Project Name: Oxley and Stilring

Practice Name: RPS Group

Project Address: 9 Christie street, South Brisbane

As densification of Australian cities increases and apartment living comes to the fore, the typical Australian backyard needs to evolve to embrace the idea of shared spaces, such as rooftop gardens. RPS Landscape Architecture, Elenberg Frasers and Grey Light carefully collaborated in ensuring this space was not only usable during the daytime, but also at night time, where the lighting provided a usable, inviting and safe place for the community.

These gardens are very complex and require a high level or coordination but also a prime example of a successful collaboration between a vast number of consultants, in particular lighting. Overlooking the Brisbane River, the roof top is designed to celebrate water, the lighting intent was designed to be subtle, drawing upon other elements such as water to help reflect and refract the light throughout the rooftop.

RPS and Gray Light designed and implemented the lighting designed which encompassed a range of lighting typologies including ambient lighting, wayfinding lighting and pool lighting.

The pool is split into two levels, an upper and a lower, the lower pool uses the underwater 'LED Neon' which is rebated under coping disguising any fixtures and allowing the light to shine back onto the wet-wall. The white lighting serves to highlight the pool edge for safety, eliminating the need for other ambient lighting in this area. The upper and larger pool uses the standard semi-recessed 'barnacle' pool lights, also in cool white and disguised under the coping tiles, which allows the light to wash through the water and illuminate the large body of water. The barnacle light also highlights the pool edge helping wayfinding around the pool edge. The central water feature, the signature element of the roof top, uses the 'LED Neon' to underside of stepping pads which gently washes light across the base of pool for decorative and safety purposes.

The lush gardens of the roof tops are a feature element that RPS and Gray light wanted to celebrate. The canopy of the feature Fig trees can be recognised on the Brisbane skyline as light beacons, up light by a series of 1,500lm3000K CRI90 spike spot up lights, capturing their beautiful canopy colour and foliage. Each light was carefully located to ensure a canopy object was positioned over top of the lights to eliminate any light spill, reducing light pollution. The garden beds have a more subtle approach with the smattering of only picket lights for decorative & ambient lighting located mainly near corners, highlighting colour accents and underside of the lush sub-tropical planting.

Entertaining spaces such as the sunken lounges use a concealed strip lighting to wash across the deck below, creating a warm and inviting moonlight setting. Robust fixed table lights were installed for dining purposes using the 2700K CRI90, also around these high use areas discreet miniature spotlights were installed to the roof and pergola, aimed down to the tabletops. Safety and wayfinding lights such as low-profile surface brick lights have been used around stairs and ramps highlighting changes in level and major pathways.

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