BRINGING COLOUR TO BUSY BRISBANE ROADS

As part of the Brisbane Inner-City Bypass project, the landscape has been bathed in colours adjacent to one of the city’s busiest roads. The ICB upgrade was an initiative of Brisbane City Council, one of more than 90 projects to tackle traffic congestion, and was delivered by Transurban Queensland.

The council approached designers with a request to come up with a lighting scheme for the Moreton Bay Fig trees that line the roadway. With the help of WE-EF sales partner, Raylinc Lighting in Brisbane, the design team was able to deliver a lighting solution that that could be integrated with the council’s lighting masterplan and provided visual interest along the roadway.

“The Inner-City Bypass project began as a road upgrade, resulting in fig trees being removed and relocated. The fig trees were replanted after completion of the road and the council wanted to make the trees a notable feature for passing motorists,” explained Mr Roland Poon from Raylinc. “Coloured light was part of the council’s lighting plan as well as to ensure that the fig trees stood out,” he said.

The design specified FLC230-CC and FLC240-CC projectors from WE-EF with 42 W RGBW medium beam. The FLC230-CC and FLC240-CC feature different wattages and nominal lumens of 3300-4080 and 6600-8160, respectively. The colour changer LED projectors offer infinitely variable RGBW colour mixing and can deliver almost every shade of the colour spectrum. For this project, a number of different products, wattages and beam types were trialled before the final decision was made to use products from the FLC200 range.

“After three different night trials with different luminaires, the FLC230-CC luminaire achieved the best effect on the fig trees,” Mr Poon said. The primary challenge in lighting this area was achieving visibility of the trees from the road. “Tree lighting had to compete with the new LED road lighting. Colour was used to overcome the spill from the road lighting,” Mr Poon said.

Photography by Jackie Chan.