098
ART & DESIGN / PROJECT
Above left The Mobile Orchard stands near the Gherkin in the City of London. Above right LED Linear’s VarioLED Flex Venus was used in the project, working well with the tree’s convoluted sculptural geometry.
further subdivided into wards, the blossom and seeds of the project.
Lighting was needed to enhance the Orchard once the sun had set, especially given the nocturnal working hours of the City. Lighting sponsors Architectural FX, LED Linear and Arup worked seamlessly and tirelessly to make the night-time tree even more spectacular than the day. As with natural trees, the trunk became the central nervous system of the organism, sending signals up and down its length to trigger luminous tips. LED strips became geometric Xylem, pulsing with life, feeding the sky-borne leaf-like spots in the boughs above.
The tree’s powerful sculptural geometry formed the perfect showcase for LED Line- ar’s VarioLED Flex Venus. A very challenging installation environment and the constant relocation of the Orchard combined to push the resilience of the product to its outer limits. Venus’s beautiful lines of light gracefully delineate and illuminate all the sections along the length of the trunk and branches, like an anatomical X-ray. Venus’s unique flexible form also allowed for an unprecedented freedom of expression. Co-sponsor Wibre’s recessed IP67 micro spots combined massive light output with maximum miniaturisation, and minute housing robust enough to survive in an
external installation. Their tiny form was crucial in realising the design intent of long, slender branches, small enough that they could be housed in the tips of the tree branches, their wiring snaking through cavities cleverly concealed in the plywood slices.
The DMX programming brought the tree to life, separating the trunk’s twelve main segments into twelve channels, through which the light rotated like the hand of a clock, steadily thickening until a sheet of light enwrapped the whole, with the movement travelling through the nested spotlights like the delicate fluttering of fireflies. The clock accelerated to a climax
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