Mullan Lighting has completed the manufacture and on-site assembly of an impressive double ring chandelier in the newly refurbished Foyle Golf Centre, Derry.

Mullan Lighting, a leading designer and manufacturer of light fixtures, has completed the manufacture and on-site assembly of an impressive double ring chandelier in the newly refurbished Foyle Golf Centre, Derry. The two-tier chandelier measures three metres in diameter and contains RGBW LED strip lights, allowing the chandelier’s light colour to be altered, reflecting and changing the ambience of the venue below.

The larger ring of the chandelier – measuring three metres in diameter – was delivered in sections due to its size and assembled on-site by two engineers from Mullan Lighting. The second smaller tier measures 2.3 metres in diameter.

The main materials used in the manufacture of this bespoke chandelier for the Foyle Golf Centre are steel and ribbed Perspex – which is very effective at diffusing light. The light source within the chandelier consists of colour-changing RGBW LED strip lights and standard E27 lamp holders.

Mike Treanor, Director of Design and Operations, at Mullan Lighting stated,

“The sheer size of the Foyle Golf Centre chandelier made it a challenge to manufacture. We designed the larger tier of the chandelier is such a way that it could be pieced together seamlessly on-site.”

Mike added,

“The colour changing LED strip lighting adds an interesting dimension to the bespoke chandelier. It’s something that we’ll likely incorporate into more of our custom light fixtures in the future.”

The Foyle Golf Centre is a fabulous place to play golf on Ireland’s Causeway Coast. Famously, Amelia Earhart landed on what is now the 6th green in 1932 on a 15-hour solo flight from Newfoundland in Canada. The stop was unplanned due to poor weather conditions and technical issues. Some rooms within the Foyle Golf Centre are named after the pioneering female pilot to celebrate her legacy and short, unexpected visit.

Mullan Lighting worked closely with Clanrye Lighting who was the lighting supplier on the project. Clanrye Lighting specified the manufacture of the impressive chandelier to their requirements. Quite a few of Mullan Lighting’s standard light fixtures were also specified in other areas of the golf club’s entertainment venue – officially known as Pitchers Restaurant & Events Pavilion. Mullan Lighting’s standard light fixtures used in the Foyle Golf Centre include their Essence prismatic pendants and Moroni dome ceiling lights, and their Amias, Dublin, Hale, Kairi and Yaounde wall lights.

The supplier on this project is Clanrye Lighting, the main contractor Mastercraft Group and designer Audrey Gaffney Associates.

The Turner Prize, one of the world’s most renowned art prizes, is awarded by Tate to a British artist who has exhibited outstanding work in the previous year. Since 2011 the Turner Prize has been staged outside of London every other year, and for 2017 it was presented at Ferens Art Gallery in Hull as part of the UK City of Culture 2017 programme.

As part of the exhibit, Gradus was chosen to provide LED stair edgings for a custom-built theatre to showcase two films from Rosalind Nashashibi, one of the shortlisted artists.

Her films use the camera as an eye to convey moments and events, merging everyday observations with fantastical and mythological elements. Electrical Gaza (2016) captures the self-contained life of Gaza, removed from the world yet somehow enchanted and Vivian’s Garden (2017) depicts the relationship between two artists, who are mother and daughter, in the connected houses they share in a jungle garden in Panajachel, Guatemala.

Lily Mellor, Assistant Producer for Hull UK City of Culture 2017 Team, commented: “We needed a lighting solution that would complement the surroundings of this purpose built theatre, but that would also still provide a safe and secure environment for visitors. The continuity stair edging offered the perfect balance between aesthetics and safety.”

Since it was established in 1984 the Turner Prize has become one of the most prominent international visual arts awards and has both reflected and contributed to a growing public awareness and interest in contemporary art.

Lynette Bowden, Group Product Manager at Gradus, said: “We were thrilled to have been involved in this prestigious project. Providing stair-edging solutions for projects such as this showcases the versatility of Gradus’ products and we were delighted to have been part of this exciting art installation.”

RNT1218L stair edgings with blue continuity lighting were used to define the edge of all steps in the theatre, helping members of the public and staff to identify changes in level and reduce the risk of slips and trips on the stairs in low light conditions.

With over 25 years of experience in the design and manufacture of illuminated decorative and safety flooring accessories, Gradus offer a supply and fit service, as well as detailed product and technical information for all LED lighting systems available.

3DReid’s vertical ribbon of lights has been selected as one of only four designs shortlisted in the first ever competition for the redesign of Oxford Street’s word-famous Christmas lights.

Based on the concept of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis), 3DReid’s design uses a continuous, linear, colour-shifting light field to create an artificial ‘aurora’ that cascades down the unique shopping street and brings a special feeling of northern-ness to the heart of Christmas London.

