Lighting in Design February-March 2018

semi-circle ring of asymmetric sliding rectangles and circles. Designed by architect Nabeel Essa from Office 24/7, the stone tool sculptures are placed at the entrance to the site. Essa’s work made use of 3-D scanning technology where he digitally recre- ated, at a 300% life size scale, a pair of stone tool artifacts from the area. The second sculpture is the focal point of the site and functions as a seating ring for picnics or events, wheremore than 200 custom-designed and cut unpolished Rustenburg granite blocks, each of a different size, make up the ovular sculptural seating. “These features all relate to create an interpretive space which does not overpower the site,” says Honiball. Both stone sculptures stand to remind visitors how far we have come as a species, and serve as a beautiful tribute to our humble begin- nings as intelligent life forms in the area. An important aspect of the project was the lighting which would allowMaropeng to extend the usage of the space. Having worked successfully with RLS on a number of successful projects in the past, includingThe Houston, the Botswana Innova- tive Hub, Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital and FreedomPark, GREENInc approached the company to assist with the lighting design at Maropeng. “Lighting was engrained in the project from the beginning,” says Honiball. Catherine Feher of RLS

makes the point that in order to limit light pollution, no uplighting was allowed. “Standard Piazza bollard lighting was used along the walkways leading to the site and to light the sculptures at the entrance.” The Piazza is an elegant upstand light with low downlighting. The lighting that captures the attention of most visitors though, is the lighting solution designed for the seating ring. “After our discussion with Cath- erine, the intent was always to have the seating lit through the slits that are present,” says Honiball. “As the diameter of ring is 30 m, we needed something with a bit of a punch to create the de- sired effect,” explains Feher. Since there was no standard light fitting available to suit the purpose, after some lateral thinking, the RLS team came up with a solution. They repurposed a wall washer fitting (designed to wash the façade of a building with light) using a stand and baseplate to ensure its integrity, and set a total of 27 fittings 30 cm back from the ring to provide the desired strips of light through the gaps as well as reflective light, which bounces back off the ring. The effect is captivating – the beams of light cross in the centre of the ring and spill upwards to highlight the 3 m raised berm. It is this ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking that has seen RLS find solutions for a multitude of problems which other companies may just have shrugged

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LiD FEB/MAR 2018