Anolis Puts Sun into the City Gardens

	Sun City Gardens. Photo: Johnny Scholtz

A new Anolis LED lighting installation is helping to highlight the lush and beautiful foliage in Cascades Gardens, part of the five-star luxury Cascades Hotel property in Sun City, South Africa.

Cascades is right at the heart of the Sun City casino and entertainment complex, and Johannesburg-based creative agency Cinevation was commissioned by Sun International to reimagine some of the resort's public areas, including the gardens, with a brief to make them more accessible and enjoyable to the public.

Cinevision proposed a phased creative lighting scheme starting with the 150m long pathway from the hotel to their ground floor restaurant "Bocado." Up until this time, during the evening house, it had been bathed in almost total darkness! In turn, Cinevation asked lighting experts DWR to assist with the specification of fixtures and undertake the installation.

The project was managed and designed for DWR by Johnny Scholtz who proposed using, among other sources, Anolis ArcPad 48s and ArcSource Outdoor 4MCs with ArcSource 24MC Submersibles to illuminate the water feature and 75 ArcPix to outline one of the bridges.

"We wanted to introduce vibrancy, complimentary color and depth to the environment," explained Scholtz, "bringing it alive so people could appreciate it for the living, breathing, and magical space that it is."

The high output ArcPad 48s are used to create a series of washes along the pathway, accentuating the shape of the landscaping, the density and diversity of the foliage, and the multi-dimensionality of the garden design.

The ArcSource 4MCs highlight selected elements like sculptures or ornamental bushes and trees, making them pop out in a series of little surprises.

The water features -- there are two, one each side at the start of the pathway -- which were previously in total darkness -- are now energized with color and movement with the help of 12 ArcSource 24MC Submersibles. These skim the surface of the water with light, and units are also fixed in place directly below the fountains and focussed upwards, changing the look and feel of the dancing water jets.

The ArcPix are at ground level on the bridge, cross lighting and texturing the cobbled floor. They are programmed to chase across that bridge and shoot up into the palm trees at the end, an energizing kinetic effect which adds excitement and ramps up the vibe, adding a sense of anticipation and playfulness.

"They all look fantastic," declared Scholtz, who recommended the Anolis fixtures for their quality color mixing and robust engineering and also based on the success of other projects in South Africa, where luminaires often have to deal with environmental elements like extreme heat and dust as well as tropical rain and winds.

The warranty assurance was another factor, "A fixture and a lightsource that's going to last is essential for a project like this," stated Scholtz, "and we will continue to use Anolis wherever we can."

The lighting installation is controlled via a Visual Productions system, comprising a number of DIN rail multi-protocol boxes dotted around which power all the fixtures along the pathway installation, creating a DMX network. Security beams are used to trigger the boxes so as people walk along the pathway, different lighting sequences are played out.

Scholtz' crew also included Kevin Stannett, Nick Britz, system designer and programmer Bruce Riley and programmer Jannie de Jager. Their site installation crew chief was Andi Rodgers, and all worked closely with Cinevation's team led by Louise Haltman and Marissa Torrani, who are delighted with the results.

"Cinevation was a new client and we really enjoyed working with them, they brought a lot of fresh ideas and vitality to the table, and the resulting scheme was a truly collaborative effort with creative and technical input from nearly everyone involved," said Scholtz.

The Cascades Gardens is phase one of a three part scheme to light and re-light other public areas of the Sun City resort.

Anolis is an architectural lighting division of Robe lighting s. r. o.