Press Release September 13, 2013 LED Linear, Architectural FX and Arup electrify the luminous limbs of atmos’s inhabitable tree for the City of London Festival. The Mobile Orchard is an inhabitable public art installation by atmos. It's a hymn to the urban fruit tree - a celebration of the theme explored this year by its commissioners, the City of London Festival. Its exuberant design mutates the wonder of natural trees with a structure that seek to nourish all the senses - celebrating both the geometric structures of nature, and the social structures of cities. It previewed in Paternoster Square before commencing a weekly journey that stopped at Devonshire Square, the Gherkin, and Finsbury Avenue Square. By day it offered shade from the summer sun; by night it pulsed with an internal electric rhythm, its luminous veins illuminating the path to a constellation of lights in its limbs. LED Linear, Architectural FX and Arup sponsored all the lighting, equipment and brainpower that brought the Mobile Orchard to life. Project Website: http://www.mobileorchard.info/ Designer's website: http://www.atmosstudio.com Please contact Alex Haw, atmos a@atmosstudio.com t: +44 (0)7815 040 619 for imagery requests, interviews and media matters PR Contact person LED Linear UK : Stuart Knox Phone +44 7796 808 888 UK@led-linear.com PR Contact person LED Linear GmbH: Jutta Lichter Phone +49 2845.98462-0 press@led-linear.com www.led-linear.com Seite 1 Press Release September 13, 2013 The Taxonomy of the Tree The Mobile Orchard centres on a sculptural timber oasis that doubles as immersive summer street furniture - morphing into seating, shelter, stairway and sky-throne. Its undulating roots offer a landscape for lounging, including sinuous benches and a molten armchair that cradles the gaze upwards through the hollow trunk. Massive branches worm outwards from a dramatically leaning trunk to offer further seats, splaying to form steps that spiral upwards around the undulating trunk to a throne at the tip. The trunk houses a miniature DMX processor that instructs the illumination of its bark with glowing Xylem. Waterproof, flexible LED veins unite sky and soil, their sinuous lines graphically delineating the segments of the tree's core geometry, each terminating in a glowing spot of LED moon-light. A lightweight latticework of curved and folded aluminium unfurls from the laminated plywood grains to support a canopy of clear lasercut leaves that glisten in the light from sun above & LED below.- Each blade was waste-lessly cut in the shape of a local London borough, with the host borough further subdivided into wards - the blossom and seeds of the project. These branches cradle a constellation of Braeburn apples, refreshed as quickly as the local City workers can pluck and eat them. The man-made tree was donated to Trees for Cities, who plan to tour it across Britain for 5 years, while its attendant choir of young fruit trees have been donated to the City's first orchard, and to a host of local London schools to start their own orchards. Illuminating the Orchard Lighting was crucial to enhance the Orchard once the sun had set - especially given the nocturnal working hours of its host City borough. Lighting sponsors Architectural FX, LED Linear and ARUP worked seamlessly and tirelessly to make the night-time tree even more spectacular than the day - a reward to all those late-night workers and revellers, but also a celebration of human ingenuity and thought, and our more manmade systems beyond day-time nature alone. As with natural trees, the trunk Seite 2 Project Website: http://www.mobileorchard.info/ Designer's website: http://www.atmosstudio.com Please contact Alex Haw, atmos a@atmosstudio.com t: +44 (0)7815 040 619 for imagery requests, interviews and media matters PR Contact person LED Linear UK : Stuart Knox Phone +44 7796 808 888 UK@led-linear.com PR Contact person LED Linear GmbH: Jutta Lichter Phone +49 2845.98462-0 press@led-linear.com www.led-linear.com Press Release September 13, 2013 became the central nervous system of the organism, sending signals up and down its length to trigger its luminous tips. LED strips became geometric Xylem, pulsing with life, feeding the sky-borne leaf-like spots in the boughs above. The tree's powerful sculptural geometry formed the perfect showcase for LED Linear’s VarioLED Flex Venus. A very challenging installation environment and the constant relocation of the Orchard combined to push the resilience of the product