With its own built-in driver, X-Chip LED - distributed in the UK by L.E.D. - can create up to 16 million colour combinations and boasts a lamp life of 50,000 hours. Moreover, designer Adrian Ball says that the tiny modules presented him with a wide range of creative options. "LED was in my mind after working with Ian Kirby at Umbaba," he said. "The beauty of these is their size - they are only four inches long by less than an inch wide. But in addition to being compact, they are low-maintenance, colour-changing, fully dimmable LED's with no heat dissipation. The light source can thus be concealed and they are very straightforward to install."
The designer says that after the "chunkier" LED effects he had experienced in the past, he was able to use the new streamlined X-Chip LED in their hundreds. These are located mostly in the main dining room, on the stairs and at the upstairs bar. But the real feature displays, he says, were the etched glass and stainless steel light panels he constructed in the private function room, with a single Chip in each. "These X-Chips really come into their own mounted behind a diffuser panel."
Ian Kirby had not only arranged the original product demonstrations, enabling the measurements to be cut accurately, but also the programming of the chase patterns within the fixture's own drive electronics. Ball, who has since specified X-Chip on another project in Norwich, also used three strips of the new Coemar LineaLED - a flexible LED-tape PCB - in three - metre lengths in the downstairs bar. This, he says, produces "a phenomenal bottle display" with its dimmable, colour-changing attributes.
In general terms, Satmoko Ball say that despite the Grade II listing, the local conservation officer was surprisingly amenable to a contemporary fit-out once he was convinced that the historic fabric would be left intact.
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
