BESPOKE LIGHTING
QUANTUM LEAP Eulum Design was challenged to turn a television prop of a huge quantum computer into a stunning chandelier. Ray Molony reports. Eulum Design had to reconfigure the prop significantly to make it work as a pendant luminaire, ending up with dimensions of 3.3m high and 1.5m wide
So when lighting designer Paul Traynor of Light Bureau asked if he could turn a television prob of a quantum computer into a dramatic chandelier he jumped at the chance. The client, TV presenter and mathematician Hannah Fry, wanted a signature centrepiece for her London home. The prop – made for the BBC scifi series ‘Devs’ – is by no means underengineered: it features huge metal disks, extensive machined aluminium, gold plating and serpentine silvered tubes designed to mimic the wiring of the dilution refrigerator that keeps the superconducting quantum bits cool in a real computer.
The prop features huge metal disks, extensive machined aluminium, gold plating and serpentine silvered tubes
By his own admission, Marcus Worthington loves a challenge. In fact he boasts that his lighting technology and bespoke luminaire business, Eulum Design, takes on ‘the stuff that no-one else will touch’.
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All of this adds up to a hefty piece of engineering: It weighs in at a chunky 410 Kilograms. Eulum Design had to reconfigure the prop significantly to make it work as a pendant luminaire, ending up with dimensions of 3.3m high and 1.5m wide. Its technicians then added no fewer than 30 LED tunable white panels and 28 LED narrow beam spotlights to bring it alive.
The gold elements are lit with Bridgelux COB LED modules at 3000K. The LEDs are tunable white from 2700K to 4000K and are all controlled by Eulum Design’s proprietary Bluetooth control system which integrates with Casambi apps. It total there are 16 scenes. The cherry on the cake is spotlight with beam angle control – featuring LensVector technology – mounted on underside of the structure. This allows the client to either use a narrow beam to spotlight a flower vase, say, or wide beam to illuminate the whole of the dining room table. Mounting this beast was no easy feat, and it took a team of two engineers three weeks to install. For this, Eulum designed a special steel fabrication to allow the floor joists to spread the load of the luminaire. The words ‘stunning’ and ‘unique’ are often used in design circles, but in the case of quantum computer light, they’re more than justified. ■
