Commissioned by the National Railway Museum for their new 'Locomotion' museum at Shildon, the home of Timothy Hackworth, an early pioneer of the railways, Light Engine is a 6 metre high, 6-sided column of text activated LEDs by light artist Peter Freeman set into a laser cut polished marine grade stainless steel structure.

Railways were the cutting edge technology of their time. The locomotives that were built at Shildon revolutionised transport and communications across the world. Light Engine is a contemporary artistic response to this important historical site.

Light Engine is a forward looking, interactive light beacon that celebrates the resonance and emotional vitality of the early railways through new emerging technologies, using the latest RGB LED's in conjunction with GMS text messaging.

There are six locomotive name text commands:- Texting one of - Locomotion - Globe -Sans Pareil - Magnet - Arrow - Shildon - to Light Engine triggers programmed light animations which express new visual equivalents for these early classic locomotives. Each command gives an individual light display that conjures the name of the locomotive through intense RGB animated colours. Each text command gives a five minute display before returning to default which is a gentle scroll through single colours.

The form of the sculpture and the pattern of the lights are inspired by the signal lights of the railway. If a number of people text the sculpture simultaneously the sculpture stores the messages in a queue and plays them back at 20 second intervals. The mobile telephone number and commands are laser cut into the base of the column. Anyone in the world can change the colour of the sculpture with the command and telephone number.

Light Engine uses 54 Luxeon RGB LED arrays and drivers supplied by Lumidrives and programmed using a Mode Lighting DMX controller. The text messaging interactivity is by a custom built GMS controller. The LEDs are installed behind windows of diffusing acrylic. They are highly visible during the day and spectacular at night. The sculpture is installed in a public space just outside the entrance to the museum. During the day it welcomes visitors to the site. At night it entertains the local inhabitants of Shildon who live in close proximity to the sculpture.

www.peterfreeman.co.uk
www.lumidrives.com
www.mode-lighting.co.uk

Lighting Technology Projects has supplied 102 Color Kinetics ColorBlast 12 LED fixtures for an eye-catching 41 metre long by 6 metre high illuminated glass 'art wall' at Plantation Place. This is part of a new office development in the heart of the historic City of London.

The public art work was commissioned from UK artist Simon Patterson.

The light wall runs along the newly created Plantation Lane that divides the two halves of the Plantation Place building - from Christopher Wren's Grade I listed St Margaret Patten's Church to the west of the development, all the way to Mincing Lane in the east.

LTP's Terry Reeves was approached by electrical contractors Haden Young, and architects/engineers/lighting designers Arup to source lighting fixtures as specified. Reeves collaborated on the engineering elements with Arup's David Hymas, which included producing a full scale mock up demonstration of a section of the wall, allowing the testing of different light sources before making their final choice.

The ColorBlast was selected for its even wash characteristics, its durability and its low maintenance and running cost factors. 51 ColorBlasts shine up from the base of the 1 metre wide wall, evenly spaced along its length, and 51 are inset along the top, beaming down. They were programmed by Reeves using CK's ColorPlay authoring software. The standard sequence includes a slow full spectrum sweep along the rows of fixtures. Control is via a CK's iPlayer 2 compact multiple show storage/playback system, specially developed to run their digital lighting products. The ColorBlasts illuminate a sepia tinted photographic etching of the dark side of the moon that runs lengthways along the wall, picking out its casting onto the glass fascias, creating shadows, contrasts and producing an almost hallucinogenic 3D effect when combined with the image.

The feature wall is proving a great hit, and is fast becoming a popular after-dark public attraction in its own right.

www.colorkinetics.com
www.paigroup.com

Futurist Projects Ltd specified James Thomas PixelPAR 90(A) LED fixtures to illuminate the exterior of Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, London, just opened after a £24 million refurbishment project.

The elegant venue is now the home of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - ending nearly 60 years of itinerancy - and also London's newest concert hall and historic venue, available for corporate events, parties and function hire. It's kitted out with a fully flexible 21st century technical infrastructure to deliver a full gamut of production requirements. Twenty PixelPAR 90(A)s were specified for the exterior of the building, to illuminate the arches and tower of the former Christian Scientist Church, built in 1904. This is phase one of a two-part architectural installation on the outside of the Hall.

