Rennes lighting master plan

In 2012, the city of Rennes adopted a Schéma Directeur d’Aménagement Lumière (SDAL), which prioritizes interventions and ensures the coherence of its lighting strategy. Designed by CONCEPTO, this innovative document introduced the ‘trame noire’ principle, which has since become a hallmark of Rennes. Building on this success and supporting various strategic plans such as the PCAET, PLU-I, SCOT, and the cycling master plan, the Metropolitan authorities and elected officials sought to implement a similar tool: the SCAL, or ‘Schéma de Cohérence d’Aménagement Lumière’. Developed through a collaborative process involving metropolitan elected officials, the SCAL aims to harmonize public lighting and illumination initiatives across municipalities. The SCAL’s core priorities include biodiversity preservation, energy reduction, optimized maintenance, and the creation of a unified territorial identity that enhances both individual actions and the collective community spirit. To launch the metropolitan SCAL initiative, the authorities commissioned the lighting design firm les éclaireurs & Luminescence to conduct an extensive analysis across all 43 municipalities. Their approach spans from a metropolitan-wide perspective down to detailed recommendations for each municipality. Designed as a practical and user-friendly tool for municipalities and stakeholders—including developers, lighting designers, architects, and landscape planners—the SCAL provides tailored lighting guidelines based on space, site, and road typologies. At its core, the framework ensures that lighting projects align with dark-sky conservation objectives (‘trame sombre’).