Illuminating Safety: Phoenix Gallery

Phoenix Central Park is a unique and beautiful building designed by John Wardle Architects and Durbach Block Jaggers that has multiple Australian design awards. The building has two unique spaces; the gallery cast with concrete walls and the auditorium displaying superior timber surfaces. It houses precious artwork and hosts musical performances within the auditorium. Not only is it a building to display artwork and music, the building itself is an aesthetic wonder through creative design and clever architecture.

Bluelab Design were reached out to by John Wardle Architects to handle emergency lighting. This is a necessary service under the ASNZS2293 building standards that requires emergency and exit lighting for occupants to be able to leave when the power breaks. John Wardle Architects required something clever and discreet to suit the sophisticated building without obstructing the architectural beauty it holds. However it can be difficult as they must be visible to everyone to meet standards, and often are more of an eyesore in public buildings.

We specified ETAP Lighting’s Architectural K9 Emergency and Exit lighting; an IF award-winning series for its aesthetically pleasing appearance and great performance. Our main goal was to ensure our emergency lighting design did not inhibit design details.

Despite Phoenix Gallery’s high ceilings, ETAP Lighting’s emergency optics have high ceiling ratings and excellent light distribution, allowing us to have discreet recessed emergency lighting instead of suspended. The emergency lighting also has remote gear mounted cleverly in an accessible area a few meters away from the emergency light. The leads joining the optic to the emergency gear is double-insulated and includes EST+ self-testing.

The first presented space was the galleries that sported track lighting that would draw lines across the ceiling surface. It is normal to find on any other building surface-mount emergency lighting that would ruin a clean ceiling surface. Bluelab Design and ETAP Lighting designed and supplied a track-mounted emergency lighting product. They are difficult to see as they are integrated into the track lighting and are designed to be subtle. These can be seen within the gallery spaces that allowed John Wardle Architects to maintain pristine ceilings. The K9 Exits are sleek and are installed throughout the building.

Bluelab Custom Track mounted Emergency Light

ETAP’s K9 Mini is one of the smallest emergency lighting products in the market, roughly the diameter of an Australian $2 coin. Phoenix Gallery has beautiful continuous timber slat interiors where we could have this discreet emergency lighting installed. Normally when presented with timber slats, lighting designers would then use black emergency satellites which cut away at the timber surface and essentially ruin the architect’s vision. The K9 Mini is small enough to be installed within the slats, and hidden in plain sight.      

We love to be challenged and have a great range of emergency lighting products for all projects. Whether it needs to be discreet or effective, contact Bluelab about your next lighting design project.