Project Name: Brisbane Sign

Practice Name: City Parklands P/L

Project Address: Stanley Street, South Bank

South Bank’s Lighting Renewal program highlights key assets in the Cultural Forecourt, including the Brisbane Sign. For this project, the idea for the lighting was conceived by Naturform with in-ground lights supplied by[undisclosed] and locally manufactured in Brisbane. Colour control is by [undisclosed].

The Brisbane Sign is an incredibly popular sculpture and used for playful photo opportunities both day and night. The design objective was to provide a more theatrical night-time experience through the use of changeable coloured up-lighting to the front face of the sign, making a stunning focal point against the backdrop of city lights.

[undisclosed] In-ground Strip Lights are discretely set in coloured rubber soft-fall both parallel to, and in close proximity to the Brisbane Sign. The overall effect is a seamless integration of the lights, paving and sculpture during the day.

At night the lighting scheme greatly compliments the existing night-time city landscape creating a very different after dark photo opportunity for its’ many visitors. For City Parklands it provides flexible lighting arrangements using changeable coloured lights, which are used to support the many City partners with special events. For instance, themes that have been created are green for St Patrick’s day, purple for key sporting events and pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Week.

As the Brisbane Sign is a high use pedestrian area, the light fittings had to be as robust and as un-obtrusive as possible to overcome this challenge. A 15mm acrylic cover was used to avoid sharp metal and glass surfaces around the light fittings. The strip lighting was placed to showcase the artwork on the front face of the sign only, rather than light up the whole sculpture.

In regards to Dark Sky considerations, the feature is in a high use inner city parkland with a lot of overspill from surrounding areas. To prevent adding to this, oval 10 degree x 35 degree optics were used on the LED’s to direct light across the sign face and reduce visual glare to adjacent areas.

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