Light Festival, Marina Bay, Singapore

Posted by Sharon Stammers

Light Collective have just spent a hot and sticky jet lagged week in Singapore eating spicy seafood and seeing the sights. No, we weren’t on holiday. We were there to speak about Light (of course) and how it inspires us at the University of Singapore. We were also there to prepare for a Guerrilla Lighting event in October as part of the Light Festival to be held in Marina Bay at the invitation of local designer Ong Swee Hong.

The Light Festival is a sister program to Smart Light Sydney and is the brainchild of Mary-Anne Kryiakou. It will feature 20 pieces of light art located around the bay from both local and international array of artists. The guerilla event will also be part of the festival but consists of a development of the usual format. Swee has evolved it into an educational workshop program that will engage 50 students in the lighting design process - allowing them to work through concept, testing, detailed design and end results in a guerrila style. Light Collective will return to help steer the workshop and also as keynote speakers for the Light Festival lectures.

Marina Bay is a man made construction and the result of a visionary architectural concept. The amazing construction sites around the waters edge are almost complete and are evolving into an architectural must visit.  They include the Sands Hotel and Casino - three towers with the highest park in the world balanced on top and linked by a huge Ned Khan sculpture, (lit by Scottish designer Douglas Brennan), the new Science Museum, the Mist Walk, the huge park; Gardens by the Bay (a Speirs and Major Masterplan) and the Helix Bridge (just for starters), the bay will be a 24/7 world class example when complete. Overall our impressions of lit Singapore were really favourable; a place of real contrasts, projects with big media facades in the shopping district on Orchard Road and the famous Crystal Mesh facade by Realities United were offset by the general approach to public and landscape lighting - subtlety and low levels of light characterised the approach to planting and walkways with clever hidden details in abundance. 

We were also lucky enough to be invited on a top secret trip round Koert Vermoulen’s lighting rig for the opening of the Youth Olympics hosted this year in Singapore. Big lights, big screens, big stage, cast of thousands, more big lights and a quite a bit of water….don’t miss it, make sure you’re near the TV on the 14th August.

Next stop, next week; Beirut. Work can’t be this much fun surely….

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