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LIGHTING PROJECTS |
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The night falls on the Gulf of Corinth. The bridge that links the peninsula to the continent changes non-stop. It’s nothing more than a fine golden thread delicately woven through four big blued needles, a thread tightened between the two strips of coast, a thread hanging between the starry sky and the sea. The deep dark of the waves offers itself as a mirror to this icon.
Having in mind these images, Roger Narboni and Concepto Agency studied the architectural lighting of this monumental bridge, which will connect the cities of Rion and Antirion creating a night landscape up to the stateliness of the site.
The lighting of the metal cage containing the roadway has been deliberately conceived as a superposition of shades, which gives relief, texture and liveliness to this very long line (over two kilometres).
The four piers which form each of the higher elements of the bridge – the big blued needles – are lit from the carrying structure, in order to gradually disappear in the darkness of the sky. Piles and the sea, instead, are left intentionally in semi-darkness.
The exterior faces of the metal cage – gold-yellow painted – are lit by a non-stop sequence of 560 projectors provided with a ceramic metal halide lamp, a yellow glass filter, and a flap to “correct” the light’s direction. All projectors are strictly the same position and direction angle. Every projector is fixed on the extremities of the metal cage’s console by means of its bracket and a metal support designed on purpose in loco. It lights the cage’s faces with a slight inclination in the same way of the traffic.
Every projector is placed in the withdrawals of the console to be as discreet as possible. The exact height of the projectors has been calculated in order to create on the metal cage a horizontal shade of the console. The bracket of the projector has been modified to offer a very low resistance to the wind. A system of lock has been studied to further fix the orientation of the projectors. All projectors, brackets and flaps are yellow like the cage. As the work is situated in a sea site with a very corrosive saline atmosphere, fixtures and fittings underwent a treatment against corrosion.
As we said, each of the four higher elements of the bridge are lit in the sky’s direction by a shaving, intense, and blued light, visible from afar. More exactly, only three faces of the four piers’ legs are lit, with a different intensity in order to underline their parallelepiped shape, while the fourth one appears in the dark.
192 projectors in all have been necessary to light the piers. They are placed at the feet of each leg, and fixed on the vertical and slightly sloping cement surface. All projectors will have to stand up to winds with a speed of 200 kilometres per hour.
The lighting of the roadway, realized with ceramic metal halide lamps which produce a white light, marks the work and becomes part of the suggestive night environment, mysterious and dreamlike.
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