Light Channel Next. That’s the sign on a door indicating the way to the brand new BMW Light Tunnel, which hides in a nondescript industrial building that’s also home to BMW’s factory engineering department. Stefan Weber, Frederic Blanc, Tabea Schluerscheid and Max Dressel from BMW’s Lighting Development Department welcomed DVN’s Wolfgang Huhn to the new tunnel with the saying: “a craftsman is only as good as his tools”. Of course, they were referring to the light tunnel, a new ‘tool’ planned; built, and equipped with great attention to detail. Joerg Kaelble, head of BMW’s lighting and vision department, was on a business trip and regrettably couldn’t join in for the visit.
Humans will politely wipe their feet before coming in—cars, too; the first detail that stands out is the drip area, where the cars can shed snow and rain water collected on the way to the clean light channel. It’s quite an impressive facility: 132 m long with a working length of 121 m; 25 m wide, 9.6 m high. The ‘road’ surface is an asphalt-concrete layer with coating, finish, and surface colour typical of Munich roadways. There’s 900 m2 of curtain area.
Every lighting engineer knows how important the quality of the 10-metre surface is, for aiming the headlamps and assessing the light distribution. BMW have installed a device for automatic alignment of the car on rollers, which even takes into account different track widths of the front and rear axles. Above the 10m surface is a suspended ceiling in matte gray for stray light assessment. The precise and heavy projection wall can be lifted vertically over the entire width of the channel. All functions such as the room lighting and much more are controlled by an app on a mobile phone or tablet.
At the other end of the tunnel, three different surfaces are installed where customers often see light functions of their car: Underground garage (concrete), showroom (wooden parquet), and sidewalk (asphalt). The precise light carpet of the new 7 and the beautiful water flow effects on the floor out of the animated Swarovski crystals in the 7’s headlight were demonstrated on the different surfaces. The light carpet is animated by four different superimposed projections, giving a very lively impression.
A new X2 and 5 Series were used to demonstrate the light channel functions and the ADB functionalities, all in the well-known BMW lighting quality. And all with the new signature—the grille light, which is a fine line of light around the contour of the BMW iconic kidney grille, homogeneous and with a colour precisely matched to the signal functions in the headlamp.
DVN found a most modern light channel designed with great knowledge and a big heart for lighting, for developing the future of light.
