Picture perfect

Bright lights have long been synonymous with the cityscape of Leicester Square. The area’s latest addition, the W Hotel, raises the bar with an illuminated glass veil that displays panoramic views of the city, writes Amanda Allen

The W Hotel opened in Leicester Square in February this year on the site of the Old Swiss Centre. Big and bright, the façade of the hotel is illuminated by 300 LEDs that relay a panoramic view of the building’s surroundings. But this is no ordinary hotel façade - it’s a permanent public art installation created in conjunction with Westminster City Council.

Architects Jestico + Whiles had already come up with the idea of a theatrical veil to envelope the hotel and the company, along with developer McAleer & Rushe, invited Jason Bruges Studio to present its ideas on how to make the idea a reality. “The architects had a strong vision for the building,” says Gabby Shawcross, senior designer and project manager with Jason Bruges Studio. “They wanted a theatrical vision to the streetscape and we were given quite a clear brief in terms of the canvas area for the artwork.”

Knowing what they had to work with, Jason Bruges Studio didn’t have to look far for theatrical inspiration in Leicester Square.

Inspiring lights

Given the animated nature of the area, Jason Bruges Studio searched for a design that would marry well with its surroundings. “It had to be dynamic and responsive to its environment,” says Shawcross.

The designers studied the history of the area and took inspiration from its cinematic past, as well as the many pre-cinema buildings. “We were inspired by Burford’s Panorama, which is a pre-cinema building where people could come and view huge panoramic paintings of different locations.”

Channelling this inspiration, they decided to create a ‘panorama’ of their own on the veil of the hotel - one which would respond to its surroundings. Eight cameras on the roof of the building capture an image of the hotel’s skyline every minute. These images are compiled into short time-lapse videos that capture the changing colours and lights of the area. “We wanted our canvas to really respond to the changes that occur daily in the area. We treated it almost like a piece of photographic paper that would absorb the light from its surroundings,” says Shawcross.

“We treated our canvas almost like a piece of photographic paper” Gabby Shawcross, Jason Bruges Studio

This concept tied in well with the original brief. Because the façade is a permanent public art installation, Westminster City Council was involved in the process from the beginning. It was keen that the idea related strongly to the nature of the surroundings and that the execution of the project and choice of materials were of an “outstanding quality”. “Westminster City Council was keen to see something that was both fitting to the area in terms of its animation and illumination, but something that wasn’t too bright or too animated, so it was a case of striking a balance and looking at the flexibility of the system,” says Shawcross.

Perfect pattern

Jason Bruges Studio was also responsible for the design of the frit pattern on the glass façade. Shawcross describes the glass as a “sort of complicated performance requirement”.

The glass façade and, more importantly, the frit pattern had to allow for views from the hotel rooms but also softly diffuse the light sources and offer a degree of privacy.

Getting the mechanics of the pattern right took time. “The process was very much to work out the correct pitch, size and pigment for the dots. They are made from a crushed ceramic material [embedded in the glass façade] that can be any degree of transparency and we tested various colours and sizes,” said Shawcross. “They took a lot of fine tuning but it was completely essential to the building - whether we positioned the dots 20 or 30mm apart made a huge difference to the effect.”

Getting it right

For this project the mock-up stage was long and thorough. In total, testing accounted for about half of the time spent on the project. “We had to do building mock-ups in the studio. We marked up a section of the hotel wall in the workshop and looked at how we might get it right.”

The result is that each night a short performance is played across the veil of the hotel. The eight cameras on the roof, all facing in different directions, take images of the skyline every minute. These shots are stitched together to create a continuous 360-degree panoramic view of the skyline.

To manage the performance, Jason Bruges Studio, working with Mauritius Seeger of Videoreactive, created a bespoke software package that compresses the images into a short movie showcasing the previous 24 hours in Leicester Square. Every five minutes, a two-minute performance takes place
showing the last 24 hours of captured skyline.

The videos are relayed through 300 Barco Versa Tube V3Xs, a linear LED tube designed for the reproduction of video and camera feeds. These colour-change LEDs are embedded in the building behind the surrounding veil.

Because the installation is permanent, maintenance is essential, and the scheme had to be easy to adjust and service. An important part of the design of the façade, according to Shawcross, is that there are no visible gantries between the wall of the building and the illuminated glass veil. “It’s a very delicate façade system where the glass is suspended from above. Access is through the hotel windows using a temporary gantry,” says Shawcross. The temporary gantry was designed by the architects and can be used across large areas of the building.

Pride of place

Because of its location, the planners wanted to create a mixed use development. The ground floor and basements were reserved for retail units and residential apartments were put on the top floor.

With the hotel, and its illuminated façade, in the middle, is Jason Bruges Studio worried that further developments in the retail section, namely the arrival of a big, bright and heavily-branded M&M store in the coming months, will compromise its design?

“Our canvas for the installation was always the area between the residential and the retail space so we were always working with that strip,” says Shawcross. “To a certain degree it’s out of our control and we won’t know how it will look until it opens up. We will have to see how that marries with our façade, or not, as the case may be.

“Part of the nature of our project that is quite successful is that it really does respond to its surroundings and they are saturated with animated colourful light sources as well as lots of activity, so it’s a very busy and animated context.”

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