Lighting designer Willie Williams - most commonly thought of for his work with U2, but also represented in London's West End and in theatres around the world with the musical We Will Rock You - was asked by the South Bank Centre's creative director Jude Kelly to devise a lighting scheme for the Centre, both to give it its own identity and to ensure that it wasn't overshadowed by the dramatic exterior lighting scheme now in place at its neighbour, the National Theatre.
Working to a tight budget, Williams devised a fixed look for the buildings; White Light supplied a large quantity of MBI floods and ETC Source Fours to implement the design, which Williams describes as "the smallest lighting system I have worked with in living memory!" The scale of the site - a collection of buildings spread over twenty acres along the side of the River Thames - proved a challenge to all concerned, as did the absence of up-to-date drawings of the Centre, leading Williams to produce what he feels may be "the first lighting plot in history to be drawn using Google Earth". In the final scheme, the floods were concealed in the Centre's many corners and crevices, with the Source Fours shuttered into slots to catch edges and corners in warm, open tungsten colour.
Williams was supported in the project by a lighting team led by crew chief Alex Murphy and including Henry Barbour, Harry Haywood and Dai Mitchel. The lighting scheme was switched on at the end of June and originally scheduled to run until the end of August; it has now been extended into the autumn, with the designer and White Light investigating weatherproofing options to keep the equipment running through the autumn and winter.
The South Bank Centre is just one of the many outdoor lighting schemes that White Light has been involved with in recent months, with others including the Northumberland Lights project, the launch of Estée Lauder Breast Cancer Awareness Month in Trafalgar Square and a project at Leeds Castle.
(Chris Henry)
