The lighting design for Basildon required a more diverse approach as it needed to incorporate alternative solutions to Festive lighting, advertising with light, light art (as shown in the adjacent drawings depicting a day time (yellow) theme and a night time (blue) theme) all of which needed to be controlled via a DMX system along with the general lighting.
Instead of having static advertising I have designed a system that uses gobo projection onto banners so the ads and festive projections can be changed easily and be more interactive with the rest of the lighting. This also enables the client to gain sponsorship for lighting ads from local shops which can then have a colour scheme or theme with the rest of the decorative lighting to enhance their revenue streams. Ideas could be that Debenhams for instance are having a blue cross day and want blue crosses projected onto the banners and all the lights to turn blue 4 times an hour for a week whilst its running its sale. This can now be achieved.
The festive lighting is now also incorporated into all elements of the lighting from the columns to the colour change strip lighting around the tree areas and in the fountain etc. All of this can be switched via pre agreed options to either turn a specific colour, random colours or a particular scene at set times of the evening. This then saves the client money year on year as separate festive lighting does not need to be installed and removed and means that it can be used for other festivals other than just Christmas making it more ethnically diverse.
The main lighting is also dimmable and will be dimmed after 1pm to a level of 60% to save energy, improve lamp life and reduce maintenance.
The light art which is now removed from the project was also a source of many design challenges and the direction it was going in would have meant a dramatic and innovative piece of lighting for the Compass square area of the project. Due to budget constraints however it has now been removed.
All lighting on this project has been developed especially by myself with the help of the manufacturers involved. Only 10% of the lighting is standard and this has proved to be exciting but also difficult at times to manage and especially challenging with only a 10 week design process. All deadlines were met however because of a real team effort from myself and all the manufacturers involved as without their determination to achieve the impossible it would have failed and the project would not now be implemented.
I had full responsibility for lighting design and Basildon Council are very pleased with the scheme which is now completed and has been well recieved by the locals and the Council.
