here's the article Officedweller mentions above;
English duo take on Hotel Georgia lighting
John Mackie, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, May 16, 2008
There has been an endless stream of new developments downtown the last few years, but few are as ambitious as the Hotel Georgia project.
The $400-million development is a blend of a 1927 heritage building and a contemporary tower. It's also a blend of a boutique hotel and high-end condos. And it's very high-end: the 7,400 sq. ft. penthouse in the condo tower has already sold for $18 million.
Sally Storey and Chris Lewis have a key role in making the two buildings work. The duo have been brought in from London to design the lighting for the project.
That's right, the lighting.
Big projects like this often employ lighting designers to bring a little extra je ne sais quoi to the development. In lighting circles, Storey and Lewis are as good as it gets, particularly regarding heritage buildings.
Their company, Lighting Design International, has worked on all sorts of historic buildings, such as the Hotel Des Bergues in Geneva (built in 1834), the Grande Bretagne Hotel in Athens (built in 1874), and the Temple Church in London, a 12th-century structure that was featured in The Da Vinci Code.
Storey is also a noted author in Britain, thanks to her 2002 book Lighting By Design (Pavilion). She has another book coming out this fall called Perfect Lighting.
"Lighting is important to transform any space, any mood," says Storey.
"You can have a white box and make it sing with lighting. It changes your mood. You go into any bar or any restaurant, and you either feel good or bad there. It may be beautifully decorated, but usually it's the lighting that gives you that comfortable feeling or not."
The Hotel Georgia is a challenging project, which is one of the things Storey likes about it.
"It's an unusual challenge, because you've got the historical side and the contemporary side together," says Storey, who was trained as an architect but has specialized in lighting since the early 1980s.
"They stand cheek-by-jowl and they both have their own style and design. It's much more fun, doing both at the same time."
On the heritage building, Storey will use modern lighting techniques to play up the architecture, rather than simply do a period restoration with period lighting.
"What I want to do is highlight the architecture so that it comes into its own, and keep the general lighting to a dimmer level so it just gives ambient lighting," she says.
"In the past people were worried about getting recessed uplighters to do things, because it's a contemporary [light] source. But I feel that you want to celebrate the old architecture, make it come alive in a contemporary way."
"Uplighting" is when you point a light up; "downlighting" is the reverse. In a heritage structure like the Georgia, this might mean placing small lights at the bottom of a grooved column so that they illuminate the grooves -- an architectural feature regular lighting usually ignores.
Subtle placement of miniature lights can also bring a fresh look to an antique chandelier. In the old days, you would just hang the chandelier in a lobby or ballroom and it would light the room. A modern trick is to dim the chandelier so the light is less glaring, then adding uplights and downlights which make it appear the light is coming from the chandelier.
"You maybe do [the chandelier] down to 50 per cent of its output, so that the lamps just glow," says Lewis, who trained in furniture design.
"Then [you] introduce other lights into the chandelier that provide other effects."
This can also be applied to the home.
"You don't just light the room by your central pendant," says Storey.
"Think of layering of light, [and] breaking your light down into three [categories]. You have your general lighting, which is the lighting all around.
"Then there's the accent or feature lighting, where you decide what in the room you want to feature. It could be a picture light over a picture, it could be a small discreet spot [light] in the ceiling lighting the picture, it could be a low-level uplighter lighting the curtains, or a plant in the corner, or your fireplace.
"And then you've got your task lighting, where you've got a desk and you can read by. You break down the lighting into those three categories and work out how you're going to do it."
In either a residential or commercial setting, "control of light is all important in a room."
"You always want your general lighting separately controlled from your feature lighting, because that's how you create the mood," she says.
"You can dim the general lighting down, and bring the feature lighting up."
In the Hotel Georgia, there will be a mix of contemporary and period fixtures, as well as lighting from unusual sources. The reception desk in the lobby will be made of onyx, which will be lit from within to make it glow, a very cool effect.
On the exterior, lights will be strategically placed to illuminate the 1927 building's architectural features. You may never have noticed some of them, such as the corner urns and balustrade (small posts) on the roof.
But it's the lighting on the adjoining 48-storey tower that will probably have tongues wagging. It promises to be the most interesting architectural lighting since the BC Hydro building went up at Burrard and Nelson in 1957. (Unfortunately, the BC Hydro building's wall of beautiful blue and green lights is rarely illuminated anymore.)
The top of the Hotel Georgia tower will be lit "like a beacon," and there will be 20-to-30 storey "raindrops" cascading down its sides.
"There's extra interest if you have motion in lighting," says Lewis.
"If it's just static, people get used to it -- they look at it once and don't necessarily look at it again. But if it's moving [and] it's doing something different, it catches the eye every time."
"It's almost like running water," injects Storey.
"It will be like a long drop and then will fade out," says Lewis.
"And then the next one will come down and fade off."
Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, they can apparently pull this off without disturbing the inhabitants of the condo tower. If work proceeds as planned, the building, and lighting, should be ready by late 2009.
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© The Vancouver Sun 2008
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