“There is a large sphere shaped Planetarium that can be seen from outside one of the museums. At night, twenty moveable multi-gobo and multiwheel projectors light the huge sphere with imagery representative of the main planets and the sun.” Mark Sutton Vane, Sutton Vane Associates
were used to create the projected effects that visitors
exhibits all appear to be lifted off the floor with glows under their
In an equally large gallery, a huge display showing how white blood
complex, including downlights from acdc, miniature spotlights
experience when moving down the travellators.
cells move towards and attack bad bacteria in the human body is formed out of several thousand LED spheres. These spheres are all programmed to chase around the gallery in spirals moving
towards large glowing models of bacteria. Some of the spheres
are lit red to represent the red blood cells and others are white.
Several days were taken to programme the various attack sequences of the UFO built LEDs and supporting structures to create the desired dramatic effects in the spiralled blood cell display.
In the Innovate gallery, designers created a forest of hanging light fibres by UFO that visitors push their way through and get lost in.
Sutton Vane explained the design of this gallery space further: “All of the fibres change colour in a complicated programme to support the
story that is being told by the graphics and the audio visual displays. There is a large sphere-shaped Planetarium in one of the museums
that can be seen from outside. At night, twenty moveable multi-gobo and multi-wheel projectors, by Martin Professional, light the huge
sphere with imagery that is representative of the main planets and
the sun. So the sphere first looks like Mars, then like Venus, then the boiling Sun and so on.”
UFO also provided an external LED fibre optic map of the stars of the universe for people to gaze at.
Throughout all of the museums and galleries, luminaires have been built in to heighten the displays and in some gallery spaces the
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plinths. A large combination of fixtures were installed across the
from LightGraphix, downlights from Reggiani, Linear LED profiles with built in optics by UK LED Lighting, Linear RGB LED strips by LED Flex and spotlights by Concord, Mike Stoane and Erco. Notably, the Space Museum is an incredible feat for the
design teams to undertake. A full size accurate replica of the
International Space Station was created for visitors to explore. SVA spent a lot of time and effort to research and replicate the specific light fittings used inside the space station and
matched them as best as possible to make the true replica. In total, SVA specified over 20,000 light fittings from the
multiple suppliers. Most of the fittings are DALI dimmable
and some work on local DMX control systems. Philips Color
Kinetics and Pharos Controls, both supplied by Architainment
Lighting, provided control systems for controlling some of the DMX controlled lighting, which demanded fast changes in the
exhibits or were controlled by AV or visitor interaction. Helvar
completed all of DALI control systems across all of the museums. Once construction of the complex was complete, it didn’t leave a lot of time for the implementation of the fixtures. SVA had two
or three designers on site for months to carry out the aiming and
programming of this huge site. They also acquired a team of Nepalese abseiling workers to aid in the focusing and aiming of the fixtures in
the fourteen-metre high galleries across the museums. Sutton Vane