The fixtures were specified by Futurist Project's Michael Lister. The PixelPARs are attached discreetly to the walls of the Grade II listed building, uplighting its cool architecture designed by Robert Fellowes Chisholm. Discretion, smallness and the ability to conceal the fittings were all top priority when it came to choosing light sources. The design brief insisted that these were 'virtually invisible' to passers by and local residents.

Control was another issue. The fittings that Lister originally specified for the project needed a cable for control, but when aesthetics and invisibility became a crucial issue in the planning stages, he had to look for other solutions. By this time the PixelPAR 90(A) was available, complete with its stand-alone operational mode allowing the lights to change colour without data cable.

Currently, the Pixels crossfade very subtly from light blue to dark blue. It's planned to introduce more colours into the scheme as locals become accustomed to the iridescent beauty of the illuminated building in their midst. The next phase of the exterior lighting installation will also include an Avolites eDMX system for more sophisticated control of the Pixels from inside the building.

Apart from that, the usual benefits of LED lighting - low maintenance, long lamp life and low power consumption - all helped Lister make his choice.

www.pixelpar.com

We've seen screens of LEDs on facades before, but nowhere in the world have we seen the media wrapping around the volume, forming a skin to the building, fluid and dynamic. At the Galleria Fashion Mall in Seoul, it does. What is a sophisticated frosted glass facade having a mother-of-pearl effect during the day, transforms into a vibrant and scenic experience at night. 5,000 glass disks, each having their own individual Xilver RGB luminaire, together make up an ocean of colours and movements.

The entire project is custom designed by Rogier van der Heide IALD, Associate Director of Arup Lighting, in close collaboration with architect UN Studio and LED manufacturer Xilver. The control system, which is supplied by E:cue, runs 15,000 DMX channels and is arguably the most elaborate system of its kind in the world.

The effect of the Galleria lighting design goes much beyond a fancy colour projection. People stop in the street, take pictures, interact with the facade, video it, all of them are amazed. Nothing reminds them of the dull, blind, concrete facade that the Galleria was until recently. The design's subtle colour changes and abstract images perfectly fit the contemporary image of the building.

www.xilver.nl
www.arup.com

The fabulous eighth floor VIP Room at London's new Penthouse club not only offers spectacular views right across the capital from its famous site at No. 1 Leicester Square, but matches the night-time vista with inspired LED colour-changing at the sumptuous window booth seating.

Paul Craig, managing director of Showtec Lighting and Sound, contacted Ian Kirby's Lighting Effects Distribution with the intention of utilising the impressive Solar range of LED fixtures and control systems on all three floors of the venue. The decision was made to install quantities of high brightness units on the 6th and 8th floors, while the 7th floor required the use of static red units.

Accompanying the LED's on the 6th floor, a number of intelligent fixtures were added to contribute movement to the main bar area. These included recessed scans and moving heads, fitted with custom lenses to give a diffused colour changing light output.

The 8th floor incorporated the use of 14 Solar MR16 colour changing LED's to slowly wash the statues of Nike, the Winged Goddess of Victory, with gentle striations of light. The LED fixtures utilise the latest technology, offering high brightness and low maintenance.

For co-owner Paul Carew the installation on the 8th floor is unquestionably the piéce de résistance for the venue's upscale clientele. "The whole place will suddenly change colour using the LED's," he said. "The effect they create up on the 8th floor is absolutely fantastic."

The design was jointly conceived by Showtec's Paul Craig and the interior designer Matt Rawlinson of RAW Design. "To ensure the job undertaken was completed to the highest of standards, our engineers worked alongside the designers and owners to ensure complete satisfaction", declared Paul. "The end result has produced an effect which is both subtle and stunning."

