Light as a physical phenomenon has a split personality. It exhibits both particle and wave properties. It’s unlike anything else. It touches us. It affects us. It invigorates us. It excites us. Sometimes our light is used to place major brands center stage, and sometimes light is itself the performance. That’s true for vehicles, light art, architectural statements and cruise ships. Our light is alive.
Qipco Office Tower
Contractor: Qatar Investment & Project Development Holding
Architects: SIAT
Lighting design: Thomas Emde
Pictures: Ralph Larmann
The tower that never sleeps. A gigantic swarm of colored dots of light surrounds the Qipco Office Tower at night, circulating like a tornado in all directions across its entire facade. 2,700 individually controllable high-performance LEDs at the nodes of the steel beams produce 35,000 color combinations, making the skyscraper a symbol of the pulsating energy of the city.
Your Black Horizon
Moving the horizon of perception. In a windowless pavilion a thin strip of light breaks through the otherwise completely dark room precisely at eye level. Our intelligent control system continuously stores and plays back specially created light scenes. As in nature, the light inside the pavilion changes from sunrise to sunset. When visitors leave the pavilion they can draw their own black horizon onto the landscape. The artificial light horizon remains on the retina for a few seconds.
A thin strip of light plays with the visual memory of its viewers.
Contractor: Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary; Architects: David Adjaye; Lighting design: Olafur Eliasson; Pictures: Michael Strasser
Zug station
Bathed in light: Flowing colors glide through the entire Zug railway station, while color transitions in a changing rhythm give it a pulsating, energy-laden vitality. With our comprehensive control concept and specially developed visualization software, James Turrell was able to define the colors and transitions on site and combine them to choreograph an entire performance.
Contractor: Schweizerische Bundesbahnen SBB, Luzern; Architects: Hornberger Architekten AG, Zürich; Light art: James Turrell; Lighting design: Dieter Dartsch; Innenarchitektur, Riehen
Klimahaus 8° Ost
Starry, starry night: When evening comes tiny dots of light appear on the glass façade of the Klimahaus. This artificial starlight gets brighter and brighter and starts to sparkle, combining with wind and water. Turning Gerd Pärné’s ingenious concept for the 125 m long and 82 m wide building with its 10,000 m² of glass into this starry reality presented huge challenges in terms of programming and technical equipment. 16 km of cables connect 2,000 custom-designed, individually controllable light points to the specially developed dynamic system.
Skyspaces
James Turrell’s Skyspaces are world-famous and have to power to change our perception. In the angular “Twilight Epiphany” in Houston or in the curvaceous “The Third Breath” in Unna, anyone within these Skyspaces experiences a change of perception during twilight. The sky becomes a color panel, part of the space. Gazing upward becomes a meditative act.
Palace of International Forums
The heart of a meeting place for cultures and nationalities: The Forum in Tashkent is designed as an amphitheater and concert hall and has seating for 2,000. Rings layered on above the other and inside one another form its distinctive cupola and repeat the structures at ground level. LED RGB lighting systems and thin fiber bars as wall panels are used to divide the cupola from the hall. Is there a more atmospheric setting for dialog?
Contractor: Republik Usbekistan; Architects: Ippolito Fleitz Group; Lighting design: pfarré lichtdesign münchen; Pictures: Andreas J. Focke
Dior Flagship Store
In her light installation entitled “Anroidika Descending The Staircase”, Angela Bulloch has created a pulsating zone of constantly changing colors and constellations in which the steps seem to dissolve into light. The technology behind this magic comprises our 252 pixel boxes and our control system together with our signal converters. This means that any color can be produced in any of the boxes and in any intensity. An electronic color palette for 21st century light art.
Contractor: Dior, Paris;
Light art: Angela Bulloch, London/Berlin;
Pictures: Daici Ano, Tokyo,
with the kind permission of Dior & Esther Schipper