The part of Cork where Cork City Hall lies, was recently redeveloped to such a high standard that it left the once regal looking Cork City Hall appearing tired and ignored. At night, Cork City Hall used to be illuminated by sodium lighting- a standard form of lighting for buildings and public lighting such as street lamps but the Cork City Council felt that Cork City Hall no longer reflected the city’s improved image and that something had to be done.
Pritchard Themis, a central London based architectural lighting design practice was called in to create a new image for the building. They proposed illuminating the Cork City Hall with lighting that would demonstrate its grand architectural design to its best effect.
Peter Pritchard, the other half of Pritchard Themis said of the project after completion, “We wanted to illuminate the city hall with a cool, crisp, white light to emphasise the strong architectural lines of the building. The lighting effect needed to be clean and even across the face of the building, powerful enough to create a striking effect, but with a maximum of optical and glare control to ensure optimum energy efficiencies”.
The architectural lamp lighting they chose to create this effect was developed by Sill Lighting who have cleverly developed lighting for buildings with projectors designed specifically for architectural lighting. The lighting projectors boast superior quality optics and control gear that produce highly efficient and dramatic lighting effects. Sill lighting were then able to calculate the correct amount of architectural projector lamps needed to create the effect the designers were after which included 28 Sill 494 asymmetric wide beam projectors with 250w lamps, two 490 asymmetric wide beam projectors with 150w lamps, and two 491 narrow beam projectors with 150w lamps and still ensure that the architectural lights remained discreet.
“The Sill Lighting projectors have superior quality optics and control gear. As a result, they are highly efficient at projecting light. Bob Bohannon of Sill Lighting was very helpful in calculating the capacity of the projectors and how many were needed to create an even wash against the building, so we were confident the lighting scheme would be effective.” said Pritchard.
Despite the enhanced lighting used in the project, the designers and council also ensured that the power load remained unchanged from the original sodium lighting.
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