Zephyr installation, Scotland 2017

Zephyr, a lighting installation for the Fairmont Hotel in St Andrew’s, Scotland, won two prestigious awards this year: The Darc Award, and The International Architecture & Design Award.

At 60 meters in length Zephyr is one of the largest lighting installations in the world and is designed to reflect the surrounding nature: the crashing waves, the long grasses blowing in the wind, the enormous cloud formations, the rolling hills, the murmurations of starlings, shoals of fish and the blossom trees, and the sheer energy and beauty of St Andrew’s Bay. We wanted to create an installation that reflected and encapsulated all of these things.

The form for the Zephyr installation was designed in collaboration with the Berlin-based company, onformative. Using this smart computer technology, onformative and I were able to design a truly organic form, full of twists, turns, and undulations which would be impossible to design by eye. By using three-dimensional, simulated fluid dynamics we had a tool we could use in order to position the 20,000 steel disks in their unique positions to create the aesthetic required for Zephyr.

Photo credit: Josu Muniz