Abu Dhabi’s Grand Mosque has picked up another award for its lighting design: the Germany-based Professional Lighting Designers’ Association presented it with a Recognition Award for Best New Project. Others have included the IALD Award of Merit, IES Award of Excellence and two Middle East Lighting Design Awards for Project of the Year and Best Public Building Lighting Project. It has also been shortlisted for the ESTA Rock Our World Awards, to be announced later this month at LDI in Orlando.
With lighting designed by Speirs and Major Associates (SaMA), over 1,200Martin fixtures, Erco interior lights and ETC Source Four luminaires are controlled by 21 Congo Light Servers and 15 Unison processors by ETC and supplied by Oasis Enterprises. Seventeen custom built equipment racks and 52 customised dimming racks contain almost 2,300 circuits – Relays, SCR- and ETC Matrix Mk II SineWave dimming – which in combination with the Martin fixtures are controlled via 276 ETC Net3 DMX/RDM Gateways.
The lighting for the building has been designed as a mimic of the moon’s phases, so at a full moon, the building is white, and for the new moon it is blue; every day there is a change. In addition to the colour change sequence, ‘clouds’ scud across the building as though they were moving from west to east, clearing from Mecca. This was achieved using a series of building-mounted and totem-mounted rigs 20m off the face of the building, from which light is projected.
The latest award, which was presented at the conclusion of the Professional Lighting Design Convention in Berlin, recognises those who have most contributed to the advancement of the field of architectural lighting design. The judges said: “This project incorporates supreme lighting insight and skills. While it respects the building’s inherent cultural and religious aspects, it can be celebrated as the best of its kind in aesthetic, meaningful and spiritually overwhelming architectural lighting.”
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