KIPCO Tower (formerly known as United Tower) is one of a cluster of tall buildings in Kuwait City. The client wanted the facade lighting to provide the tower with a clear, dynamic night-time identity and make it stand out from its neighbours.
Buildings
KIPCO Tower, Lighting design, Kuwait
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About this Project
Client
Kuwait City
Timespan
June 2009 - Jan 2013
Location
Kuwait
Contact
Kevan ShawLighting Design DirectorPhone: +354 412 6234 / +44 783 65 970 44E-mail: kevan.shaw@efla.is
The project's objective
The facade features coloured panels set in the architecture with random coloured glazing to the spandrel panels. KSLD | EFLA Lighting Design integrated LED lighting into the spandrel glazing, providing a random arrangement of single colour elements. The themes chosen to animate these are: 'waterfall', which presents a gentle cascade in green and blue colours; and 'diamond' which animates all colours with a white sparkle provided by random strobing of white panels. In the course of programming, the client requested additional themes and we created a snowfall effect, playing digitally generated snow across white and pale blue elements over a solid blue ground; and a Kuwait flag, with edge lighting in the flag colours of red, white and green, and a red and white animation over a green ground.
Working with the limited colour arrangement creates a dramatically different result than the typical RGB colour changing system, giving us a far greater range of brightness and a much more interesting challenge in developing dynamics and patterns. We used a combination of digital video, effects generation within the E-Cue control system and mechanically derived animation to achieve the effects.
The tower stands out powerfully among the other lit towers; the edge lighting defines the curvaceous form and the animations read clearly against the sky and background of lit buildings around the site.
Service Components
