November 2011

Three of our stories this month are linked to winners: Protea Court and Blackburn Pedestrian Bridge have both won engineering awards and, of course, we also cover the Haute Lumiere Award for 2011. How lovely it would be if South Africa hosted an award for the best lighting project - perhaps it is something IESSA can consider for the future!

Earlier this month, Sandton City's long-awaited extension, with its magnificent new Protea Court, was officially opened to the public. The court, which is central to the refurbishment of Johannesburg's most glamorous shopping destination, has already taken top honours in the SAISC Steel Awards and was a joint winner in the ‘Civil engineering and building contractors' section of Construction World's Best Projects, which this year held its 10th awards event.

Inspired by the shape of South Africa's national flower, Protea Court was designed by Tia Kanakakis of MDS Architecture and she tasked PPA with creating a lighting scheme that would accentuate the shape and aura of the venue while capturing the mood and spirit of the cutting edge development with lighting.

The installation, which makes use of 115 Anolis ArcPad 48 and 12 ArcSource 96 fixtures to highlight the 34 m high, 42 m diameter, 11° sloping roof structure and its ETFE inflatable skin, is spectacular.

DWR, Anolis' South African distributor, installed and commissioned the lighting system and because over 70% of the fixtures were rigged externally on the roof structure, three installation technicians were required to complete full Rope Access and Working at Height safety courses, prior to commencing work.

In this issue of Lighting in Design, Tia Kanakakis and Anthony Tischhauser tell us of their companies' involvement in this very successful, very beautiful, lighting installation.

The ‘award-winning'; Blackburn Pedestrian Bridge near Umhlanga in KwaZulu-Natal has had a lighting facelift. Giantlight was appointed to upgrade the existing scheme and to bring the bridge to life at night with endless variations of colour sequence and colour combinations.

Eduard Claassen was the winner of the 2011 Haute Lumiere Award and during September he had the enormous pleasure of jetting off to Alingsås in Sweden for a week long lighting workshop. The luminaire he submitted was simple and compelling and the judges, in addition to being impressed with his prototype, liked the potency of the single idea of his fitting. His entry was fiercely contested as August de Wet ran a close second. The overall standard of the entries was much improved on previous years and the sponsors were delighted with the quality of the submissions.

We also have two interesting articles by overseas contributors, Seth Warren Rose and Neall Digert and our regular contributors Brian Rowell and Tanya Duncan remind us of the lighting basics.

This year has flown by and it is hard to believe that already the next batch of Matrics is on vac and we have started scratching our heads (and our pockets) around seasonal gifts! Enjoy the December break and, from the Lighting in Design team, all best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season and an exceptional 2012!

Regular Features