The design has two main elements, a ribbon and a star field. The ribbon uses 500,000 fully addressable, three colour LED luminaires to create a never-repeating continuous geometry that curves smoothly around street obstacles such as trees or lamp posts. At each of five ‘gateways’, the ribbon takes a more flamboyant path and its programming changes, providing a strong sense of arrival for visitors.

Explains Charlie Whitaker, Associate Director and Concept Coach at 3DReid: “Where traditional Christmas light installations are horizontal, either spanning the street with intermittent banners or shapes, or putting a lid on the street like a ceiling, the main part of our design is a long, vertical ribbon. Because of this geometry, the many rich facades and storefronts of Oxford Street – often themselves illuminated – remain unobstructed and are allowed to make their own contribution. The continuously curving path encourages visitors to enjoy the whole length of Oxford Street, to appreciate its scale and the variety in its unity.”

In addition to the main ribbon ‘aurora’, the installation has a background ‘star field’ of suspended lights. Much less dense than the ribbon; the star field both contributes to the aurora effect and offers an opportunity to mix in some ‘Christmas eggs’. These consist of a variety of illuminated characters and shapes, some with a Christmas theme, some with a gift theme (by district) and others that are … less expected. Visitors can travel the length of Oxford Street to spot them, inviting exploration of the wider district.

With an installation lasting October through January – almost a quarter of the year – the Oxford Street lights unavoidably have a presence extending well beyond Christmas and can be subject to the traditionally reported ‘festive fatigue’. 3DReid’s design contains a planned and adaptable programme for the whole ‘winter lights season’, celebrating festivals such as Diwali and Hanukkah and national events such as Remembrance Sunday, whilst framing Christmas at its centre.

Launched by RIBA and Oxford Street and led by New West End Company, in conjunction with Transport for London (TfL) and Westminster City Council, the competition asked lighting designers and architects from the UK and beyond to design the most inspiring and innovative Christmas lights. The designs will be judged by an internationally esteemed panel and the winner will be announced in May 2018.

Images courtesy of 3DReid.

A global competition, launched to create the new design for the Christmas Illuminations across Oxford Street, which is visited by over 30 million people during the festive season, has reached its exciting second stage today. New West End Company, who commissioned the competition, has unveiled a shortlist of four ambitious concepts from across the world for the first new installation on the world-famous shopping destination in five years.

The shortlisted entries feature innovative and intricate uses of design and light from four talented artists and lighting specialists. The designs, two from UK studios, one from Portugal and a collaboration between two studios from Germany and Austria, have taken their inspiration from themes such as the Northern Lights and swarming flocks of birds. Each design has been created to enable passers-by to personally interact with the display.

This is the first time a global competition has ever been undertaken to find a designer to take on this illustrious project. Over 40 entries were submitted, with participants from the UK, Europe, Australia, the USA, and the Middle East among those to put forward their artistic visions for Christmas on one of the world’s most famous shopping streets.

The competition has been arranged by New West End Company and facilitated by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The judging panel, made up of experts from the arts and design industries, includes the British fashion designer Anya Hindmarch and Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries, Justine Simons. The winner, set to be announced at the end of May, will have the opportunity to showcase their work to over 30 million festive season visitors between November 2018 and January 2019 when the display will be showcased on Oxford Street.

The competition to secure a world-leading festive installation for Oxford Street is the latest example of how Oxford Street and London’s West End have their sights set on providing an unrivalled experience to visitors, especially during the magical Christmas season. The Oxford Street lights form part of New West End Company’s ambitious programme of events, activations and transformational projects designed to continue to enhance the reputation of the West End as the best place in the world to visit, shop, dine and explore.

Jace Tyrrell, Chief Executive of New West End Company said: “Oxford Street’s Illuminations are synonymous with Christmas in London, launching the festive season and drawing crowds from across the globe to the West End. The shortlisted entries are all outstanding, creating opportunities for people to interact with the installations in a new and innovative ways that have not been seen on Oxford Street before. Selecting the shortlist was incredibly difficult, but looking at the four potential winning designs, it’s certain the lights this year will be spectacular, giving all our visitors the opportunity to experience a special festive moment here on Oxford Street.”

Chris Wilkinson, OBE, Director, Wilkinson Eyre and RIBA Adviser says, “Oxford Street’s Christmas lights are world renowned, and this year a designer from this incredible shortlist will deliver an installation that eclipses anything that’s come before. The standard of entry has been wonderful and selecting a shortlist was extremely hard, but these four entries stood out in terms of their quality, and the inspiring stories that underpinned their design concepts. I’m really excited for the final stage of the competition from this amazing shortlist, and, whoever wins, I have no doubt there will be an amazing Christmas spectacle for visitors to Oxford Street to enjoy this Winter.”

