Long lengths to highlight a cultural icon – WA Museum Boola Bardip

The dramatic design of the 2019 project the New Museum of Western Australia (WA Museum Boola Bardip), beautifully connects modern architecture to the historic, heritage-listed buildings across 6,000 square metres of galleries.

Conceived as a civic space for the community to connect, share stories and collaborate today, the museum hosts a diverse range of cultural programs and incorporates dining and retail.

For WE-EF LIGHTING, delivering a lighting solution to effectively illuminate the façade, contending with unique challenges including long distances of 45+ and 52+ metres between luminaires and the upper façade, to enhance this important museum at night, was a rewarding project to be involved in.

Considerations

Key project considerations for this project included:

• Performance and Power: Powerful high output floodlights with modern LED technology and clever optics were needed to meet the long distances needed to throw the light (45 m and 52 m respectively) and deliver enough lumens to highlight the building so that it could be seen from the city
• Precision and Control: Precisely placing light where needed to accentuate the façade with control, sharp cut off and preventing light spill, thereby minimising light pollution was integral
• Aesthetic appeal: A premium quality look and feel of the luminaires that blended discretely and allowed the façade to shine
• Heritage-listed buildings: Demanding careful and thoughtful consideration as to luminaire placement, with strict rules prohibiting fixing luminaires to particular heritage listed buildings within the precinct
• Warranty and longevity: On a state government project, ensuring luminaires will last the test of time in an external environment demanded a solution with a comprehensive warranty
• Reliability: Superior performance with minimal maintenance and downtime to improve long term cost efficiency and reduce unnecessary outages and labour was requested

Challenges

With several heritage listed buildings in the precinct, ensuring mounting options could meet the rules and regulations of the site demanded careful consideration and the adoption of a lighting solution that could be setback from the building and mounted and aimed from poles.

Early during the project planning, consultants at Stantec identified that in order to effectively illuminate the three sides of the upper façade, there would be a need to fix luminaires to two of the third-party buildings within the precinct (including the state library) and then to also add poles to be fix luminaires to for the third side, where fixing from a building was not possible.

With extensive experience in working with WE-EF LIGHTING, Stantec deemed WE-EF FLC230 [FP] Profile Projectors as a good potential solution to meet the long distance demands, however, the viability of this solution required rigorous testing together with H.I. Lighting.

As James Oskam of H.I. Lighting recalls “We set up a sample luminaire mock-up in our warehouse/office to test the long distance we needed to throw in order to effectively illuminate the object with enough intensity and luminosity”. Stantec worked together with H.I. Lighting to confirm viability in the factory mock-up setting.

Following this, a series of night trials were conducted, with great support from the Electrical Contracting team at Everett Smith. Being a state government project, several stakeholders were involved and consulted in the testing and decision-making process, including the Director General of the Department of Culture and the Arts, there onsite during a night trial to give a confirmation. “The testing process was long and arduous, totalling to approximately 8-10 months”, explains James.

Solution

Following successful onsite night trials, a strong collaboration between H.I. Lighting, consultants Stantec, the electrical contractors and the State Government, led to the selection of 42 x FLC230 [FP] profile projectors in static white.

The Profile Projector range for WE-EF, is, like the rest of the WE-EF range, made from marine-grade die-cast aluminium alloy with 5CE+Primer corrosion protection system, designed to withstand the tests of time in exterior applications.

The framing projector technology by WE-EF ensures the concentration of the light output directly to where it is needed with intricate precision. In this case, it is to the façade, with a snoot that sharply cuts off any light spill and prevents, in particular, any upward light spill, limiting the environmental impact of the luminaires by reducing their capacity to contribute to the growing global issue of light pollution.

These luminaires were installed and precisely aimed by Everett Smith Contractors, on two of the surrounding buildings and on poles beneath to effectively illuminate the upper façade.

Results

As stated by one of the key Architects responsible for the project, David Gianotten of OMA, “The New Museum is a place to welcome everyone to explore the natural and social heritage of Western Australia.”

With the projector installation, the objective of highlighting this new cultural icon, so it could be seen from the city while ensuring sharp cut off and preventing light spill, was exceptionally executed with the FLC230 [FP] luminaires, thanks to thorough testing and consultation processes from the key stakeholders involved.