The Garvan Institute Dome

The Garvan Institute of Medical Research is one of Australia’s leading biomedical research institutes. The building was designed by architect Ken Wooley and has six floors with the most amazing staircase in the form of a DNA Helix.
The Institute’s Library is located within the building’s Atrium with an oval glass dome on the roof. The space is used for functions and rather than just a dark night sky, it was decided to make the roof dome a focus point with the aid of coloured lighting.
Myall Quint, Electrical Electronics Technician at the Institute, worked closely with Show Technology’s Gareth Mealing to produce an unobtrusive solution that was easy to operate.
A small LED lighting bar that would complement the current architectural design was required. It needed to be 500-600mm in length to match the size of the glass panels and its colour needed to be the same or similar to the current paint work. The Studio Due Light ArchiBar SL300 RGBW/FC equipped with high powerful LEDs was the ideal solution. Robust and reliable, this IP67 rated LED bar is suitable for architectural and entertainment applications. It has a modern and appealing style which reflects the Italian design.
The eight Studio Due ArchiBars are located around the base of the atrium from where they can shoot coloured light up the walls leading up to the dome.
In order to colour wash the dome itself, the original floodlights have been retrofitted with eight ShowPro LED PAR Quad-18 fixtures. Compact in size and utilising the latest in LED technology, they are bright, look fantastic and are also inexpensive.
“The fixtures have been performing very well,” added Myall. “We get good brightness out of them and versatility for our functions.”
It was necessary to have an operating system that could be preprogrammed or used in a live event. An MA Lighting International MA2 2 port node was installed with Show Technology providing training once the system was installed and running.
“We have the MA2 software on a computer in the engineering office from where we control all of the lighting,” said Myall. “That MA2 software is really quite impressive.”

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