The Tower is the prominent centrepiece of Barratt London's flagship regeneration project - Great West Quarter (GWQ) in Brentford, Middlesex. One of the tallest interactive sculptures in Europe, it offers views across the capital and the nearby Kew Gardens, with a publicly accessible viewing gallery. Boasting an internal area of 13,600m2, it hosts 178 apartments and stands to the west of the five-hectare mixed-use development.
LTP was invited by Barratt Homes to design, supply and install the spine lighting solution for The Tower. This comprised of 53 horizontal runs of six point sources of light, set at 1000mm intervals up the north facing side of the building.
LTP designed and manufactured a bespoke cable containment system that was used to support the feature lighting, consisting of 396 RGB IP67 rated, individually addressable LED spot lights (Traxon/Osram's LED Dot6 String) powered by 13 LED drivers. The spots are set within stainless steel 'candles' with extruded ultra violet stable acrylic and supported by powder coated transoms and mullions.
For control, LTP integrated Traxon Technologies' Lighting Control Engine mx (LCE-mx) - a compact and versatile DIN rail mountable control server with built in e:cue software. This was paired with two Butler S2 units, each offering powerful RDM-capable DMX512 output and the storage of up to 99 pre-programmed cuelists. The lighting is set to operate fully automatically 365 days of the year.
LTP's engineers - who utilised a window cleaner's basket that was suspended from above and lowered down the face of The Tower - successfully overcame the challenges faced by strong winds, inclement weather and working at such height.
(Jim Evans)
