i-Vision was approached for the project - part of the ongoing scheme to light landmark building in the City of Liverpool - by Tony Woof, chief executive of Liverpool Architecture and Design Trust (LADT). I-Vision’s brief was to produce an interesting and cost-effective design to transform this somewhat imposing looking building into an attractive, integrated element of the landscape.
LADT has been overseeing the River of Light project, which started with a massive light, laser, projection and visuals show for the town on Millennium Eve. It completes with the lighting of eight key buildings in Liverpool - the last of which is the Police Authority HQ. With all other buildings in the scheme being listed or of a heritage nature, they responded well to traditional architectural lighting methods - and the overall schemes designed and supplied by Phillips.
Geoff Jones of I-Vision split the lighting into three distinct areas - a blue wash light illumination of the building’s main elevation, a green wash light effect to illuminate the walkway and proposed garden area for the front of the building, and ‘Thin Blue Line’ effect. This latter is a glowing blue line delineating the building form, encased in a custom aluminium extrusion.
i-Vision used a combination of eight bespoke asymmetric flood J800 flood fittings - 2 x 400W HIT lamps in an asymmetric reflector, 7 x 400W symmetric floods and 14 Meyer 5 degree 150W narrow beam spotlights. The Marlanvil J800 asymmetric fixtures are fitted to the building, 4 metres off the ground and create the blue flood over the main structure. The Marlanvil N400 symmetric fixtures are sited below the J800s, casting a green wash along the walkway and the tree area at the front of the building. Compact spots highlight the pillars of the building, breaking up its slab-like appearance. The Thin Blue Line extrusion runs a total of 155 metres around the top of the building. i-Vision specially fabricated the extrusion and brackets and threaded a blue Duralite lightsource into the extrusion. For control, they took a low maintenance brick-outhouse approach. The building lighting is split into three zones, each controlled via a 365 day timer with an inbuilt LDR, giving the client hands free operation.
(Ruth Rossington)
