It was with great pride that Rachel and I stood beside the Premier of Victoria John Brumby, Minister for Major Projects Tim Pallas and Sue Nattrass AO for the launch of the LED lighting scheme for AAMI Park, designed by Electrolight.

The project represents the culmination of more than 2 year’s work from the time that Electrolight won the competition to design an artistic feature lighting scheme for the stadium.  Such a scheme has not been realised in Australia before - we believe it is actually a world first in stadium design.

About the scheme: there are 1544 LED fixtures, one attached to each of the ‘nodes’ that comprise the facade design.  Each fixture contains red, green and blue LED lamps which are themselves individually controlled by a central system in a similar manner to that of a TV screen.  The thing that makes this project so special is that it is infinitely adaptable, a blank canvas for whatever content can be dreamed.

For the opening, the content (the actual light show programmed onto the LEDs) was designed by Alexander Knox (with input from Bruce Ramus).  The content will regularly change - for example a specifically designed light show will play when Melbourne Victory are playing, another for the Storm etc.

And does it look any good?  We think so - check it out…

So many people to thank - the wonderful, talented team at Electrolight led by Rachel Burke, John Ford, MPV, Bruce Ramus, Cox,  Joe Casamento from Lightmoves, Grocon, Bruce Myles, MOPT and Sue Nattrass for having the vision to choose our scheme at competition stage.

All images credit Matt Irwin

Thank you so much to everybody who participated in The Meaning of Light.  Thanks to Federation Square for allowing us the indulgence of talking about light at their fabulous fabulous venue, for providing heaters and deck chairs to sit on.  In particular Matt Jones, Kate Brennan and Robyn Archer deserve praise for their vision and tenacity in bringing this project to fruition.

Thanks to the speakers who thought carefully about what light means to them and the role it plays in their lives.  No mean feat to stand up in public and to speak from the heart in the way that you did.

Thanks to Rafael - your work is superb.  The Solar equation is a masterpiece and we are so fortunate as Melburnians to be the first to see it.  Good luck with this project and may it bring joy to many others down the track in other parts of the world.

Thanks to my team at Electrolight - there was a lot of work that went into facilitating The Meaning of Light and while I get the credit, quite simply it couldn’t have happened without you guys.

And last but not least, thanks to all who attended.  Fed Square estimate that there were 300 people there over the course of the event.  Considering it was freezing cold that is just awesome.

Hands up if you are freezing...

Dear Light...

Rafael in the lights

Mark, Amelia, Kate and I went to the opening performace at the newly refurbished Geelong Performing Arts Centre last week.

We saw a performance called The Sapphires, a play directed by renowned indigenous Australian Wesley Enoch - and it was really fabulous.

The theatre is, we believe, the first in Australia to have house lighting that is exclusively LED.  The long life of the LED lamps will, we hope, save the theatre a lot of maintenance trouble into the future.  It is something of a milestone within our practice to light such a space (the capacity of the theatre is 700) with high ceilings using this technology using locally sourced LED products from Digilin.  We are very proudwith the results.

GPAC in all its glory

Photos Trevor Mein, Architect Studio 101