Iron Lighting Products and Fixtures Design · 2022
Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting
- A' Design Award 2022 Iron Winner in Lighting Products and Fixtures Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: Singapore Tourism Board
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 14,834
- Verification code CA1BBD4F8D · Verify this award
About Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting
Haw Par Villa is a heritage lighting scheme for an 8.5 hectare park in Singapore, built in the 1930s and filled with sculptures and dioramas based on Chinese folklore. More than 20 sculpture attractions are lit, and each one is treated individually so that the details of its story are revealed. A moving light show at the entrance draws passers-by inside, while warm white light of 2700 to 3000 kelvin guides visitors along the paths. As the site is protected by conservation laws, drilling was avoided and custom structures were built to hold the light fittings.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The design is a balancing act between staying true to the sculptures’ stories, while making them more accessible than before. The sculptures can only be enjoyed when visitors visit the park, so the first design intent was to use moving lights situated at the park’s entrance to draw visitors into the park. Once inside, visitors are then led naturally by the lighting to the most important sculptures. Each sculpture’s lighting is then handcrafted to showcase the stories to the greatest effect.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The entire Haw Par Villa park is 8.5HA in area. We lighted up more than 20 individual sculpture attractions, the smallest of them about 10 sq metres in area, and the largest about 200 sq metres. The highest light structure we built was over 5 metres. Many kilometres of wiring and cabling was laid to enable power delivery to the new lights. It was a massive engineering undertaking.
- Tags
- lightingdesign, lightingconsultant, heritagelighting, landscapelighting
- Production Technology
- There are too many different kinds of lighting products used to individually mention. More importantly, all SKUs were customized at the factory to our exact specifications - length, luminosity, color temperature, throw of the light, and other details. In this way, most products are bespoke, even though the SKUs are readily available. The key product we used for the realization of the moving light show is the Gobo projector made by Martin Harmon, and we worked closely with them to enable a moving slide show. We also build a structure from scratch to house the Marting Harmon projector.
- Design Challenge
- This project is on a national heritage site, protected by conservation laws. Drilling and hacking are strictly prohibited. Many natural first-choice solutions cannot be used, and we had to constantly create new solutions from second-best options to get the desired lighting effect. A lot of our time was building structures that would give us total installation flexibility. And because each sculpture was unique, it was like 20 individual projects, with no economies of scale.
- Project Duration
- The project started in February 2020, and all installations finished in December 2020. However, the project was suspended from April - July of 2020 due to pandemic lockdown. The project is situated in the Republic of Singapore.
- Operation Flow
- The moving light show is situated right at the park's entrance, so that when passers-by experience the light show, they will develop curiosity about the contents inside the park. Warm white (2700-3000K light) is chosen so when visitors come into the park, it feels like a resort, increasing its comfort level. Lighting on the main dioramas are then hand-crafted for overall effect of drawing the visitors into the details.
- Research
- We did both cultural and technical research. Culturally, many of the dioramas are famous Chinese folklores, and we needed to dive deeper into these folklores in order to light them properly. In a battle scene of the Eight Immortals, we studied old books to know the 'order of battle', so key details would be lit. Technically, we used rapid prototyping to quickly cycle through variations for the best solution. We tested whenever we could, at our office, on-site, and using miniatures.
- Inspiration
- Built by the Tiger Balm family in the 1930s, Haw Par Villa is an oriental park containing sculptures and dioramas from the epic to the macabre. Over the years, visitorship fell steadily due to changing tastes. The brief was to breathe new life to these sculptures through lighting, and re-engage a new generation of visitors with its timeless folklores. We are honored to win the proposal competition to work with the Singapore Tourism Board (the park custodian) on this national commission.
- Image Credits
- Illuminating Asia SG Pte Ltd
- Patents
- Illuminating Asia SG Pte Ltd
Colors of Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting
Grand Interview about Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting
By combining lighting effects and projected graphical artworks of the various key note stories on to the forefront of the park, we seek to provide a sneak peak for visitors and passerbys. Hence, encouraging them to explore the historical sculptures and stories in the park.
We need to survey the landscape throughly, work closely with clients and stakeholders to understand all limitation and possibilities (creative, innovative or unconventional methods). Thereafter to work with multiple lighting suppliers and contractors to explore methods of lighting deployment from afar or near point to achieve the intended effect on the sculptures / stories.
In the night, due to various limitations, we have to be selective of the most important and pertinent scenes to highlight. The illumination covers the scluptures that offers the most vivid expressions that may connect easily with a viewer.
A master lighting plan was created. We had to constantly move between micro perspective to macro views of the entire space, as we go about the design, recommendation, trials and final deployment.
As the sculptures are very colourful and the expressions of various figurines are extremely vivid, the lighitng colour tone needs to achieve clarity while not giving too much of a glare. The colour tone also downplay areas where certain figurines might have looked too daunting to the visitors.
It was an extremely intense exercise given the scale of this project. This approach seeks to ensure we acheive the most solution a the first instance we work on one specific area. This allow us to check in with all stakeholders on a viable method of statement in accomplishing our design intent, while tackling the site limitations.
By selecting the right location within the park is the most crucial to achieve this balance. Moving colourful lights are often dynamic and should be used at only key locations sparingly to make the space feels energetic. Other areas where it is more serious or where we want people to appreciate the culture better, the static lighting takes over. This contrast of lighting application makes the entire space feels refreshing and not too homogeneous.
We start with a thinking and engineering process of using only the least amount of light fixtures to illuminate a given space. We constantly challenge ourselves if one light fitting can achieve the ideal result we want a visitor to feel. Through this bottom up approach, we had already seek to minimise the light fittings and power consumption to be at the base minimum. This directly lead to positive energy efficiency and project effectiveness.
This would be the use of gobo projection at the main entrance of Haw Par Villa. The first problem we want to achieve is how to bring in more visitors into the park at night to experience the cultural heritage. Through lighting art displays, we bring the stories to life, stopping people in the tracks to take photos or even start asking whats there in the park. To accomplish the projection, we had to apply geometry, electrical and civil engineering practices to identify the most optimal positions to place the GOBO projectors. And the result as as what we all have seen at the entrance; the one and only Singapore public permanenent projection mapping light show.
Yes. As the younger generation get disinterested or disconnected to their traditions or history; making things abit more interactive with such light shows revitalises history in a way the younger generation appreciates easily. This can help perserve not only the heritage spaces, but allowing the stories a better chance of reflourishing in the future as people retains this memory.