The shortlisted entries are:

 

1. Gia Equation with Peter Fink Studio, Harry Dobbs Design & Eckersley O’Callaghan, London –KaleidoSCAPE is an immersive interactive experience of light and colour inspired by Aurora Borealis, the fragile spectrum of colours on the surfaces of bubbles and the light refraction through prisms.

 

1. Castros S.A, Portugal – This entry, entitled ‘The Polar Christmas’ will create a welcoming, tender Christmas display by combining inspiring shapes and colours, with one of Christmas’s most popular icons, the reindeer. The Polar Christmas is inspired by a magical tale created by the designer which describes how a famous jeweller was reminded of the preciousness of family by an encounter with a majestic reindeer on a dangerous polar expedition.

 

1. 3DReid, London – The designers’ North Pole-inspired design incorporates a ribbon geometry that never repeats and 500,000 LED lights that will allow flexibility for the lights to smoothly curve around the street through a ‘ribbon and star’ field.

 

1. Herr Meier Licht, Germany & MK Illumination, Austria – Taking inspiration from flocks of birds in the sky ‘The Swarm’ will use a 3D calibration to allow every light to follow its own behaviour. The simulation will last 24 hours and will change in colour.

 

 

NET LED Lighting are acknowledged specialists in LED lighting solutions for commercial businesses across the UK via its extensive electrical wholesaler network.

Seen as the manufacturers’ distributor, with over 25 years of knowledge and experience in SMD LED technologies, NET LED ensures they only supply products that meet the industry’s stringent quality and performance demands.

Christopher Dawes, Director at NET LED explains why they wanted to become an Ambassador of the Lighting Industry Academy.

“At NET LED we are very keen to set and raise standards for people looking for a career in our industry and have experienced first-hand the benefits of enrolling team members onto Academy courses.”

NET LED are a recognised LIAQA Assured Company for lamps and Commercial Luminaires and their supply chain and processes are accredited to ISO 9001 and 14001 ensuring the highest standards for quality and environmental management.

They are also a member of ICEL, the Industry Committee for Emergency Lighting, whose mission is to strengthen the industry and promote the benefits of good quality lighting.

With such respected credentials as these, the Academy are proud to welcome NET LED to the family.

NET LED’s commitment as an Ambassador, reinforces the vision and direction the Academy will take by helping it reach its full potential, support its goals and promote education and skills across the lighting community.

The Academy with NET LED’s support will bring skills and learning to the whole community, and create opportunities to develop the lighting community for a bright and exciting future.

See what you can learn today www.thelia.org.uk/academy

www.netledlighting.co.uk

Over 90,000 visitors from 152 countries [1] made their way to Frankfurt Fair and Exhibition Centre over the last five days – despite public-transport strikes and around 800 flight cancellations at the beginning of the fair. In common with previous years, some 20,000 visitors attended this year’s Musikmesse Festival concerts at 30 venues throughout Frankfurt. As expected, the reintroduction of days reserved for trade visitors resulted in a decline in the number of private visitors from Germany. On the other hand, there was a significant increase in the share of trade visitors (+10 percent) and more visitors from outside Germany, which resulted in a further increase in the level of exhibitor satisfaction (+7 percent).

“The positive echo from the exhibitors of the two fairs and the high visitor standard indicate that we are on the right track. The sector honoured the focus on business during the working days. Moreover, we sent out a positive signal for music and events with our multi-faceted music-education programme for young people and the successful Musikmesse Festival”, said Detlef Braun, Member of the Executive Board of Messe Frankfurt. “We aim to build on the strengths of the trade-fair duo in the future, too. Accordingly, we are setting course for a Musikmesse and Prolight + Sound in 2019, which focus even more on the wishes of our customers for an international meeting place for the music and event-technology sector and exploit synergistic effects between the event to the utmost.”

In line with this, Messe Frankfurt has announced that Musikmesse and Prolight + Sound 2019 will overlap fully on all days and move closer together spatially.

Further information about the events can be found on the websites www.musikmesse.com and www.prolight-sound.com

[1] 2017: 92,022 visitors (FKM certified) from 144 countries at Musikmesse and Prolight + Sound

The latest industry player to support the vision of the Lighting Industry Academy is relative newcomer to the emergency lighting world, Lux Box Lighting Technology Ltd.

Whilst Luxbox may be a new brand, it has the power of Sander Elektronik, the Swiss emergency lighting specialists, behind it. At the helm is Simon Fox who has been a key figure in emergency lighting for over 20 years.

