Titanic Belfast
Titanic Belfast is the world's largest Titanic-themed visitor attraction and was is largest tourism project undertaken in Northern Ireland. Designed by Eric Kuhne Architects, the building ingeniously captures the spirit of the Titanic, from the energy of the shipyard and the iconic logo of the White Star line to the ice shards of the ship's untimely fate. The five-storey, 38m high building (the same height as the Titanic’s hull) is clad in 3,000 individual anodized aluminium shards, 2/3 of which are completely unique.
Sutton Vane Associates were commissioned to light the exterior and interior of this now iconic building for Belfast, just across the water from W5, another project lit by SVA. The building was part of a £7bn project to redevelop the dockyards including new public realm areas. Surrounding the museum is a collection of water pools which SVA used to help tie the highly contemporary building into its setting. Powerful recessed uplights were placed in the pools and used to light the building through the water, creating ripples and dynamic reflections on the building’s façade. This makes the building responsive to its environment with windy days creating far more ripples and thus creating greater movement and excitement on the building’s façade.
The striking piece of architecture, nicknamed ‘The Iceberg’ by locals is covered in a highly textured silver skin. Lighting this in a conventional manner could have completely erased the impact of the material and the unique shapes of each shard. The lighting design by SVA up lights the texture, creating an entrancing mixture of shadows and highlights dancing up the building’s façade. It would have been disrespectful to the architecture of the building which is unique from every angle, to use the same lighting across its eight sides. Equally, with such a relatively white material, the temptation could have been to light it using warm white light, but this would not allow the anodized aluminium to be truly appreciated. It was instead decided to use a mixture of warm and cool light across the four ‘hulls’ of the museum’s exterior. The result is cladding that sparkles against the night sky, and each of the buildings' elevations has unique lighting.
The large central atrium that holds the 4 shards of the building together is left unlit, giving the building a far more sinister feel at night time with its icy reflection on the water standing as a stark reminder of the fate of the ship. Despite the extent of the exterior lighting, there are no visible or distracting light fittings allowing the building to breathe and rightly be the centre of attention as an icon for Belfast.