Spectacular show puts the spotlight on Stoke

2006-05-03

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A giant display of colour is now a nightly attraction in Stoke brightening up the Civic Centre in the evenings - and the colour designs due to change daily will be created by young city residents with the help of Thorn Lighting:

Stoke's Civic Centre light show 1.

Living Lights.

Local pupil selects colours.

The landmark building on Glebe Street has become a huge canvas (measuring 300ft by 75ft) for colour displays as darkness falls, with more than 150 luminaires bathing the brickwork in art. A potential six million shades of colours are available to use. No words or images will be used to ensure motorists remain undistracted but are still able to glimpse the light show from the A500.

The £515,000 Living Lights project, funded by a government scheme, creates a striking and constantly changing colourful gateway into the city, whether entering it by rail, road or canal.

An 'educational experience':

Designing the light shows will be an educational experience for students in the city. Pupils as young as five up to postgraduates will be invited to create cutting-edge colour displays to be projected on the Glebe Street building and surrounding white sails, mounted on new street lights.

Schools, colleges and universities that are chosen to take part can access special software via the Internet to design their innovative light displays and send them to the technical team. Suitable creations will be projected on to the building and sails, and the day's designer will be told in advance when it will be on show to make sure they get to view their work on the large-scale canvas. Designs can include stripes, cascades of colour, fades and many other variations. Changes in colour can also be co-ordinated with the streetlight-mounted sails made of poly glass material, where electronic light strips reflect colour onto the material.

The system:

Vincent Pauzat, manger of Thorn's Exterior Custom Products Department, explains: There are three types of lighting units for the building façade. On the low-level and balcony we used 1m long RGB LED Bands - 60 at balcony level, and 48 at low-level. For the central part of the building façade, 21 Contrast Spectra C2 250W colour-hanging floodlights are employed. The 16 street lanterns also feature banners also lit by custom LED strips.

The project was made all the more challenging because to prevent traffic disruption and extra cost no new cabling could be installed, hence innovative wireless (W-DMX) transmission, from Swedish based Wireless Solutions, has been used. For DMX purposes the luminaires were arranged in 57 groups. The application is believed to be one of Europe's largest wireless DMX controlled lighting installations and was installed by SEC Ltd.

Above all the project highlights the city's creativity while providing a memorable landmark for motorists passing through Stoke-on-Trent.

The three pictures show two views of Stoke's Civic Centre light show, plus a pupil at the local Sneyd Green Primary School helping to create the cutting-edge colour displays.

one of the Civic Centre pictures large size, please click on the Download button. (.jpg - 649kB).

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Related contacts

Contact: Hugh King Thorn Lighting Ltd., Silver Screens, Elstree Way, Borehamwood, Herts WD6 1FE Tel: 020 8732 9877 Email: hugh.king@thornlight.com Web: www.thornlighting.com

Hugh King

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