Simon explains the company’s support for the Academy:

“As a home for learning and career development, the Academy is a fantastic resource for everyone in our industry, providing a central point of access for lighting related learning. We wholeheartedly support that vision. Working at the cutting edge of lighting technology, we need a skilled workforce coming through to help us deliver our aims. The Academy, with the support of its Ambassadors, will be integral to that development.”

Luxbox’s mission is to make emergency lighting simple. They take their experience, apply the latest technology, and box it all up to form the company’s four cornerstones, quality, value, technology and service, echoing the ethos of the Academy.

Technical responsibility for the company rests with Alan Daniels, well known in the industry for involvement in ICEL and the development of emergency lighting standards over the past 40+ years. Alan continues:

“I’ve been involved in educating people about emergency lighting for quite some time; through seminars, conferences and professional development training courses. For me, the Academy take a big step towards making this kind of specialised training more available. That’s really exciting and we’re pleased to be able to support it.”

The Academy team are looking forward to working with Luxbox to educate and develop the lighting community for a bright and exciting future.

See what you can learn today at www.thelia.org.uk/academy

www.luxbox.co.uk

Pictured: Sarah Lavell, Academy Operations Manager with Director of Luxbox, Simon Fox

The new Chroma-Q^® Studio Force II™, a high intensity tuneable white wash light will make its European tradeshow debut at Prolight & Sound 2018, Frankfurt, 10th – 13th April 2018.

Using a homogenised LED source capable of delivering variable colour temperature, plus/minus green shift control and the ability to produce deep saturated colours when needed, the Studio Force II is specifically designed for TV Broadcast and film applications but also performs particularly well in other situations demanding high quality tuneable white light such as touring key lights, exhibitions, corporate events and theatre lighting. The Studio Force II uses the same ColorSure™ technologies found in other innovative Chroma-Q fixtures to deliver consistent colour across fixtures.

The Chroma-Q stand will also display award-winning products such as the Color Force II™ RGBA LED cyclorama, wash & effects light, the Inspire™ RGBW colour-mixing house lighting range and the Space Force™ tuneable white LED soft light.

Visit Chroma-Q stand G51 in hall 3.0, to get your demonstration. Alternatively, go to www.chroma-q.com for more information and to find your nearest Chroma-Q dealer.

Follow Chroma-Q on Facebook: www.facebook.com/chromaq.lighting.

High-efficiency Tamlite LED lighting solutions have been installed in five leading sites operated by the popular Japanese food restaurant chain, provided by ESolutions.

The relationship between good lighting and retail sales is long-established, so it stands to reason that most leading operators regularly review their lighting infrastructures, in order to take advantage of the latest technologies. As the result of one such refurbishment exercise innovative restaurant chain YO! Sushi now sports high-efficiency Tamlite LED lighting systems at three sites: two in London (Russell Square and St. Paul’s) and one in Leeds.

While work at the Russell Square site was more comprehensive, the upgrades in Leeds and St. Paul’s were focused on the belt areas, where customers are seated. The requirements were clear yet exacting, calling for a lighting solution that could cover the full 40m length of the belt areas and be supportive of easy colour changes via one central controller.

ESolutions SY Ltd was engaged to carry out electrical refurbishment at these sites as part of a refurbishment roll-out for design-and-build contractor Matrix IDC Ltd. Jamie Jones, Managing Director of ESolutions, explains that the ability of Tamlite lighting to meet the aforementioned requirements was integral to its selection for the YO! Sushi sites; but there were other benefits too.

“The Tamlite LED RGB lighting ticked all the important boxes,” confirms Jones, “but it was also apparent that, thanks to a design that is conducive to easy installation, the fit-out of their products would be quicker and easier than other comparable LED RGB lighting systems. And that proved to be the case.”

Integrated into one centralised controller, the new lighting infrastructures allow colour changes to be made quickly and easily. The RGB strips cycle through every colour, which provides a vivid lighting design at the tables. This fits in with the style and aesthetic that YO! Sushi is renowned for.

Downlights were also supplied at a number of sites, which increased the lux levels at the serving areas, maintaining the distinctive atmosphere. The overall quality of illumination in these areas has also improved markedly, whilst the restaurants’ owners can look forward to benefiting from significant savings in terms of energy consumption and maintenance.

Jones confirms that YO! Sushi is “very content” with the results of the Tamlite Lighting upgrade and anticipates further such projects in the near-future. “The ESolutions team is very impressed by the performance and quality of the Tamlite LED lighting, and we will be selecting and installing it for other clients too,” he says. “I also believe that YO! Sushi will wish to install Tamlite systems elsewhere as they are happy with the final look of what has been installed.”