The specialist procurement and installation skills of Lighting Technology Projects (LTP) were utilised to specify, prepare and rig 48 custom designed and manufactured trusses that facilitate the ‘house' lighting in The Atrium at Westfield London, the UK's new £1.7 billion shopping destination in W12.
Westfield London, currently the largest urban shopping destination in Europe, features a spectacular central Atrium space the size of a football pitch. Designed by Westfield's in-house architects, its elegant undulating glass roof comprises thousands of glass panels, suspended by tree-like support structures.
LTP was referred by architectural/entertainment lighting specialists Architainment to T Clarke, electrical contractors to Westfield. They needed LTP's experience of integrating theatrical and architectural lighting methodology to provide design support for the trusses including specification of their internal wiring outlets.
The trusses - all 3 metres in length and constructed from Litestructures' A04 product - are 227 mm square and were rigged in The Atrium roof using cherry pickers, with the LTP team working 18 – 20 metres in the air at the highest points.
They utilised Reutlinger wire rope hangers to secure the trusses in place at the correct positions in the roof. These are TUV certified and pre-tested, allowing millimeter accuracy and very fast adjustment and locking, which saved an enormous amount of time with over 200 terminations to complete.
The LTP site team was led by Jonathan Adkins, and they worked closely with lighting equipment suppliers White Light, who delivered all the lighting fixtures and control for the project. The relevant lights were issued to site enabling LTP to fully prepare the trusses for hanging and raise them to the preordained install positions.
All hooks, clamps and fixings on the trusses, along with the lighting units themselves - including 300 Enlighten/ETC Source Four Pars & Profiles and 100 circuits of architectural lights - are coated in the same white RAL colour (9010) – effectively making the entire installation almost invisible up in the roof void.
LTP's biggest challenge was the timescale – they were on site for 2 weeks - plus the logistics of working around the myriad of other contractors and trades on a busy site in the run up to completion of the project by launch date.