Saint Patrick's Church, County Mayo by Dark Source
Saint Patrick's Church, County Mayo by Dark Source
The ‘Dark Sky’ approach to the illumination of Saint Patrick’s Church in County Mayo, Ireland, has won both a PLATINUM and GREEN award in the 2024 lighting category.
The ‘Dark Sky’ approach to the illumination of Saint Patrick’s Church in County Mayo, Ireland, has won both a PLATINUM and GREEN award in the 2024 lighting category.
The project advocates visual and physical manifestation of environmental ethos through the considerate use of light on a publicly respected architecture as a communication platform.
It challenges the common doctrine that one must fully illuminate the architecture to communicate its purpose or value.
Instead, this lighting scheme by design practice Dark Source, inverts the relationship between light and dark by emphasising the carefully selected architectural features whilst retaining unilluminated surfaces in abundance, and informing a confident canvas superimposed on the night sky.
Uplighting is only used where the spill can be contained. Front façade windows’ backlighting is emphasised verticality along with the stained glasswork whilst all the other windows relied on passive illumination.
The warm-lit windows aim to evoke an inviting sense of domesticity. The old scheme only focused on emphasising the verticality through excessive floodlighting whilst the new lighting restructured this hierarchy by balancing both vertical and horizontal experience.
The church grounds were treated as an extension of the façade illumination to encourage social activity after dark. This transformed the church’s night-time role from being an object of interest to a destination worth visiting both for the locals and visitors.
Community involvement has been a big part of design development with activities ranging from taking active part in the lighting tests to installing shields on site.
2200K was utilised across the board to minimise the environmental impact whilst providing a consistently warm and inviting feel for the built environment. The new LED lighting scheme (inclusive of the interior re-lamping) resulted with 2 tonnes of CO2e and 40 per cent light pollution reduction reiterates that a powerful night-time image can be created through judicious use of light even on a façade illumination project.
Important suppliers include Linea Light, Heper, Stoane Lighting, Harte, Rosco and Evica. Picture: Georgia MacMillan, Michael McLoughlin.
