Within the city of Unna there is a great passion for light. You will find the international light art museum, many light art project throughout the city and also many buildings are being specially lit.
The Stadskirche (church) is recently beautiful restored and is ready for the next decades. We, as lighting designers, have a long relationship with Unna and the church. A little bit of history; more then 20 years ago the ELDA (European Lighting Designers Association, later called PLDA) held an international workshop. We where one of the workshop heads and we played with the church with al kinds of solutions. The local community loved the results of the workshop and afterwards we where asked to make a permanent lighting design for the church. We added colour to the tip of the tower and this became a recognizable element and, in time, a real part of the experience. Two years ago we where asked to do a redesign and provide a lighting design for the next 20 years.
The lighting design is there to support the church and to show the beauty of this building. In the concept we show the textures of the structure, reduce the amount of light and emphasize the symbolic elements. For the tip we added a colour with a low brightness, just enough to see but not to dominate. The blue/purple colour reminds us that the night will soon be there and give us time to rethink and rejuvenate.
For specials days a different colour can be chosen but this is limited to only a few days a year. The daily light scene will be live between sunset and 22.00. Afterwards it will be off to respect the darkness.
