12 minute read
COASTAL COMMUNITY
As we show over the next two articles, colour-changing LED totems are at the heart of a £4m regeneration of Bridlington’s seafront in Yorkshire. But ensuring they could withstand the winds, cold and heat, seawater and sand and, sadly, the threat of vandalism all proved challenging
By Guy Bolton
The lighting of seaside locations in the UK is always a challenge. A profusion of signposts, adverts and flashing lights will be striving to attract the passing tourist. Therefore, to make a statement in such an environment is no mean task.
Furthermore, the seafront is a harsh first line of defence against the might of the ocean. Anything less than flawless products will quickly have their weaknesses exposed and ripped bare by the relentless climate.
When renowned lighting designers Sutton Vane Associates (SVA) approached us at DW Windsor in the autumn of 2018 to help rejuvenate the seafront at Bridlington, we were therefore delighted to get involved. Julie O’Reilly and Edward Sutton-Vane provide their perspective on this project from page 38.
VISION BEHIND THE PROJECT
Bridlington on the east coast of Yorkshire has been a popular destination for over 200 years and is a thriving seaside resort, as the vintage postcard shown opposite highlights.
A family-favourite holiday destination, Bridlington boasts two award-winning beaches and a seafront, offering panoramic views of Bridlington Bay edged by the cliffs sweeping round to Flamborough Head.
East Riding of Yorkshire Council expressed a desire to overhaul the promenade between Regent Gardens and Garrison Square in a £4m regeneration project.
JANUARY 2022 LIGHTING JOURNAL 35
Public realm lighting
Lacking a major upgrade for almost 30 years, a team was established to focus on how best to refresh and modernise the area. Working with engineering and architectural consultants Sweco, with SVA as lighting consultants, an open meeting was held in April 2018 to suggest proposals and listen to local businesses and residents.
Schemes were created and plans were then drawn up before SVA contacted us at DW Windsor with some outline sketches and requirements for the feature lighting. This included the installation of totem columns and linear in-ground LED strips.
Bridlington has long attracted visitors with various motives and desires. A fire-beacon once stood along the cliffs at Flamborough Head to warn of approaching Vikings. It may be the comfort and security of this flickering column of light that inspired the unique colour-changing totems we were asked to create.
Many discussions and meetings later, SVA issued a thoughtful and comprehensive specification in November 2018 and our design team set their minds to the task of finding the best possible solution.
PROJECT REQUIREMENTS
Seasides in the UK can be harsh. A vast scope of damaging conditions need to be endured. Feature lighting along a British promenade doesn’t just have to work in the summer season, coping with the hot midday sun and assorted spillages of soda, ice-cream and alcohol after a wild night out.
These items must fulfil their purpose all year round; when the winter storms hurl corrosive seawater across Garrison Square; when North Sea winds whip layers off Bridlington’s beaches and sandblast the paint from buildings. Against all this, the promenade still needs to be properly lit.
Come the springtime when the weather eases, our lights must look their pristine best and illuminate the magical seaside nightscape for a new season of visitors.
A product was therefore needed to meet these expectations and be robust enough to last for many years in a harsh coastal environment. The totems were designed with open gaps at each end to remove dirt and debris.
The LED equipment had to be housed with a high level of ingress protection; sealed against the weather and yet accessible for maintenance. The structures had to be tall enough to stand out yet suitably squat and sturdy to resist the severest of winds, as well as resisting the abuses of vandals, revellers and children.
The in-ground linear lighting had to meet the same requirements, with the added capability of needing to be being driven over. This would include by icecream vans, fire engines, fairground equipment and even occasionally the local lifeboat on its launch trailer.
PROJECT INNOVATION
Progressing steadily, we invited key stakeholders in the project to visit our headquarters in Hertfordshire during February 2019, where we had prepared images, lighting plans and working prototypes for their inspection. On approval, the designs were finalised and prepared for manufacturing.
The specially manufactured stainless-steel mesh encasing the totem columns is not only marine grade and very robust but also difficult for litter to be pushed through, and difficult to climb.
The mesh and rings reflect the changing colours in interesting and overlapping patterns. The LEDs are fully controllable to allow the landscape to be themed for special occasions.
Complementary colours can be set to reflect the environment – blue from the lower section meets orange from the upper, creating interesting reflections of the sunrise over the water.
The cabling is concealed to the upper compartment and each section has a discreet access panel for maintenance. We devised the lighting using our range of IP67 Ligman RGBW units, with an interface by Mode Lighting to the scheme’s central controls.
The framework is hot-dipped galvanised then painted using Polysiloxane PSX paint that has been especially developed for saline environments. Oil rigs, bridges and promenades benefit from its 25-year guarantee for colour retention.
The totems were designed to be assembled off-site and then crane-lifted into position, hoisted as a single piece on to
Public realm lighting
their fabricated roots. To provide even more protection, these were then hotdipped galvanised with glass-flake root protection.
The Vaio in-ground LED strips were designed with aluminium frames buried into a suitably drained surface. This allowed the IP67-rated units to be installed with cables and connectors kept above any run-off water that might flow underneath.
The site is vulnerable to rainwater, over-spraying waves, spillages and passing traffic, so the simplistic, fully encapsulated design of the product was ideal. The Vaio can withstand a 15,000kg vehicle or a direct load of 588kN.
PROJECT INSTALLATION
The manufacturing process continued steadily, aiming for completion at the end of March 2020 when, along with the rest of the world, everything paused with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nevertheless, we managed to ship the Vaio lighting in mid-April of that year, allowing the contractors plenty of time to install during that strange Covid springtime. Thankfully, the open site with its fresh sea air was quick to reopen and works progressed.
