Lighting in Design November-December 2015

rchestral lighting

for fun and profit

by Gavin Chait

W andering around Hong Kong at night is like visiting the world of Blade Runner, the 1982 neo-noir science fiction film by Ridley Scott. Thousands of people pack the streets, and immense modern buildings tower up into the sky. Property is so expensive that the only way to make anything anyone can afford is to add levels. You may remember the opening to Blade Runner, as you fly into the city with humongous visual advertising displays flickering on the sides of buildings? That –minus the flying cars – is Hong Kong today. Every evening, tens of thousands gather on the waterfront along the key and look- ing across Victoria Bay. At 8pm, the Symphony of Lights begins; the world’s largest permanent light and sound show. Forty-seven buildings, on both sides of Victo- ria Harbour, participate in the display. Each has wrapped its building in a combination of lasers, searchlights, LEDs and projection lighting. The show itself has five movements: awakening, en- ergy, heritage, partnership and celebration. Laservision, the company behind the Hong Kong Symphony of Light, says that for one of the buildings it wired up – Canon in Kowloon – it used, “6WLED dots, each containing six LEDs, two each in red, blue and green”. Lighting up the entire building required, “A to- tal of 14 rows of LED dots, with 30 dots per row, installed along each of the building’s external ribs. The design solves light trespass and light pollution issues that are problematic in illuminating glass surfaces.”

The fixtures have an expected lifetime of about 75 000 hours, and use about 12.5 kWhr at a cost of about $2.00 an hour. The LED luminaires consume little energy, and the resolution required is not the super-pixel level of a mobile phone. Since people are usually viewing buildings from hundreds of metres away, LED dots can be quite spread out. Similarly, directed lighting reduces stray light, and control systems ensure minimum energy consumption. At these low energy consumption levels, many companies power their façade lighting with solar panels on the roof. “The revolutionary development of LEDs has opened up fresh design approaches for façade lighting. The controllability of the brightness and light colour of LED light sources, together with their diverse optical characteristics, aremaking innovative technical lighting solutions possible. For example, façade lighting can be realised from inside a building thanks to the compact dimensions of LEDs. Rather than flooding façades with light, it is now possible to integrate light sources into the architecture,” says Stefan Hofmann, a lighting designer at Lichtwerke . Started in 2004, with eighteen buildings, the Symphony has become part of Hong Kong’s efforts to present itself as one of the world’s great cities. And, pollution aside (which is fantastic for public lighting displays), Hong Kong can definitely be said to be amongst that milieu. These media façades have become a major part of efforts by cities around the world to attract notice, brand themselves, and capture the idea of ‘urban chic’. Unsurprisingly, some of the world’s fastest growing, but impoverished, cities are taking the lead.

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