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Darc night and awards 2018

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Darc Night And Awards 2018 1
Credit: Gavriil Papadiotis (www.gavriilux.com)
Darc Night And Awards 2018 2
Credit: Gavriil Papadiotis (www.gavriilux.com)

Following on from our sponsorship of darc room, LIGMAN are proud to have been involved in the darc night and awards event organised by arc which was held in London, Shoreditch on the 6th December. One of the fun aspects of the event is the partnering of supporting manufacturers with lighting design practices into teams tasked with designing and building themed Light Art installations and this year we were delighted to have been partnered with Michael Grubb Studios.

The 2018 theme was appropriately a Christmas tree and us and 12 other teams set work independently to come up with our designs.

Working closely with Stuart Alexander and Michael Grubb on the installation was LIGMAN’s Global Lighting Director, Martin Valentine:

“MGS came up with the concept of making a tree physically out of luminaires and lighting it from within. Working with Stuart and Mike was a wild and inspiring experience with ideas flying back and forth and the design just fell into place naturally it felt. We decided to really go for it in our support and hand finish every fixture and there were 125 of them! With a steam punk and dystopian aesthetic and strong references to the cult film Blade Runner the base fixtures arrived from the LIGMAN factory finished in the requested Bronze and Stuart an myself spent long days around a weekend applying custom paint finishes with stencils and careful weathering to each fixture. We also wanted to have them all powered; creating different patterns and textures of light, so we formed custom optics with internal filters using copper and aluminium tape and lots of other materials and tricks.”

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Martin continues: “The support from both LIGMAN and MGS to the process was wonderful and we managed to get everything done in time to transport the various components to site the morning before the event and then build it….Even though I think that was about 15 hours of work in itself! I loved the collaborative feeling with all the other teams there and we all helped each other if needed. Also a special mention to Joe, our electrician from Lamps+Amps, as he had to connect this all up and make it work!”

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In the end there were some stunning works on show from the teams and the darc night was again a unique enjoyable event and a great success. The winners of all the darc awards were announced, including one for MGS for their public realm lighting scheme for Black Prince Road in London.

Congratulations to all the winners, whom can be viewed here: https://darcawards.com/architectural/2018-winners/

Also a video of the event showing all the awards as they unfolded and all the 13 art installations can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLPmc6VMyvM&feature=youtu.be

See the MGS Video of the installation here: https://vimeo.com/307710926

Read the full history of the artwork and collaboration here on Michael Grubb Studio’s website: https://www.michaelgrubbstudio.com/darc-night-2018/

The whole LIGMAN UK team attended the night and the MGS-Ligman installation had many admirers. A great event all round and great to see a chat with so many designers.

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