Quarry Bay is a densely populated area in Hong Kong Island’s Eastern District, pinched between steep green peaks to the south and Victoria Harbour to the north.
Extensively developed in the 70’s with both residential and commercial buildings, it is now the heart of Urban Renewal with many Hong Kong Government departments and multi-national companies relocating there.
Swire Properties, one of the great “Hongs” has been a major landowner in Quarry Bay since the 70’s. Swire has driven the renewal in the Taikoo Place vicinity with many interconnected tall, modern Grade A commercial buildings (Taikoo is the Chinese name for Swire).
Hong Kong is a place of vast architectural contrast, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Quarry Bay. Aging and densely packed 60’s and 70’s high, and low rise, concrete structures alongside the most modern glass towers.
Stark is insufficient as an adjective to describe the contrast; the boundary layer between the new and old is striking.
It is like time travel.
Swire’s latest addition is the tenth tower to be added to the interconnected Taikoo Place business hub. The boundary layer between the new property and its environs would be a wall of sorts, but an art wall.
The working name became simply: the Swire Wall. It transforms the ancient, narrow Kam Hoi Street into a spectacle.
The Boundary Layer seems like a fitting epithet.
The visionary design and fabrication of the art wall is the work of Miriam Sleeman and Tom Sloane. They conceived a colorful layer of metal tiles that would transform a 60m long, 6m high concrete boundary wall into a sculpture. A riot of shades of red metal tiles – utterly unique.
The sculpture comes to life as the sun sets. Embedded in the wall are 4,569 custom LED lights, attached to every other tile. Each illuminated tile would become a “Pixel Brick”, individually controllable in 3000K dimmable warm white.
Miriam and Tom have designed animated lighting programs that sparkle within the sculpture, reminiscent of a soft breeze passing through the leaves of a tree or slowly running water.
illumination Physics’ primary role in this project was the development and manufacture of the custom hardware, including the design of the luminaires and the electrical and data control systems within the wall.
OUR BRIEF
The first challenge was to produce a tiny luminaire that could be integrated perfectly and neatly into each pixel brick. It was to produce sufficient illumination of the pixel brick above it without any hotspots or veiling reflections in the satin finish of the tiles.
Each luminaire was to have in and out cables with IP 67 rated connectors so that a single string of fixtures could be connected vertically for even the tallest section of the wall. The in-and-out cables must be of a length that is just sufficient so that there was no excess. The colour of LEDs was to be determined.
The drivers for the strings of fixtures would have to be integrated into the wall itself as there would be nowhere else to install them. It would also be important to keep the starter cable from the driver to the first fixture as short as possible as the drivers would output power and data in SPI format. There are limitations based upon the number of fixtures in a string and the overall cable length.
Miriam and Tom had their own preferences for the control system components and Illumination Physics would source and assemble and deliver the system and assist with Testing and Commissioning.
OUR SOLUTION
We started with the Luminaire. Swire had commissioned a 1:1 scale mock-up of a section of the wall, so virtual lighting simulations were irrelevant. Tests could be done with the real thing. Illumination Physics supplied groups of fixtures with various LED configurations.
Tests were done with RGBW and various colour temperatures.
3000K was selected.
The task then became the optimisation of the design of the little luminaire so that it could be integrated with the pixel bricks in the most ergonomic and cost-effective way. Working with such an accomplished and savvy industrial design team as Miriam and Tom made this process seamless. The components of the wall could be adapted as could the luminaire.
Next came the development of the drivers and this resulted in a new product, the IP Driver 4 SPI AC. The drivers and all the associated cabling and junction boxes had to be contained in a shallow space at the base of the wall. The IP Driver 4 must be an AC powered fixture with its PSU on board. The housing of the driver could only be 52mm deep and must be rated at IP 67 to withstand temporary immersion as the wall could catch large volumes of rainwater which would exit at the base of the wall where the drivers would be located.
Each IP Driver 4 SPI would have input and output cables carrying AC power and DMX. The connections would use our IP67 rated push-to-snap connectors. On each driver, 4 outputs carry SPI power and data sufficient to drive 4 separate strings running up the full height of the wall. An integrated system with the unitised system of the wall itself.
OTHER LIGHTING
The Swire wall bounds one side of Kam Hoi Street, which is not only the boundary layer, but also a public throughfare carrying light but essential traffic in two directions. Like any other road, the illumination of Kam Hoi Street falls within the purview of the Highways Department of Hong Kong. The illumination of the roadway must meet minimum luminance and uniformity standards, according to its category of L4, a Local Distributor.
Under less aesthetic circumstances, lights on poles would be used, but this would have negative consequences not only on the view of the wall, but also the ambience of the entire area with its decorative gardens and water feature.
Lighting Designers Spiers and Major had been engaged for the overall development and had concluded the light poles would be replaced by lighting integrated into the top of the Swire Wall which would illuminate Kam Hoi Street without the ugliness and glare caused by streetlights on poles. How exactly that would be done became a design exercise in which two illumination Physics solutions were modelled in Dialux software.
A high-powered linear wash light and a circular wash light.
Both samples were made, and the circular wash light was chosen because of its compact and unobtrusive size, achieved using remote IP Driver 12 constant current drivers, removing the PSU from the fixture. The fixture would be fitted with a custom glare shield and the finish would be a mid-red chosen by M+T to blend in with the colours of the Pixel Bricks in the wall.
The 90mm diameter fixture was beautifully integrated into the wall by Miriam and Tom. Kam Hoi Street is elegantly illuminated, and the regulations were met.
The luminaires themselves are barely noticeable.
All that remained to be done related to control. Illumination Physics were contracted to source the racks and equipment which was mostly specified by Miriam and Tom. We would build to racks of control equipment, one would live in the control room (sending data), and the other would be an outdoor specification IP65 rack which would be installed directly behind the wall itself. The two racks would be connected by a fibre optic cable. Illumination Physics researched and sourced a pair of fibre optic to DVI converters to complete the link.
CONCLUSION
Our responsibilities complete, we could enjoy the vision of the Swire wall sculpture coming to life. The use of the various shades of red is a masterpiece and in Hong Kong, culturally appropriate. As the sun sets every day, organic patterns of light appear in a variety of organic and dynamic displays. When your eyes first settle upon it, the wall is a delight. Quite the nicest way to define a boundary we have seen.
EQUIPMENT LIST
- 4751 IP custom series pixel bricks linear wash 200 3000K 2W DC SPI in and out cables IP rated
- 9502 IP custom mounting clips for pixel bricks
- 46 SPI driver with 4 ouputs 400W IP rated
- Various AC/DMX starter and interlinking cables, end cables abd DMX terminators
- 30 IP custom series circular spot light mono 3000K 20W COB DC CC 60 deg with full snoot.
- 2 IP HPCC Led driver 600W 12 outputs
- Various spotlight starter cables in custom lengths.
- Control equipment:
- 1 Pharos LPC 10 DVI lighting playback controller
- 1 PharosTPC BB touch panel controller
- 1 Pharos EDN 20 Ethernet Data Node
- 2 DVI Fibre optical extenders lightware
- DVI cables and DVI adaptors
- 1 Media converter
- 1 Ethernet switches
- 1 Control room equipment rack
- 1 IP rated equipment rack for installation at the wall
- 2 UPS