Living wall accented by elegant LED lighting
The Green Wall at Birmingham, England's Snow Hill Station is a mammoth structure that merges nature, architecture — and now, beautiful LED lighting. The impressive junction, which hides a multi-story parking lot and provides a scenic backdrop for the city's future railroad network, measures 220 m x 7 m (720 ft x 23 ft) and showcases 604 m² (almost 2000 ft²) of plants, making it the largest "living wall" in Europe. To add organic movement and vivid illumination to the living landmark, MBLD, the project's lighting designers, and C A Sothers, the installation team, turned to elegant white light LED luminaires from Color Kinetics.
MBLD knew immediately that they were looking for an all-LED lighting system, which would offer easy controllability and low energy consumption, all while breathing life into their dynamic concept with long-lasting, high-quality luminaires. The primary design objective of the project was to bring out the unique perforated ripple texture of the panels that run the length of the wall. To highlight the textured panels, the C A Sothers team installed 1 ft and 2 ft iW Graze Powercore and iW Burst Powercore (both now specified with IntelliHue) luminaires, placing them in the gully spanning the base of the wall. The comprehensive system, controlled by a Color Kinetics iPlayer 3 DMX lighting controller, creates a shifting, glowing effect on the panels, enveloping the wall in alternating shades of warm and cool white light — a stunning complement to the pervasive greenery. But the team, intent on illuminating the entire wall, didn't stop there. They also mounted the Graze luminaires approximately 305 mm (1 ft) from the back of the wall, highlighting the sweep of flora that faces a public walkway and enabling a full-bodied experience of the living structure.
