Shedding Light on Entertainment Spaces: Grand Villa Casino
Feb 23, 2021
By LightForm
When it comes to establishing a trend and setting a mood, Fiona Rimmer, Interior Designer with Kasian Architecture, knows first-hand that lighting plays a key role. In designing the Grand Villa Casino in Edmonton, she collaborated with the lighting designer, Ombrages, to establish a sense of entertainment and discovery. Knowing how the different products will work together, the type of illumination the lighting will provide and if it is enough light, is challenging.
“When you’re designing an entertainment space like this, the light has a significant effect on how space looks and feels,” says Rimmer. “Achieving the right balance of light in the variety of spaces in a casino is a challenge. This isn’t an issue for a mobile casino, which only needs good graphics and a user-friendly app! That being said nothing quite beats the atmosphere and design of a tangible casino, which is why we had a lighting designer assist. Not only do they have the knowledge about so many different products, they provide the expertise in creating a holistic lighting solution and including many different lighting effects”
With the name Grand Villa, Kasian based the design off a Roman villa with various rooms and spaces within it. “The gaming floor was the ‘colonnade’,” explains Rimmer. “So for lighting in that area, we were really looking to create movement through the space and something that related to the architecture. There were curved shapes defining the gaming floor space and we thought the lighting should relate to those shapes.”
That’s when Ombrages came up with the idea of using Lightnet‘s Liquid Line suspension lights. Liquid Line was able to make curved shapes, and it was able to curve in two directions, which a lot of linear fixtures don’t do.
“We’d review the fixture aesthetically from a design point – but where the lighting designer was critical was to ensure the light would provide suitable light levels in the space and what kind of effect it would create.”
“Often they’d recommend how the lighting could be suspended or recessed in a cove, for example, and provided the correct detail for that. Ombrages was integral in figuring out the lighting details once we moved through the design and into construction.”
In addition to its appealing scale, Ombrages recommended Liquid Line because of its range of finish options, which a lot of typical linear manufacturers can’t support. Rimmer specified a warm gold tone that best reflected the other materials in the space.
As opposed to adding time to the overall design process, Rimmer finds that working with a lighting designer results in added efficiencies. “Ombrages worked alongside us through the design, so together we could come up with solutions,” says Rimmer. “We’d be developing the design and share ideas for lighting treatments and products – and by working this way, we were able to move the design forward quickly.”
Regardless of whether a project is large-scale or small, Rimmer feels it is important to ensure lighting doesn’t become an after-thought. Its the same thought process when planning an online casino… your website also needs to have the correct theme so it appeals to the customer. “I think the trick to dealing with lighting is making sure that it is a key point to the design and not leave it to something to figure out at the end.”
“Address it first and as part of your design process. Not only does it have a nice effect on a space – it can change the experience.”
This article was originally published by LightForm
