Light defines space. For large open public spaces it creates a transition between environments instead of separation.
The random flexibility of luminaires suspended from a system of Ronstan structural cables allows designers and artists to illuminate with pin-point accuracy, creating a unique ambience and achieving a clear and useable footprint without light poles, masts or intrusive support structures.
Artist Stuart Green, in collaboration with Ronstan, created the artwork Aurora – a Aurora – a spectacular catenary lighting solution.
The artwork consists of 2 parallel lines of 45 cable ‘droppers’ each 13m long that hang in a connected curtain above an 80m long pedestrian mall between the two apartment buildings.
Aurora is primarily a lighting artwork with each of the 90 droppers housing 26 individually addressable LED nodes within custom made perforated tube and glinting stainless bulbs strung down each dropper. Combined, the 2340 lighting nodes form a curtain of programmed changing light. This program evokes the night sky and creates a ‘moon rise’ that drifts through the space followed by a drifting gradation of colours that flow and evoke the Aurora Borealis lighting phenomena.
Importantly the whole curtain is engineered to safely move within a strict range, with the wind giving movement to the work, and imparting a weightless quality that allows the strands and the lighting to sway and drift.
The team at Ronstan Tensile Architecture love working with exuberant lighting concepts and are experts in the design and engineering of catenary lighting structures that have transformed some of Australia’s premier outdoor urban meeting spaces, including Melbourne’s Federation Square and Bourke Street Mall, Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall and Manly Corso, and Adelaide’s soon to be completed re-development of Rundle Mall.
Ronstan does not shy from the complicated and does its utmost to realise client dreams.
