STRUCTURES:
Best Exterior Lighting Scheme Low Budget
WINNER
Pier Mauá Cranes, Brazil Two beautiful and sculptural cranes from the 60’s remains by the port area of Rio de Janeiro’s downtown as a record of a glorious past. Those big structures are located next to the Museum of Tomorrow at Mauá Square, a recently renewed area of the city that has become an important site for the city residents, the cariocas, as well as for tourists. But sadly, those beautiful cranes used to go dead during the night. These metal characters are well known by the cariocas and certainly every child that has set eyes on one of them, have related its form, shape and size with cartoons like dinosaurs or some other creature of their imagination. Therefore, the intention of the lighting, designed by Brazil-based LD Studio, is to give life to these big metal structures in way that allows people to go back to childhood and give wings to their imagination. The designers’ approach to this lighting concept consists in revealing the main structure, the ‘animal’s legs and upper body’, using warm
white LED floods, with different intensity and beam angles, while taking the opportunity of the existent transparency of its operator’s cabins and along with the crane’s boom, the ‘arms’ of the imaginary creature, using an LED RGB technology that adds movement and pulsation to this character we are creating. Another layer of communication of this RGB technology, relates to special awareness dates like pink October, blue November, Christmas or any other colour-related special date. It is quite interesting to cite a quite old reference on which LD Studio were also inspired. The lighting composition of ‘The City Of Bridges’ at Cleveland, Ohio, from lighting designer Ross de Alessi in 1996, as a celebration of the bicentennial of the city. The freedom on the use of colour and movement at the bridge’s huge structures have made a strong impact on a lot of people that have had the opportunity to gather and enjoy the night scene by the water.
Project: Pier Mauá Cranes Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Lighting Design: LD Studio, Brazil Client: Pier Mauá Main Lighting Suppliers: iGuzzini, Philips, Lemca