Canberra Centre Shopping Centre Light Sculpture

The Project

The Canberra Centre is the premier retail development in the heart of Australia’s capital city.

The centre was substantially redeveloped and expanded in 2006 and now accommodates more than 300 stores.  The redeveloped centre sits on a vital cranking point within Walter Burley Griffin’s original design for the city and this cranking point is the focus of this project.

Lighting Design Concept

We felt that the mall intersection/escalator void, a highly significant confluence within the shopping centre, presented an opportunity for a significant lighting object. We suggested that the insertion of a sculptural element would activate the space, lead the eye to upper retail levels and provide a pivotal focal point in the centre.

Electrolight designed a sculpture that was conceived as both an architectural element and a functional object, something to both define the space and to play a pragmatic role within the retail environment.

In the process of conceptualising the sculpture we concluded that both natural and artificial light should be used. The use of a strong geometrical form which was somewhat deconstructed became fundamental to work with the strong geometry of the shopping centre as well as our desire to introduce a random, playful element into the space.

The geometry of the sculpture was designed in tandem with its materiality.  Dichroic glass was selected because of its unique properties of light transmission and reflection. 

Design Development

Each disc is attached to a suspension cable at a 45 degree angle in a rotationally random arrangement.  The varying angle of light incidence and reflection creates a wide variety of colours within the space, whilst maintaining a constrained colour palette. Rich blues, aquas and purples are transmitted through the discs whilst spectrally opposing oranges, yellows and golds are reflected from various light sources including the sun, light sources from retail stores and dedicated artificial lighting.

The sculpture consists of an array of 300mm diameter glass discs with dichroic coating (all discs finished identical ‘sky blue’ colour) suspended at 45° angles within a cubic grid of unit dimension one metre. 150 watt metal halide spotlights provide artificial light to sculpture at night. The sculpture is lit by sunlight and daylight during day.