LIGHT + TECH 111
THE YARDS, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON DESIGN AND LIGHTING: BRIMELOW MCSWEENEY AND STUDIO-29 CATEGORY: EXTERIOR
St Martin’s Courtyard, renamed The Yards, is one of Covent Garden’s quiet corners, a revamped retail and restaurant destination. It has three entrances, each of which has a lighting installation created by Brimelow McSweeney in collaboration with lighting designer Studio-29 (also responsible for the Coaldrops Yard exterior and the Regent Street masterplan). The aim is to draw people in to explore the hidden enclave. ‘The design intentionally creates a unique identity for the courtyard with large flower arcades and colourful canopies which can attract people away from the typical market area tourist attractions into this new location,’ says Brimelow McSweeney. ‘The restaurants have been designed with a new arcade to provide undercover alfresco dining and first-floor terrace space for the summer. Three entrances to the courtyard have been individually treated including the 50m-long flower arcade, dichroic glass canopy and Corian-clad bay window.’ This installation was inspired by Dale Chihuly glass sculptures and the way the coloured glass came to life with light. Larger-than-life flowers suspended across Slingsby Place capture the sun’s rays during the day and project light on to the pavement below. Working with Brimelow McSweeney and Studio-29, the backlit flower patterns were used in the new facade cladding and a new Corian terrace was made featuring the same motif. This joins the two other installations. The first was the dynamic colour-change scheme to the Mercer Street passageway. Inspired by light filtering through a forest canopy and the dappling created by foliage on to the forest floor, the concept involves backlit flower perforations within three layers of a mirrored ceiling and screenprinted acrylic. This increases the volume of the space, originally just a dark concrete sofit. The interactive installation uses red, green and blue light projected through the flower petal shapes within a suspended mirrored ceiling, creating a winding path of white light. Once the beams of light are broken by people
walking underneath, cyan, magenta and yellow shadows come into play. A control system allows for a number of different scenes to create a different atmosphere depending on the time of day. To increase the dynamism, every five minutes there is an event light sequence where the red, green and blue perimeter gives a shimmering effect.
The second installation was a dichroic glass canopy that protrudes into Upper St Martin’s Lane. ‘The use of dichroic glass gave several different dimensions of colour, from the colour of the glass itself to the sun passing through from above and at night with artificial light accenting the colours,’ says Tony Rimmer, principal of Studio-29.
In addition to the entrances, lighting for the facade and terrace within the courtyard is seamlessly integrated into the building fabric, delineating its lines and accenting its features from daytime to night-time. Lighting suppliers included Light Lab, AFX Linear LED and NJO. As well as receiving a Highly Commended in the SDAs, the entire lighting project for The Yards was also shortlisted for the [d]arc awards.
darcawards.com
PHILIP VILE
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