Lighting Design Awards - Architecture : Information

BDP WIN LIGHTING DESIGN AWARD 11 Mar 2008 BDP Lighting won the special projects category and had a further entry shortlisted in the workplace category in this year’s Lighting Design Awards. The awards were presented at a ceremony at the London Hilton on Park Lane on 6 March 2008. Castlefield, Manchester Photograph © David Barbour/BDP BDP’s Guerilla Lighting events in London and Manchester won in the special projects category and Westminster Academy, London was short-listed in the workplace category. The concept of Guerrilla Lighting was created by Martin Lupton, director of BDP’s lighting group, to promote lighting design and create a platform to discuss key issues such as professional design, waste and sustainability. The power behind the exercise was the participation and collabaoration, which was what particularly impressed the judges. Under the guidance of a team leader, the teams created transient lighting designs by using high powered torches, battery powered LED projectors, luminous dot lights and an array of gels and filters. Although it looks spontaneous, the lighting effects are carefully planned. Instructed to be in a specific position at a given distance from their target, the teams simultaneously lit up various aspects of the city’s architecture at the sound of an air horn, creating a dramatic spectacle. The lit buildings are photographed and the teams then switch off and move on to the next building. Pool of London Photograph © Sanna Fisher-Payne/BDP BDP aims to raise the question “If these transformations were achieved through 20 minutes of battery power, what are the possibilities through permanent lighting installations?” The first BDP Guerilla Lighting event in Manchester, a city yet to exploit lighting to show off its amazing architectural heritage, was designed to challenge people’s perception of the city and inspire a new thinking within the industry. So far Guerilla Lighting events have been held in Manchester, London and Glasgow, and further events are being planned for later this year. At Westminster Academy in London BDP’s lighting designers worked closely with the architects to develop the design for high levels of daylight and dynamic sunlight that is complemented by the graphical use of simple exposed fluorescent luminaires giving a visually stunning lighting scheme that matches the raw finishes of the architecture. Fenestration was carefully developed for all classrooms to maximise daylight which has been proven to improve the speed of learning. Classrooms that don’t have external windows feature light wells to pipe natural light from the roof into the classroom. The atrium roof shading was also designed to maximise daylight, allow a control penetration of dramatic sunlight at key times of the day and create a visual feature within the space.