Posted on: 26th January 2006, United Kingdom E-mail this page to a friend

Lighting Technology Projects (LTP) has specified and supplied 19 Color Kinetics ColorBlast 12 wall washing LED fixtures and 128 pieces of CK wide angle iColor Cove NXT for the main reception of the new 'Patient Hotel' at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London.

The 150 year old Great Ormond Street is one of the world's most famous children's hospital's, and welcomes over 90,000 patients a year. It's currently just completed Phase 1B of an extensive and ongoing modernisation scheme, which has included the creation the, the £14 million Patient Hotel development to provide free long and short term accommodation for patients and parents.

To help create an environment that is stimulating, fun and friendly for patients, parents and visitors, a large colourful feature lighting scheme was proposed for the Hotel's pre-reception entranceway by Ove Arup.

It's well known that light has many therapeutic and healing properties, and good lighting can induce positive moods and feelings.

The entrance lighting scheme was designed by Arup Lighting's design team. They then asked LTP's Terry Reeves to specify the best equipment for achieving the overall effect. LTP has worked on previous project with Arup's including the award winning Plantation Lane 'Moonwall' at Plantation Place, in the City of London.

The 6 square meter tiled frosted glass floor runs the entire width of the Patient Hotel entrance's floor, and continues right up the wall beside the staircase, finishing at the ceiling. Forming a giant light box, it's an attractive, eye-catching centrepiece, programmed with various undulating slow cross fading patterns.

Designed as an extremely high impact effect, Reeves knew that the ColorBlast 12 was an ideal fixture to under-light the floor section. Given the spread of light and even colour field distribution needed, the 'CB12' was the best value-for-money solution. It met the budget without compromising on the solution required in the initial brief.

When it came to illuminating the wall, Reeves chose the new wide angled iColor Cove NXT LED fitting, picked for its very wide emitted light angle. and the practicality of the installation, utilising the loom type wiring detail and compact fixture size. The Cove is fitted so it reverse lights the tiles off the matt white rear surface, and is attached to the rear of each individual light box surface.

LTP's contract included the full installation, commissioning and programming of the feature, undertaken by Jonathan Adkins and his team, who completed their task ahead of schedule, overcoming all the usual challenges of working on main contractor sites.

GOSH's new lighting feature is controlled via one of CK's iPLayer 2 controllers, a compact multiple show storage and playback system accommodating a full DMX universe of 170 individual light addresses. One long show or multiple shorter shows can be programmed and downloaded to the iPlayer 2 for convenient playback. Reeves supplied the controller together with an 8 button recall pad for hands-on access and the local triggering and changing of show selections. This set up is easily operable by non-technical staff.