The initiative to light the building was led by Valašské Meziříčí’s city council working with lighting design studio Archlights.cz from Usti nad Labem, who provided expertise and selected the Calummas as the best quality and most sustainable light sources for the job.

The architectural lighting practice has utilised Anolis – a Robe business – products on several other jobs with great success, so it again looked towards the brand for a stylish, high quality lighting solution.

The brief included creating some very specific colours to match the brickwork and general ambience of the Baroque-style castle building which is at the heart of this bustling town.

Thirty-three Anolis Calumma RGBA fixtures are utilised in total, lighting the arches and the facade.

The clients specifically wanted a lighting installation that could change colour – in addition to producing the very specific colours of the signature look. This enables the building to be lit for special occasions like Christmas, Easter and other national holidays and celebrations.

Anolis products are well known for their excellent colour mixing and other features, and Calumma with its multichip LED engine light source was perfect for this tasteful installation.

The Castle’s 3-walled facade is illuminated with 11 fixtures – 5 x Calumma Ls with 15-degree lenses and one Calumma M with a 10-degree lens. These are arranged in two arrays, mounted on special brackets fixed to the walls, positioned left and right of the building on convenient structural wall protrusions, with a ‘crossover’ focus. Each cluster of lights illuminates the opposite surface, bathing it in a beautiful, even and balanced light.

The quality of the optics and homogeneity of the source was another reason for picking Anolis explained Anolis product specialist, Martin Zámečník.

Six of the facade’s columns are downlit with 6 x Calumma Ms with 15-degree optics to get that refined pencil-like beam, one fixture per column, mounted right at the top, focussed tightly downwards, bringing definition and depth to the overall lighting picture.

The ground floor arcade arches are illuminated with Calumma Ms fitted with 30-degree lenses, rigged discreetly on special brackets to the side, with 2 fixtures mounted back-to-back and concealed behind each column.

Cabling is a unique combination of wireless and wired. The first fixture receives a wireless DMX signal via its inbuilt Lumen Radio transmitter from the Nicolaudie controller, with the connection wired onwards from there to all the other fixtures. This was done for neatness and reliability. The wireless receiver is a standard option with Calumma.

The Nicolaudie feeds all the signals to a DIN rail device concealed in the Castle allowing the lighting scheme to be accessed and controlled remotely via the cloud with an iPad, smartphone etc., while the day-to-day operation is set to an astronomical clock, so the installation activates at dusk and switches off at dawn.

The interesting custom signature colours comprise a red-beige RAL 3012 to match and emphasise the distinctive reddish colour of the exterior stucco walls, while the arches and columns are set to white-grey RAL 9002. Both colours had to be precise, again highlighting the excellent colour quality and rendering of the Calumma range.

Technical support during the installation period was supplied by Martin and the Anolis team who also preprogrammed and preset everything on-site at the Anolis factory … which is also conveniently located nearby in Valašské Meziříčí.

The new lighting scheme has been a huge hit with the public, allowing them to appreciate and engage with the Castle during evening periods, with a second stage of lighting expected to be announced soon.

Photo Credit: Pavel Nemec (courtesy of Anolis – A Robe Business)