Given that it is illuminated 24 hours a day, the lighting for the Heydar Aliyev Center is a crucial part of its visual effect. Carl Gardner talks to the UK lighting designers who spent more than five years creating the building's lantern-like illusion, in which nearly all the lighting equipment is integrated with the architecture

摘要

London-based lighting design consultancy Maurice Brill Lighting Design (MBLD) had never worked with Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) when it was commissioned to design the lighting for the Baku Cultural Center in 2008. But even then it could see that this was not going to be any ordinary scheme. 'Our initial brief was that the lighting would be fused with the fabric of the architecture...to enhance the flowing nature of the single surface that encompasses the whole building,' MBLD managing director Rob Honeywill explains. For most areas, this immediately ruled out many staple lighting solutions for museums and exhibition spaces, such as surface-mounted spotlights, pendants or track-mounted fittings.