design: Brut Deluxe
client: New Town Plaza, Hong Kong / Sung Hung Kai Properties
commissioned by: a-rch design limited, Hong Kong, China
area: New Town Plaza, Hong Kong, China
year: 28 nov 2014 – 30 jan 2015
team: philip baumann, elisa luda
status: temporary/ build

The site is an artificial park on the roof top of New Town Plaza Shopping Centre in Sha Tin, New Territories, in Hong Kong. The park is located on the eighth floor constituting an artificial landscape that spreads over three blocks and is used for recreation and circulation at the same time connecting several high rise dwellings, hotels, office buildings and community facilities sitting on top of the shopping centre.

We were commissioned to design a series of light installations for a ludic parcours with altering maze concepts as common leitmotiv for the different designs that could be walked through as an attraction by part of the daily 350.000 New Town Plaza visitors. Instead of typical light motives that are looked at only from the outside and perceived as objects, we created a series of installations that can be walked in focusing on the atmosphere perceived inside. The parcours starts with an artificial jungle of pink coloured hanging flower motives suspended in an apparent random order. Surrounding the existing trees on site, the light installation evokes a dazzling atmosphere of a luminescent night blooming tropical garden.

The following ambient is constituted by a maze build of transparent Plexiglas panels with the same flower motive carved in the material and illuminated in varied colours from top and bottom. The interaction of both transparency and reflections create and an apparent infinite space of geometric order with the flower motive acting as luminescent and never ending wallpaper. The maze lay-out was specifically designed for NTP by maze designer Adrian Fisher.

The parcours finishing atmosphere is constituted by a maze of blue coloured geometric flashes apparently floating in the sky and creating a groined vault build just out of light.