The Penthouse is operated by Paul Carew, with partners Nev Mody and Mark Young in the venue previously occupied by Home. The same team also owns and operates nearby Elysium at the Café Royal.

www.solargb.co.uk
www.led-lites.co.uk

One of the most stunning features at this year's Hampton Court Palace Flower Show was the Garden of Light, created using LEDs from Tridonic.Atco. The garden so impressed the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) judges that not only did they award it a Silver Gilt medal; they also introduced a brand new award, Most Creative Small Garden, especially for this project.

The Garden of Light was the brainchild of lighting designers Jonathan Gittins and Torunn Saksvikronning, and it enabled them to combine their professional skills with their interest in gardening. "We have had an interest in garden lighting for some time and LEDs have now reached a stage where they can be used effectively for this purpose," explained Jonathan Gittins. "Having worked with Tridonic.Atco LEDs before, we knew they could provide the performance we required," Torunn added.

The garden is designed to demonstrate how lighting can be used to bring gardens to life at night and how the mood of a small garden can be changed by the movement of light and variations in its colour. The design used a combination of Tridonic.Atco's red, green and blue powerLED light sources, so these colours could be mixed in different proportions to change the overall colour effect.

Some 50 spotlight fittings made from simple enclosures with acrylic discs, each containing red, green and blue LEDs, were secreted amongst the plants and these are supplemented by illuminated light boxes at each end of the garden and an illuminated table at its centre.

"It was important that visitors should see the effects of the light itself and not be distracted by the fittings," Jonathan Gittins continued. "In using LEDs we were able to achieve a colour changing effect in much smaller fittings than would have been possible with other light sources," he added.

For demonstration purposes, the lighting at the Garden of Light was programmed to run in an automatic colour-changing sequence, loosely influenced by the natural colour changes seen in the Northern Lights. To ensure that visitors could appreciate the results during the day, the garden was fully enclosed with viewing slots for visitors.

The Garden of Light was designed as a contemporary courtyard garden with a silver birch as its focal point. Other plants were designed to enhance the lighting effects and included bamboos and grasses as well as white-flowering Agapanthus. All of the landscaping and planting, as well as the lighting installation, was carried out by Jonathan and Torunn in their spare time.

www.tridonicatco.com

The front of the new Lagotronics headquarters uses 72 acrylic panels, sized 800x2850mm, to light up a surface of nearly 165 square metres. The acrylic panels are 10mm thick and coated with a layer which protects them against all weather conditions. Amazingly transparent, the whole construction leaves the light entering the building during the day but reveals a fantastic chase of diffrently coloured squares at night. Due to the fact that the front faces directly towards a highway, the building has become a significant landmark in this region.

The edge lit panels can cycle through any colour using LagoLED® RGB LED strips which are installed on one long side of the panel. Being an edge lit panels means that the light is transported through the panel from top to bottom, from outside to inside. The Dot-matrix on the acrylic then reflects the light evenly off the panel. Using LagoLED® RGB Strips, any colour can be created out of a 24 bit palette, giving a total of 16.7 million colours to work with. The colour mixing is done by LagoLED® RGB Strip controllers. The LagoLED® RGB Strip controllers use the world standard DMX 512 protocol. Since there are four outputs on this type of controller, 18 controllers in total are used for the entire facade. To connect the panels to the controllers, the LagoLED® strip frame was modified to accommodate the cabling to run through the frame. The strips have been adapted for outside usage by sealing them inside of the frames with a special resin.

The facade is designed and installed by Lagotronics, known worldwide for their LED technology. >>>

www.lagoled.com

The new Marriott Hotel in Potsdamer Platz is an oasis of calm only minutes from the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, at the very heart of Germany's new capital. Architecturally the building is wrapped around a keynote central atrium, creating a stage for the central attraction, an astounding 30 metre tall luminous wall sculpture. Lighting designers Licht Kunst Licht worked with Se'lux Lighting to create an installation which gives the impression of a landscape of luminous, drifting clouds, blending into the architecture of the space rather than appearing as a separate lighting effect.

The 30m high by 10m wide sculpture follows the architectural grid of the building. It comprises 72 individual expanded copper mesh panels illuminated by lines of LEDs along their vertical edges. The overall effect is that each panel appears to glow both from within, whilst light grazing the surface of the mesh adds depth to the entire wall.

