Studio 29 recently completed a lighting installation to Mercer Street walkway as a part of St. Martin’s Courtyard refurbishment in Covent Garden. It aims to provide an inviting entrance to increase footfall into the courtyard by using interactive light as an art installation to create an immersive experience. The scheme uses light patterns and colour change light fittings to create an enchanting, mystical and interactive space to discover colourful shadows.
Inspired by light filtering through a forest canopy, which is a reminiscent of dappling created by foliage onto the forest floor. The concept consists of back lit flower perforations within three layers of a mirrored ceiling and screen printed acrylic to increase the volume of the space which was originally just a dark concrete soffit.
154 bespoke CoB, RGB colour change and single coloured Red, Green, Blue LED are installed above the mirrored ceiling shining through various sizes of flower cut outs. The flower openings have to be carefully positioned to create the correct combination of RGB with the adjacent fittings and the focal length of the beam of light has to be carefully calculated to obtain the optimum distribution. Visitors enter the courtyard and following path of white light created from arrays of overlapping single coloured RGB lights. As people walk through the space they are mesmerised as their shadows surround them made up of secondary colours cyan, magenta and yellow. The perimeter of the space consists of CoB RGB colour change lights which are carefully selected to ensure a defined colourful flower prints on the walls and floor. The walkway acts as a gateway into the heart of Covent Garden and at night-time helps provide a dynamic, safe, bright passageway for people to walk through.
The architectural control system allows for a variety of different scenes throughout the day. Each scene creates a different atmosphere depending on the time of day and activity taking place. In the daytime, the light effect is concentrated onto the ceiling with a vibrant colour light sequence twinkling across the perimeter. At night, subtle light colour combinations and shimmering effects provide a more enchanting and pleasant experience. To aid in creating a dynamic environment every 5 minutes there’s a more dramatic and vibrant ‘show event’ sequence to add more variety to the scene setting.
