Cundall's Australian Lighting team is celebrating after two projects took out Awards at the IES (NSW) 2022 Awards, held in Sydney on Friday, 4 November.
The creative public art piece Twenty Seven on display for VIVID Sydney 2022 won the Award of Excellence for Lighting Sculpture and Installation, and the lighting design for 99 Mount Street end-of-trip (EOT) facilities won the Award of Commendation for Lighting Design. Cundall Associate and Head of Cundall Lighting in Australia, Bettina Easton, said both projects show that a small lighting design budget can result in a major creative impact.
“In the IES Awards, projects are judged in real-time on their merits, not on submitted photographs. The judges visit the site and consider the lighting result for themselves,” Easton said. “Both 99 Mount Street and Twenty Seven were competing against projects with substantially larger budgets. The fact both won awards shows the value of applying a deep understanding of how light can enhance space and the human experience.”
The 99 Mount Street EOT project was a strategic uplift of amenities for an older building in the North Sydney CBD. Given a very modest budget, Easton and the Cundall Lighting team sought to create the ambience of a premium hotel experience. The use of a Bluetooth enabled smart lighting system also overcame limitations imposed by the basement location which restricted connectivity to the main building management system.
Twenty Seven, with its stately and compelling 3D printed pillars illuminated with a shifting spectrum of light, sought to embody the human emotions of the pandemic by celebrating community, resilience and the shared experience.
“The project was also a celebration of Cundall’s digital engineering capabilities, showing that code and 3D printing can create something that is glorious and radiant,” Easton said.
“Both projects also show the power of design-led thinking. The projects that win awards are often those where significant sums have been spent to achieve a result – but Cundall Lighting has shown clearly that understanding the medium and its potential does spark a brilliant outcome, even with a very economical budget.”
Overall, there were 23 entries into the IES NSW Awards for 2022. The NSW Award of Excellence winners will now proceed to the National Awards, which will be announced in June 2023.
