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White Light at the South Bank Centre
Visitors to the South Bank of the River Thames over the last few months will have seen a dramatic visual change to the concrete structures of the South Bank Centre as night falls and a new lighting scheme takes over.
Lighting designer Willie Williams - most commonly known for his work with U2, but also represented in London’s West End and in theatres around the world with the musical We Will Rock You - was asked by the South Bank Centre’s creative director Jude Kelly to devise a lighting scheme for the Centre, both to give it its own identity and to ensure that it wasn’t overshadowed by the dramatic exterior lighting scheme now in place at its neighbour, the National Theatre.
Working to a tight budget, Williams devised a fixed look for the buildings and White Light supplied a large quantity of MBI floods and ETC Source Fours to implement the design, which Williams describes as "the smallest lighting system I have worked with in living memory!"
The scale of the site - a collection of buildings spread over 20 acres along the side of the River Thames - proved a challenge to all concerned, as did the absence of up-to-date drawings of the Centre, leading Williams to produce what he feels may be "the first lighting plot in history to be drawn using Google Earth". In the final scheme, the floods were concealed in the Centre’s many corners and crevices, with the Source Fours shuttered into slots to catch edges and corners in warm, open tungsten colour.
Williams was supported in the project by a lighting team led by crew chief Alex Murphy and including Henry Barbour, Harry Haywood and Dai Mitchel. The lighting scheme was switched on at the end of June and originally scheduled to run until the end of August; it has now been extended into the autumn, with the designer and White Light investigating weatherproofing options to keep the equipment running through the autumn and winter.
photos Henry Barbour
1st November 2006
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