lighting (a combination of recessed downlights from Visual Feast and grille panel lamps from GGI’s in-house brand LUMI+) increases. There’s even a mode where the lighting level can be decreased for staff naps in the afternoons without compromising ongoing office activity. Out of office hours, when there is little or no occupancy, the lights are appropriately dialed down.
For Leonard and his management team, the executive rooms are pleasantly lit, individual, and more intimate working and meeting spaces that also act as demo rooms. They are fitted with linear magnetic track system modules by COLORSLED, which are controlled by scene-setting touch switches from Simon, a brand from Barcelona. Lastly, the conference room houses a blend of square recessed downlights and wall and floor washer downlights from XAL to make longer group meetings feel very comfortable to the eye.
Across all the rooms, the ease with which the multitude of scenes can be changed makes everyone’s working days at GGI much more seamless. What also becomes apparent after spending some time in the whole office is that no light fixture ever produces illumination that is too strong for the eyes. Every space feels evenly lit at just the right lux level, reducing eye strain during office working hours. Compared to a standard working environment, where lighting is often too bright or inconsistent, you can truly tell the difference in the ambiance, color rendering quality, and clarity of the environment the light touches. This showroom compellingly demonstrates the principles that have underpinned GGI’s success over the years, showcasing them in a way that allows visitors to experience them directly.
Shedding new light
Eds Rivera and fellow Arkisens partner Chok Manalo outlined the smooth process of working with GGI to define the new working space and show spaces with light. They initially submitted a set of plans without knowing all the products GGI had wanted to integrate. “The initial goal was to highlight the spaces and the surfaces,” Manalo recalls. Next, GGI, along with Zabala’s expertise, got to work on integrating a wishlist of products and applications into the design. Even if GGI were clear in what they wanted to include, the architects “still had the freedom to interpret the lighting design,” Rivera chimed. Ultimately, “the combination of those two intentions became the outcome [you see here],” Manalo confirmed. In reality, GGI and Arkisens’s familiarity with each others’ design process meant that most of the effort was put into fine-tuning rather than wholesale changes. Even with the staggering number of settings and options, GGI staff are on hand to clearly describe every detail of the products and explain their benefits both qualitatively and in terms of cost. Even if a client lives a plane ride away, GGI’s technical team can even assist in customizing settings remotely without having to go to the client’s property itself; clients can run through a series of settings to their liking and have them checked and approved on the proprietary cloud server.
Leonard reiterates the importance of GGI being involved much earlier in the design process for the projects they’re asked to consult on and supply for. He and Zabala know all too well that lighting is often considered an afterthought or value-engineered, so it’s their prerogative to highlight the value good lighting can bring to a project. Arkisens attest to this close collaboration as Manalo and Rivera elaborate, “While we can do our part in convincing the client that there’s more to it [than just being lighting], it’s a big help that the supplier assists us in educating the client.” Leonard, who is also architecturally trained, is in complete sync with Arkisens in not underinvesting in lighting, especially when much is spent on high-end finishes and furniture. “It can make or break a design intent,” proclaims Manalo.
Towards the end of the showroom tour, the Arkisens partners had queries about some of the technical and operational aspects of the new outdoor lighting solutions that GGI is venturing into supplying. Such is the continuous learning curve for their design partners, and it pays to check in regularly with GGI to keep abreast of the latest product releases and innovations. Manalo remarks, “The products are constantly evolving, so even for us, we also need some reintroduction and retraining as to what new products and applications are.”
On the day of the showroom and office tour, the number of meetings booked with their lighting brand partners and lighting designer collaborators showed that GGI was already gearing up to refresh the company to the market. With the scene set for future operations, the new GGI showroom bolsters the company’s offering to clients and designers, being greater than just a sum of their in-house technical expertise, outward-facing services, and acting as a shopfront—their customer experience and service, housed in one holistic design, can now be seen in the same light. •
A co-creation of Kanto.com.ph and Green Group Inc.
