Completed in 2024, Paddington Square is a landmark scheme designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), which has transformed the area around world-famous Paddington Station into a lively new quarter. The centrepiece of the development is an 18-storey, mixed-use building, which houses 350,000sq ft of Grade A office space and West London’s highest rooftop restaurant – with panoramic views of Hyde Park and more.
Drawing inspiration from Brunel’s Grade 1 listed Paddington Station, RPBW’s vision was to create a striking crystalline cube-like structure that appears to float above the ground. WSP worked closely with the architect to enhance this concept through a bespoke lighting strategy, all while balancing local council requirements, site constraints and sustainability.
One of the greatest challenges was meeting the diverse and often conflicting requirements of multiple stakeholders, including Westminster City Council, Transport for London (TfL) and Network Rail. Each organisation had its own lighting standards, operational constraints and sustainability targets, requiring extensive coordination to ensure a harmonious yet compliant lighting solution.
The project also faced significant construction challenges, particularly concerning underground utilities and the integration of bespoke lighting solutions within a densely built transport hub. The placement of lighting columns and other fixtures had to be carefully reconsidered on-site to avoid conflicts with existing infrastructure, while still aligning with RPBW’s vision of a lightweight, floating architectural form. The lighting design team worked closely with the construction team and architect to ensure that lighting elements could be repositioned or adapted without compromising performance, energy efficiency and the overall aesthetic.
The finish of the luminaires was selected to complement the material palette of the urban realm and architectural finishes, allowing the lighting to blend seamlessly with both historic and contemporary elements. The lighting scheme was refined through extensive testing and calibration, ensuring that illumination levels, contrast ratios and reflection control were optimised.
The public realm lighting columns were designed with custom brackets and tailored lighting arrangements to align with the architectural scale of the building and surrounding urban fabric. Positioning the columns required careful re-evaluation during construction, as their placement needed to ensure unobstructed pedestrian movement while avoiding conflicts with windows and sensitive sightlines. Several columns were repositioned on-site to better integrate with the space, reinforcing wayfinding principles while maintaining a clean, unobtrusive visual language.
The forecourt lighting strategy follows a simple and refined approach, using a minimised number of lighting elements to achieve an elegant and functional scheme. The design prioritises clarity, safety and seamless integration, ensuring that functional lighting enhances visibility without overwhelming the architectural composition. The building’s canopy lighting reinforces its floating form while providing functional illumination for surrounding pedestrian areas and roadways. To optimise energy efficiency and responsiveness, the system is linked to time clocks and photocells, adjusting automatically to ambient light conditions, ensuring that illumination is only used when necessary.
