What do a former custard factory, medical mission and viaduct have in common? They all took centre stage in a recent lighting festival in Birmingham.

The Eastside Light Festival was held in partnership with the European Lighting Designers' Association (ELDA) during February and involved the relighting of six sites around the city's historic industrial area. The first time the event has been held in the UK, over 50 lighting design students from worldwide joined artists and lighting designers in themed workshops to create the installations.

The idea is to give students practical experience of the design process, while demonstrating to the public what can be achieved with good lighting design. And with only four days to form a concept design, test the theory and complete the installation from their first glimpse of the sites, the learning process was intense.

The timescale also meant that the contractor providing electrical supplies for the installations had to work fast and be adaptable; this task was set to Birmingham City Council's Street Lighting Division. Peter Harrison, street lighting manager, explains: "The big problem was that we didn't know what we had to work with until it was virtually time to install. We were able to do some preliminary work before the projects were fully designed, but this was limited and a lot of work didn't happen until the actual week. The difficulty we had was doing them simultaneously."

Knowing exactly what power supplies were needed was not possible until the workshops were well underway. "The students met on Monday, had some ideas by Tuesday and all the schemes were switched on during Thursday," says Harrison. Project meetings were held at 9.30 am daily, with operatives and plant booked into timeslots at the six different sites for the day's work.

Easing this process was a 12-month planning period that began when the city was invited to host the event. "We had to make sure that we had suitable plant and manpower resources available when it came to install the projects," says Harrison. Equipment such as luminaires and cabling was donated in advance by manufacturers, so no sourcing of vital parts was needed during the event. A generous inventory of around 600 lights meant there were few restrictions on the student's ideas. In the end only around one-third of the products were used.

The effects of this two-week festival is set to be long-term. Installed on the new Eastside Heritage Trail, the schemes have been a catalyst for future change. "Birmingham City Council is now actively pursuing a lighting strategy for the city," says Harrison. "We've been able to demonstrate what's possible." With the first meetings already being scheduled to take place, it can't be long before Birmingham stands out in lights.

The Bullring Underpass

This underpass has become a major pedestrian thoroughfare as a route between New Street train station and the Bullring shopping area. Zumtobel’s coloured flourescent luminaires were combined with a palate of gels from Rosco and Color Kinetics’ leds to transform the space.

The design made use of fenced compounds that contain control boxes for tunnel lighting. “We arranged for Heras fencing to be put inside the compounds, muslin was then wrapped around this inner compound and lit from behind,” explains Harrison.

This enabled the students’ design to be completed while accounting for any potential fire risk. “There were lots of supplies available here for lighting,” adds Harrison. “Access was a larger problem, but the Bullring was very accommodating.”

River Street

The jagged roofline of the industrial buildings here was dramatically highlighted. Their shape meant that 60 bespoke brackets were needed to fix the lighting; co-operation of the supply chain meant that these were produced in under 24 h.

The window reveals of the historic Medical Mission at the apex of the triangular site were lit by iGuzzini fluorescent luminaires. A narrow beam We-ef projector with a 150 W ceramic metal halide lamp created a pool of light in front of this building, forming a focal point for the scheme.

“We could only work on River Street at night because of parked cars,” says Harrison. ”We’d start at 6 pm and work until around 2-3 am.” Electricity supplies were taken from the Medical Mission and street lighting.

The Viaduct

The installation in this landmark Victorian structure included a series of seven short lighting shows.

Harrison expands: “The students wanted to use a continuous line of fluorescent lamps that would be computer-controlled to change colour in sequence.

We installed a lot of metalwork to get the line of lighting at a suitable height, this meant getting blacksmiths involved and a crane wagon to erect 8 m poles to support the lighting.”

To wash the face of the viaduct, colour-changing lamps were fitted to adjacent buildings.

The Railway Bridges

The main railway line to London bisects this crossroads of bridges. “The concept,” explains Harrison, “involves this being the main line into the central station in Birmingham, and seeing it as an arterial route pumping life into the city.”

A pulsing red light in each of the tunnels represented the flow of blood. This was created using Exterior 200 colour changes from Martin Professional controlled from a DMX playback unit.

“Here it was necessary to co-ordinate with Railtrack, because we were using their structure,” explains Harrison. The outside of the bridges were washed with a cool blue light.

“We couldn’t provide suitable protection on ground fittings so we erected six light columns in adjacent grassland and made arrangements for the electrical supply to be fed from the surrounding street lighting,” says Harrison.

Typhoo Basin

For over a century, tea was blended and distributed from the Typhoo basin. “Particular issues here were the size of the site, that there was water involved and we were working at night by a canal,” explains Harrison.

Pre-wired underwater luminaires placed in the canal created a green glow; this coloured effect was continued by green lights installed within the building.

“Floodlights were fitted on adjacent roofs and on trees around the canal,“ adds Harrison.

The Custard Factory

A combination of projectors from We-ef and iGuzzini were used to light the factory and graffiti wall behind. “There was an issue getting supplies to light the wall,” says Harrison. “The only way was from ground level.

Floodlighting installed the length of the wall washed it in light and highlighted it as a feature.” Heras fencing was installed for security purposes.

A line of red Philips LEDlines leds fixed to its base lit the chimney. Inside the former factory, gel applied to lighting produced an effective custard yellow glow.

Source

Electrical and Mechanical Contractor