The cdf Haikou International Duty Free City is located on the Northwest coast of Haikou, Hainan province. It is adjacent to the Xinhai Port, the core area of the city’s economic development and an important transportation hub serving as an entry and exit port for goods and visitors.
With its unique geographical location, the architectural design team created the cdf Haikou International Duty Free City with natural elements from the surrounding areas that are integrated into the architectural design which is based on the concept of the “Auspicious Clouds in Jiuzhou, the Crown of the South China Sea”. The landscape merges symbiotically into the overall architecture with natural and elegant wavy curves made of metal panels and glass curtain wall allowing natural light into the building where necessary.
During field surveys at the early stage of the project, the lighting design team was on its Journeys to the West of Haikou accompanied and led by the most beautiful and natural element that unfolds before dusk: sunset. This is when Lighting design team found its challenge: the integration between natural and comfortable artificial lights.
First, the lighting design team absorbed from top to bottom the language of the architectural design, focusing on creating different lighting layers based on the building’s characteristics. Except for the rooftop “star light” surface lights, the entire facade lighting brings the natural effect of sunset light that washes upon the beach of the nearby Jinshawan Binhai park onto the facade. The horizontal curves of the glass curtain wall as well as the triangular and lozenge shaped perforated panels are softly washed by LED lights that reveal and outline architectural hierarchies.
Partial 1:1 scale mockups are one of the important means to verify the feasibility of a design. When necessary, from the very early schematic design stage, the lighting design team validates its design by independently carrying out partial 1:1 scale mockups and lighting simulation on its premises as well as onsite. The results help the team to not only further optimize lighting fixtures’ installation details, but also to fine tune the lighting effect through observation from different view points, to determine the viewing scale and to understand the feelings of people from different perspectives at different time periods when adjusting a mix of brightness, color temperatures or colors where applicable.
During the final site commissioning, lighting design team ensured in this case that the only four lighting scenes, confirmed with the customer’s project team and matching local airline traffic regulations, are properly set for the cdf Haikou International Duty Free City as they create different atmosphere at different times.
And a mandated dimmed lighting effect that include only the roof “starlight” together with the podium lights always softly on for the midnight mode set especially for aircrafts landing at and taking off from the Haikou Meilan International Airport.
