The Cornerhouse offers bars, restaurants, a 14-screen cinema and the biggest nightclub in town, all under one roof. LTP's brief was to produce a discreetly placed, low-maintenance, energy efficient lighting scheme to enhance the energy and life within the building, and ultimately to attract more people.
The design was created by LTP's Terry Reeves, who was initially alerted to the project by Nick Tolkien of Archtainment. The ground, first and second floors of the building are each illuminated with six ColorBlast 12s, strategically positioned on the exterior face of the stairwell drum. They are mounted here for aesthetics - to keep the fixtures low profile and out of sight - and also to maximize the throw distance.
The futuristic, steep, white dramatically sloping sides of the escalators are lit on both external faces by a total of 12 ColorBlast 12s. i.e. one pair of fixtures per side. The top floor of the building functions as a service and office floor, and on the stairwell drum's ceiling is a fabric skin, which is up-lit with a further eight ColorBlast 12s on the top floor.
The lighting system is controlled by a CK Light Engine, an Ethernet-based controller for control of up to 30,000 data lines. This leaves plenty of room for the future expansion of the lighting scheme. The CK fixtures are all RGB and so consume 3 channels each. Ethernet is a highly practical and economic way of data cabling the installation, with one box wrapping entire building, and Ethernet to each fixture run from there, with a hub on each floor. The Light Engine is fully astronomically enabled, and programmed to switch on and off and run different sequences at various times. LTP has also supplied Cornerhouse with an 8-button recall pad for manual override.
The lighting installation was completed in three weeks, with LTP's on site team led by Ashley Wood working under CDM regulations. The project was managed for LTP by Jonathan Adkins.
(Lee Baldock)
