Building with light
Light can be an effective attention getter. But it can do more than that: It can create an ambience, alter rooms, or even become architecture in its own right. That opens up almost unlimited possibilities for the design of trade fair stands and events.
For some years now, the designer Achim Jungbluth of LFF Licht Form Funktion, Solingen, has been experimenting with light phenomena, spectral colours, and the additive mixture of colours. Today's light-emitting diodes (LEDs) generate precisely the red, green and blue that are needed to form white light that is almost identical to daylight. However, the light is only perceived as pure white when viewed head on or if the light is reflected. If the rotating-pivoted red, green and blue LEDs are arranged at a specific distance the light will mix additively to form white light if the light cone is congruently positioned on a reflective surface. If shadows are cast in this triple-light beam, they usually appear as black shadows at the focal point, but directly next to it they appear in all the colours of the RGB chromatic space.
This discovery provided the basis for the light installation in the former German Rail divisional head office in Cologne. From January 16 to 22, Stylepark invited guests to the building on the banks of the Rhine for the third time. An approximately 30-m corridor with a vaulted ceiling was equipped with LEDs developed specially for this event and shone from the floor diagonally through the room to the ceiling. The corridor was bathed in white light. As soon as people entered the corridor, shadows began to dance and oversized shadows floated across the walls and ceiling. Over 34,000 visitors went down this corridor.
LEDs do not have to determine the concept. They can also be used to highlight individual elements or to create a special background mood. Sprinz, Ravensburg, for example, equips luminous ceilings and glass objects with modern lighting technology and LEDs, making them eye-catchers or even light sculptures in their own right, for example, for the trade fair appearances of Volvo (contractor: Ambrosius, Frankfurt).
"Prepare your senses" - was the slogan chosen for last year's Volkswagen dealers convention in a restored sandstone cave on Majorca. The light designer and company manager Lutz H. Kleine-Herzbruch from rgb studio für lichtgestaltung gmbh, Essen, was responsible for the light design staging. In co-operation with the event agencies De Vries + Partners and De Otter Creators an ambience was created, tailored to each of the items on the programme, business meeting and evening program, that took visitors on a journey into the night and into the "bowels of the earth". The centrepiece of the event was the main cave, in which the artistic program was performed on four stages cut into the stone walls. Live performances with dancing, music, and shadow theatre had to be incorporated into the room staging. With a modern inventory designed specially for the event, the cave was bathed in changing light and exposed to different room aromas so that the spectator was able to experience constantly varying moods "with all the senses".
For this year's trade fair appearance of Saab at NAIAS in Detroit, CT Germany, Nürtingen, developed the world's first LED module for hire that can be used multifunctionally as a ceiling, wall or floor element. In Detroit the VersaPIX modules were for the first time integrated into the overall stand concept as a 250-m2 LED ceiling element to create a special experience of space with LED walls made of Barco I-Lite 6 XP and the tried and trusted VersaLightguide modules. Over an area of more than 240 m2, the specially programmed graphical contents made for fascinating light effects on the stand.
In keeping with the Philips Lighting corporate philosophy "Enhance People’s Lives with Lighting", the objective of the company's appearance at EuroShop 2005 in Düsseldorf was the scenic demonstration of light products in their various applications. One special example of this is the light façade, the Big X of the Philips Lighthouse, which was developed based on an LED innovation of the company. The light moods moved dynamically from one to the next. The physical architecture was eclipsed by the light, which formed the real façade of the stand. "Light surface and the physical structure merge to form a light sculpture with a high attention value", explains Jochen Höffler, managing director of D'Art Design Gruppe, Neuss, which designed the stand.
But LEDs are not essential: with more than 300 RGB lighting systems, LK Aktiengesellschaft, Essen, illuminated the textile architecture of the DATEV information event 2005 in Nuremberg. What resulted was a varied exhibition scenery lit up in the CI colours of DATEV. The show forum at the heart of the exhibition also had to be incorporated. One special highlight were the DL1 projectors that projected bright images and films in many different positions. Werbe- und Messebau Walbert-Schmitz from Aachen designed and implemented the exhibition which covered a total area of over 10,000 m2.
RGB fluorescent lamps made the 3,500 m2 stand of furniture maker himolla, staged by tennagels Medientechnik, Düsseldorf, at imm cologne in January visible from afar. Right round over a length of 340 m, a 5.5-m high vaulted light wall was created that produced slow and fast colour transitions in the horizontal and vertical axis and framed the stand. The Startube luminaires hung on 4.5-m steel strips. The luminaires were controlled using seven DMX circuits of 512 channels each with the matrix module of Sunlite software 2004. Colour effects so slow as to be barely perceptible over a long period down to 25 ms light transitions (stroboscope effects) were presented to stand visitors. An additional coloured foil was stuck onto 2,400 coloured fluorescent lamps to ensure the best possible colour mixture to form pure white. More than 800 RGBW Startube light troughs with 3200 DMX channels were used. The result was a total light visual of over 2,000 m2 (design and steel construction: Grote Eventsupplies; technical implementation: Seybold, Düren; contractor: Steenbreker, Oberhausen; light staging: tennagels medientechnik).
m+a report Nr.2 / 2006 vom 24.03.2006
m+a report vom 24. März 2006