Haymarket Lights

This project marks the place of Chinese settlement and activity within the wider setting of Haymarket. Through lighting, the key ideas of place, street definition, night-life and theatre are expressed. Urban design and Feng Shui principles established an organising framework for the layout, form and lighting colour. A series of transparent screens made up of coloured light sticks traverse the length of the north/ south streets, changing colour according to the feng shui framework. 

In Little Hay Street, wall lights designed as a lantern, cantilever over the footpath. These depict modern interpretations of traditional iconography such as dragons and phoenixes and are coloured to depict the cardinal direction they face. 

The “heaven and earth” marker is central to the whole composition and placed at the symbolic centre of Chinatown, the intersection of Little Hay and Dixon Streets. A shallow dome structure supports a web of fibre optic cables that morph through the colour spectrum hourly. Walking under the lantern, pedestrians experience and complete the cosmic diagram: heaven (circle), earth (square) and person.