LED it be!: the latest lighting projects

The exponential growth of LED and other technologies has made light even more biddable as an architectural element, as the latest crop of restaurants and museums demonstrate.

By Clavel Arquitectos and Peter Smisek

May 4, 2021 | 10:00 pm CUT

The dramatically lit interior of FMS | Fisher Marantz Stone-designed Paradise Club at the Edition Hotel In New York. Photo: Nikolas Koenig

Ever since the advent of artificial lighting, designers and architects have used it to enhance buildings around us and spaces within them. Then LEDs changed everything – small, flexible and energy-efficient, they give architects and designers more opportunities than ever to deploy lighting as an architectural element in its own right. Naturally, the possibilities offered by these new advances in lighting are best explored in nightclubs, theatres, restaurants and bars – spaces that truly come alive and light up when darkness falls.

Clavel Arquitectos' makeover of the five-star Gran Hotel Casino Extremadura deploys lighting to accentuate the spatial opulence of the complex's entertainment venues. Photos: David Frutos (BISimages)

Clavel Arquitectos explored these possibilities when refurbishing the lobby, restaurants and nightclub in the five-star Gran Hotel Casino Extremadura in the Spanish town of Badajoz. With a simple colour palette of black and gold, the architects have sought to emphasise the curvilinear space with custom-designed LED strips mounted on aluminium tubes. The large overlapping chandeliers mirror the curvature of the space and are reflected in several strategically positioned mirrors, creating an almost psychedelic effect.

In YAMA, Lai Studio has deployed lighting as an underlying material that helps to incorporate the different formal gestures into a cohesive whole. Photos: Matteo Guidetti

On the Italian-Swiss border, Lai Studio has designed YAMA, a restaurant overlooking the shores of Lake Lugano, whose design combines geometric and organic geometries. Glowing walls and backlit cassette-like ceiling complement beige and honey-coloured surface finishes, and create a surprisingly harmonious contrast with the more traditional flooring and furnishings, while a green wall in one of the dining spaces brings a more relaxed casual atmosphere.

The deployment of the lighting scheme enhances the surrealist mural on the walls of FMS | Fisher Marantz Stone-designed Paradise Club. Photos: Nikolas Koenig

In New York, FMS | Fisher Marantz Stone has designed Paradise Club at the Edition Hotel. Comprising an entire floor of a building on Times Square, this flexible space can function as a restaurant, a nightclub, as well as a venue for various cultural and corporate events and includes a performance stage. The ceiling features a custom-designed, low-resolution RGB starburst that – like the rest of the lighting elements – can be controlled digitally with FMS having designed different lighting schemes for the space's multiple uses.

Designed by Pfarré Lighting Design, the different LED lighting systems at the Rothschild Collection are deployed in harmony to create a versatile golden cabinet of curiosities. Photos: Markus Tollhopf, Hamburg

New lighting technologies can also be used in museums and exhibition spaces to a great effect. Pfarré Lighting Design's scheme for the Rothschild Collection at the Goldkammer museum presents 300 bars of gold bullion from 35 countries in 38 vitrines lined alongside a wall. These scarlet-lined vitrines feature a custom lighting system that enhances the gold sheen of the bullion on display. The other three walls are covered in two-way mirror panels, with high-resolution LED screens, installed behind the glass. This allows for changing, immersive video displays, while at other times creating an optically infinite space. Simple LED strips on the ceilings complete the space.

LED it be!: the latest lighting projects

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