We were then finally permitted to hoist the lighting columns into position in the autumn. That meant they could be well established, tried and tested throughout the dark winter and ready for the coming spring. Following the completion and commissioning of the scheme, positive feedback was received, as Edward and Julie from SVA discuss in the next article.
CONCLUSIONS
Since becoming involved in the Bridlington redevelopment, we have learned much and developed many useful innovations for future schemes.
Often, we find that, by pushing the boundaries of our own capabilities, we develop the next generation of products. This is why at DW Windsor we always appreciate demanding commissions for intriguing schemes. It is the special projects of today that form the building blocks of tomorrow’s standards.
This scheme is completely unique to the town. This is Bridlington. Where the sun rises over the sea, and the rainbows are reflected along the promenade.
• Turn over to page 38 where Julie
O’Reilly and Edward Sutton-Vane give an architectural perspective on the
Bridlington scheme.
Top: an early sketch of the totem. Below, left and right, two prototypes in the DW Windsor workshop
Guy Bolton is special projects co-ordinator at DW Windsor
As Guy Bolton from DW Windsor has illustrated in the previous article, Bridlington is a much-loved seaside resort. To our minds, the seafront area has been completely brought to life by the combination of Sweco’s excellent landscape design and engineering, Sutton Vane Associates’ lighting design, the coloured light totems made by DW Windsor and the seafront’s new lighting columns from Fabrikat and Urbis Schréder.
However, getting to this point did have its challenges. Bridlington, a northern English coastal town with celebrated beaches was deserving of some extra night-time pizazz. We wanted to create a vibrant, colourful space for people to enjoy in the evening. Light that would be attractive and inspiring to both residents and visitors alike.
It was about trying to transform the seafront to somewhere much more jolly,
Following on from Guy Bolton’s article, Bridlington’s seafront colour-changing totems, lines of light and innovative new street lighting are boosting civic pride and delivering a sense of fun
By Julie O’Reilly and Edward Sutton-Vane
much more fun, a space that was nice to be in. We wanted the lights to bring people into that space, and the coloured totems are used almost like gateposts, leading folk in. The lighting is very much a punctuation of the architectural layout of the seafront.
ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGES
We knew it would be challenging from the start because of its location. It is by the coast in the north of England. It has long sunny days and balmy evenings but can also be cold in the winter; you have
JANUARY 2022 LIGHTING JOURNAL 39
Public realm lighting
saltwater spray; there is freezing and thawing. There are a lot of environmental challenges. So, we had to make sure we had really good, solid IP-rated products for such an environment where corrosion can become a real issue.
The other challenge, common to most public spaces is that there is a vandalism side, unfortunately, even to the extent that you can get people bringing tools down to have a go at things. So we knew we had to be really tough on that front as well.
We knew DW Windsor had great outdoor specs for products, and that it specialised in things such as anti-climb paint, which we definitely needed for this kind of project. With the vandalism question, what this project taught us is that it is about much more than just making sure people can’t pick something off the product.
For the 60 or so streetlamps that now run along the seafront area, we chose Fabrikat for the columns, with the intention of having columns that look as though they are leaning away from the wind. The columns are then topped by yellow-headed 32 LED Puntila luminaires supplied by Urbis Schréder and mounted at specified angles. As Guy also highlighted in his article, our lighting control needs on the project were met by Mode Lighting.
When we were doing the initial programming, we got a call from the harbourmaster saying, ‘turn those red lights off, you’re going to confuse ships!’. Basically, when you’re coming into harbour you normally navigate by flashing red or green lights, which tell you whether to go port or starboard of, say, obstacles in the water, so it is obviously very important that there is no lighting that is going to interfere with that and potentially confuse ships or boats that are coming in.
We immediately, of course, removed the red and green options from the app. And we made sure that, with all the future scenes, we don’t have red and green. The difficulty, however, is that, because we’re working with RGB lights on the bottom, when you’re fading from a blue to a different shade or a purple you can get sections within the fade when you start elements of red and green coming through, so that has been a challenge to iron out. But we have made sure we just have the allowed colours.
The Bridlington seafront colour-change totems and in-ground lighting with (left) the new ‘windswept’ lighting columns
SENSE OF DYNAMISM
More widely, the colour-changing of the totems brings a sense of dynamism to the space; there is a lovely two-tone effect on the totems. The colours change with the seasons; it tends to be more blues and teals during the winter months and then brighter and warmer colours in the spring and summer. It was about making the space feel more fun and more alive, a space the whole community can be proud of. It is about having a tool that says, ‘hey, this is winter or summer in Bridlington’.
The council also has customised scenes it can create, for example for a corporate event. The council team is really excited about taking control of things for themselves, as we are training its team of engineers. We all know it is a different skillset to be a designer or an engineer, to create choreographed sequences and get the pacing, colours and brightness right so that you create a really great show. It is really important to be able to show them what is possible.
The response from the citizens of Bridlington has also been extremely positive. We had some amazing comments from passers-by about how pleased they were about the scheme and impressed, and generally just really positive stuff, which was great to hear. When we were programming some of our sequences, we had people stopping us and saying some lovely things.
With the in-ground lines of light, we had to be mindful that there are some pretty serious big fairground vehicles that are going to roll over these things. So we knew we couldn’t just have any generic in-ground linear, they had to be really tough and strong.
Ultimately, the final learning point from this project, for us, is that there is no substitute to actually going to the site, checking things out, talking to the people who are there, listening to what they want. And then collaborating closely – everyone, the whole team, working together – to realise the vision.
Julie O’Reilly is creative director and Edward Sutton-Vane is project co-ordinator at Sutton Vane Associates