A sophisticated control system manages the phasing of each panel, but also their construction means that the appearance of each effect also changes subtly as the observer moves around the atrium. To achieve this masterpiece, Se'lux Lighting supplied 152 lighting fixtures to support almost 220 metres of LED narrow beam light strips and 31,000 individual LEDs. Every light emitting diode is fixed in a precision installed lens system, allowing the installation to vary with the viewing angle. Each illuminated panel consists of a torsion-proof black backing sandwiched together with a sheet of expanded copper mesh and the entire panelled wall has been constructed to be absolutely flat across its entire 300m2 surface.

Like every project that involves the combination of daylight and electric light, the atmosphere and effect of the installation are dependent on the time of day. During the daytime, this artwork of lighting blends seamlessly with the architecture as natural light washing in from the glazed roof bathes the lobby area in a natural glow. To arriving guests the wall is simply another architectural element, until the discreet lighting sequences rippling over its surface catch the eye of those who choose to linger. The sculpture really comes into its own after dark when the lighting takes over as the central element creating a keynote ambience and warmth for the entire hotel.

www.selux.co.uk

Due to its unique and impressive wealth of historical buildings, Prague is often referred to as the "Golden City". A recently completed ambitious tram project, has added yet a few more dabs of colour in the form of six train stops to the already colourful city. Thanks to modern LED technology provided by Hess, the aesthetic effects can be appreciated at night.

Since recently, a 3,567 m long street tramline connects the Prague quarters Hlubocepy and Barrandov. The six stations along the line are unique in terms of architectural design and urban planning. Although they are designed homogeneously, for orientation, each has been designated a particular colour for its respective zone. Both of the stations in the outskirts are clad in red and silver to contrast with the bordering green landscaped areas. To break up the monotony of the streets and concrete facades, the inner city stops have been outfitted in bright shades of yellow, blue, green and red.

Rows of illuminating tiles, each 200mm long, run along the platform edge at a distance of 2m from the edge. Operating on a special lighting control system, they alert the waiting passengers of approaching and departing trams. Blinking lights indicate the arrival of trains.

The lights switch off as soon as the train has stopped so the passengers are not irritated by glare. At departure, the lighting system switches on and remains on, without blinking, until the train has left the stop. Through the accenting of the platform edge during

the potentially dangerous operational phases, the risk of persons inadvertently stepping too close to the train and being injured is significantly reduced.

Hess LED illuminating tiles (Ledia LF) were chosen for the directive lighting system. Employing high capacity light diodes, they fulfil all of architect Kotas' requirements for this safety lighting system with regard to function and design. "They are flexibly controllable, efficient and maintenance free, durable enough to withstand the abuse incurred in a high-use exterior application and, through their coloured light, coordinate well with the principal colour of each specific station," he says, naming the most important features.

www.hess-form-licht.de

The Prince Bar centrally located on Church Street in Athlone has undergone a large-scale refurbishment programme. The new design is wholly suited to the bar's active lunchtime trade but can also be revolutionised into a warm temperate funky up-beat haven in the evening twilight.

The owner, John Callanan of the Callanan Group wanted something contemporary and attractive. Callanan also knew that a legendary lighting design would be the key to the look and identity of the venue so he brought in ICAN Technology, who has previously worked on similar projects all over the country.

The huge building that comprises the Prince Bar was divided into zones, each with its own innovative décor and purpose to meet and suit the different environmental needs. Downstairs, incorporates the carvery area, sandwich bar and a modern lounge and bar section under sweeping ceilings, another small cocktail bar and various seating areas, subtly divided from the rest of the floor plan for ultimate comfort and privacy.

The main fixtures that were used to create such an inspired look consisted of Pulsar's ChromaDomes and ChromaStrips which all contributed to the warm timbers, earthy tiles and dark cranberry and brown leathers. The lighting scheme was programmed purposely to create subtle slow changes and beautiful, embracing tones that would create a lovely bubble in the room, highlighting and enhancing the Prince's architectural features; its perfect colour mixing is achieved through LED technology, which was carefully selected for its long life and low maintenance.

www.pulsarlight.com