Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting by Stanley Tay Wee King is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 A' Design Award in Lighting Products and Fixtures Design Competition Category.
IronLighting· 2022
Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting
Client: Singapore Tourism Board
A' Design Award Winner in Lighting Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #126012The Design
About Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting
Haw Par Villa is a heritage lighting scheme for an 8.5 hectare park in Singapore, built in the 1930s and filled with sculptures and dioramas based on Chinese folklore. More than 20 sculpture attractions are lit, and each one is treated individually so that the details of its story are revealed. A moving light show at the entrance draws passers-by inside, while warm white light of 2700 to 3000 kelvin guides visitors along the paths. As the site is protected by conservation laws, drilling was avoided and custom structures were built to hold the light fittings.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Interviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to revitalizing the Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting project through moving light shows at the entrance demonstrates remarkable strategic thinking - could you elaborate on how this entrance lighting concept evolved to draw visitors into the deeper narratives within the park?
By combining lighting effects and projected graphical artworks of the various key note stories on to the forefront of the park, we seek to provide a sneak peak for visitors and passerbys. Hence, encouraging them to explore the historical sculptures and stories in the park.
Given the strict conservation laws that prohibited drilling and hacking at this national heritage site, how did you develop alternative lighting solutions for Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting while maintaining the artistic integrity and storytelling power of the original sculptures?
We need to survey the landscape throughly, work closely with clients and stakeholders to understand all limitation and possibilities (creative, innovative or unconventional methods). Thereafter to work with multiple lighting suppliers and contractors to explore methods of lighting deployment from afar or near point to achieve the intended effect on the sculptures / stories.
The cultural research behind Haw Par Villa Heritage Lighting, particularly your study of Chinese folklores like the Eight Immortals battle scene, is fascinating - could you share how this deep historical understanding influenced your specific lighting choices and techniques?
In the night, due to various limitations, we have to be selective of the most important and pertinent scenes to highlight. The illumination covers the scluptures that offers the most vivid expressions that may connect easily with a viewer.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The design is a balancing act between staying true to the sculptures’ stories, while making them more accessible than before. The sculptures can only be enjoyed when visitors visit the park, so the first design intent was to use moving lights situated at the park’s entrance to draw visitors into the park. Once inside, visitors are then led naturally by the lighting to the most important sculptures. Each sculpture’s lighting is then handcrafted to showcase the stories to the greatest effect.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The entire Haw Par Villa park is 8.5HA in area. We lighted up more than 20 individual sculpture attractions, the smallest of them about 10 sq metres in area, and the largest about 200 sq metres. The highest light structure we built was over 5 metres. Many kilometres of wiring and cabling was laid to enable power delivery to the new lights. It was a massive engineering undertaking.
- Tags
- lightingdesign, lightingconsultant, heritagelighting, landscapelighting
- Production Technology
- There are too many different kinds of lighting products used to individually mention. More importantly, all SKUs were customized at the factory to our exact specifications - length, luminosity, color temperature, throw of the light, and other details. In this way, most products are bespoke, even though the SKUs are readily available. The key product we used for the realization of the moving light show is the Gobo projector made by Martin Harmon, and we worked closely with them to enable a moving slide show. We also build a structure from scratch to house the Marting Harmon projector.
- Design Challenge
- This project is on a national heritage site, protected by conservation laws. Drilling and hacking are strictly prohibited. Many natural first-choice solutions cannot be used, and we had to constantly create new solutions from second-best options to get the desired lighting effect. A lot of our time was building structures that would give us total installation flexibility. And because each sculpture was unique, it was like 20 individual projects, with no economies of scale.
- Research
- We did both cultural and technical research. Culturally, many of the dioramas are famous Chinese folklores, and we needed to dive deeper into these folklores in order to light them properly. In a battle scene of the Eight Immortals, we studied old books to know the 'order of battle', so key details would be lit. Technically, we used rapid prototyping to quickly cycle through variations for the best solution. We tested whenever we could, at our office, on-site, and using miniatures.
- Inspiration
- Built by the Tiger Balm family in the 1930s, Haw Par Villa is an oriental park containing sculptures and dioramas from the epic to the macabre. Over the years, visitorship fell steadily due to changing tastes. The brief was to breathe new life to these sculptures through lighting, and re-engage a new generation of visitors with its timeless folklores. We are honored to win the proposal competition to work with the Singapore Tourism Board (the park custodian) on this national commission.
- Project Duration
- The project started in February 2020, and all installations finished in December 2020. However, the project was suspended from April - July of 2020 due to pandemic lockdown. The project is situated in the Republic of Singapore.
- Operation Flow
- The moving light show is situated right at the park's entrance, so that when passers-by experience the light show, they will develop curiosity about the contents inside the park. Warm white (2700-3000K light) is chosen so when visitors come into the park, it feels like a resort, increasing its comfort level. Lighting on the main dioramas are then hand-crafted for overall effect of drawing the visitors into the details.
- Patents
- Illuminating Asia SG Pte Ltd
- Team Members
- Stanley Wee King Tay
Aries Lay Hoon Goh
Addison Yu Ann Goh - Image Credits
- Illuminating Asia SG Pte Ltd
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