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Lighting Exhibitions
Expo 2000 in Hanover Germany
Article published in Lighting and International
September 2000
Pavilions at Expos try at out doing each other in terms of uniqueness.
Most however, although having original interiors, are still buildings
from the outside. That is, they have four walls and a roof. The
Dutch Pavilion is different. The architect MVRDV of Rotterdam gave
it no walls at all. The theme of it was that Holland Makes Space.
Much of its land is reclaimed, a significant quantity of its food
is grown under glass, it is an example of man working to control
nature. It is not surprising then, that the cinema at the top, showing
a surreal portrait of Holland, is itself sitting on an upper floor
held up only by large trees (with no reinforcement) forming a woodland
landscape. The level below comprised of giant pots, gives the impression
that the roots of the trees are concealed inside.
The pots are in various sizes; twelve stretch from floor to ceiling
whilst the other twenty five penetrate the ceiling at different
heights, so that visitors can walk underneath them. A few pots have
letter box shaped port holes cut in to them from which projected
images emerge to form a surreal show.
Some of the interior spaces were designed by MET Studio of London.
They chose Peter Phillipson of Future Group Lighting Design for
the gobo and colour light effects on the "flower pots"and
Graham English of McClean English (who also worked on the Health
Pavilion) to interpret the concept brief in relation to the photographic
projections. The photospheres of dutch landscapes and lifestyles
included Hans van der Meer; Cary Markerink, Karel Tomei Gerald van
der Kaap and Theo Baart.
The curved walls are illuminated by specially constructed diachronic
filtered washlights creating hundreds of shades of colour. They
are recessed into curved slots in the ceiling.
Text and lines are projected onto the pot surfaces by the use of
Clay Paki Zoom 1200’s. These lights are intense, and show
up in broad daylight, even in the late afternoon when the sun was
low in the horizon. In addition, each light has a powerful zoom
facility allowing the normal change in image size that occurs when
panning across surfaces of increasing distance, to be modified.
Peter explains, “The pots formed unusual projection surfaces
being curved in one plane and tapered top to bottom. Grahams transparencies
could be key stoned and cropped as they were fixed in position,
but the gobos had to be programmed so that, during lulls in their
movement,they were perfectly registered, ie aimed straight on, so
that the letters looked undistorted. We tried a number of desks
in order to accurately pin point the fixed part of each movement.
We found that the Avolites Pearl was useful. It has 12 sub masters
allowing the assignment of subparts of each sequence easier to edit.
Unfortunately, it still uses a floppy disk drive for backing up.”
The result is unusual , it resembles the BBC tv web page advert
with text moving left and right and up and down in an ordered fashion.
“As the text gobos move around they need to be rotated to
keep them horizontal”, Peter explains. “It would helpful
if there was a definite zero position in the gobo holder with a
location point on the gobo itself. If replacement was necessary
the whole sequence would not need to be re-edited. In a club for
example, if rotating text is used, its position at any given instant
is not important, but now as subtle and repeatable use of moving
text is becoming more common, it would good if future generations
of moving lights were to include this feature.”
The sound was a mixture of conversations of dutch people mixed into
a delicious cacophony by Tony Frossard of The Sound Experience using
standard weatherproof speakers and amplifiers but crucially the
mixing was done, live on site, via a 64 mult-track mixer running
Ntrack software.
A review of the pavilion by BBC’s Radio 4 programme “You
and Yours” described the Dutch Pavilion as “An absolute
work of art” and “The best thing there”.
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| Earth Galleries Atrium
Natural History Museum London
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1940s House
Imperial War Museum London
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Whilst working with DHA, Peter Phillipson designed several aspects
of the lighting for Neal Potter's Earth Galleries Atrium at the
Natural History Museum (formally the Geology Museum). Six striking
Icon figures welcome the visitors. They sit on internally lit glass
semi-spheres, the Icon light from specially .
The barrel vaulted glass ceiling was of such architectural merit
that it could not just be blacked out. Instead the light level was
cut down greatly using techniques to attenuate the daylight but
reflect its heat away into the sky.
The walls were made of Petrach and decorated with constellations
and planets. Cut into these are 44 cases displaying rare examples
of fossils and rocks. Some of these have been in the possession
of the NHM for over 150 years but not shown until this project was
completed. One factor in this was that the cases need only be cleaned
by the curators of the exhibits. The lighting is provided by a bespoke
fibre optic system which allows the lamps to be maintained by electricians
outside of the cases. There is no security issue for lighting maintenance.
In the 1940's House, Alison Proctor has used theatre techniques
to light the facades as if they were really outside. There is a
contract to maintain the lighting so that this short to medium term
exhibition keeps its original appearance.
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