to its outer limits. Venus’s beautiful lines of light gracefully delineate and illuminate all the sections along the length of the trunk and branches, like an anatomical X-ray. Venus’s unique flexible form allowed an unprecedented freedom of expression, and LED Linear's ability to delivery precisely manufactured custom luminaires within a very tight time frame allowed the designer's incredible vision to become a stunningly elegant reality. Project Website: http://www.mobileorchard.info/ Designer's website: http://www.atmosstudio.com Please contact Alex Haw, atmos a@atmosstudio.com t: +44 (0)7815 040 619 for imagery requests, interviews and media matters PR Contact person LED Linear UK : Stuart Knox Phone +44 7796 808 888 UK@led-linear.com PR Contact person LED Linear GmbH: Jutta Lichter Phone +49 2845.98462-0 press@led-linear.com www.led-linear.com Seite 3 Press Release September 13, 2013 Co-sponsor Wibre's recessed IP67 micro-spots combined massive light output with maximum miniaturisation, and a minute housing robust enough to survive in an external installation. Their tiny form was crucial in realising the design intent of long, slender branches - small enough that they could be housed in the tips of the tree branches, their wiring snaking through cavities cleverly concealed in the plywood slices. The DMX programming brought the tree to life, separating the trunk's 12 main segments into 12 channels through which the light rotated like the hand of a clock, steadily thickening until a sheet of light enwrapped the whole, with the movement travelling through the nested spotlights like the delicate fluttering of fireflies. The clock accelerated until a climax every 15 minutes - a visual accompaniment to the City's surrounding church bells, with a dramatic thunderstorm climax on the hour, every hour. Project Website: http://www.mobileorchard.info/ Designer's website: http://www.atmosstudio.com Please contact Alex Haw, atmos a@atmosstudio.com t: +44 (0)7815 040 619 for imagery requests, interviews and media matters PR Contact person LED Linear UK : Stuart Knox Phone +44 7796 808 888 UK@led-linear.com PR Contact person LED Linear GmbH: Jutta Lichter Phone +49 2845.98462-0 press@led-linear.com www.led-linear.com Seite 4 Press Release September 13, 2013 Designer's Statement The design of the Mobile Orchard furthers atmos's ongoing investigations of natural forms, organic structures, experiential ergonomics, digital fabrication, and innovative public landscapes. It was parametrically designed using scripts and algorithms that explore the mathematical rules of growth so brilliantly exemplified by nature, enabling an unprecedented level of highly-resolved complexity. "This project was a unique opportunity for us to really grapple with the extraordinary beauty and complexity of trees. We've been designing projects that reference them whether explicitly or unconsciously - for years, but never had the chance to share the stage with them, until now. Our initial arboreal research into tree growth patterns and geometries was extensive, inspirational and highly generative , and helped us literally grow this project from seed. Just as a tree benefits from a multitude of nutrients to aid its growth, the Mobile Orchard benefitted from an extraordinary ecology of people and organisations, who all played a vital symbiotic role in helping bring the project to life. Stuart Knox from Architectural FX was particularly crucial, offering incredible thoughtfulness, ingenuity, generosity and perseverance, partnering with the brilliant LED Linear and Wibre to do everything possible to acheive excellence and make the project a success. " (Alex Haw, Director, atmos) Resources Project Website: http://www.mobileorchard.info/ TreesforCities' webpage on the project: http://www.treesforcities.org/about-us/20th-birthday/mobile-orchard/ Designer's webpage on the project: http://www.atmosstudio.com/mobile-orchard Please contact Alex Haw, atmos (a@atmosstudio.com, t: +44 (0)7815 040 619) for imagery requests, interviews and media matters PR contact person LED Linear UK: Stuart Knox Phone +44 7796 808 888, UK@led-linear.com Seite 5 Project Website: http://www.mobileorchard.info/ Designer's website: http://www.atmosstudio.com Please contact Alex Haw, atmos a@atmosstudio.com t: +44 (0)7815 040 619 for imagery requests, interviews and media matters PR Contact person LED Linear UK : Stuart Knox Phone +44 7796 808 888 UK@led-linear.com PR Contact person LED Linear GmbH: Jutta Lichter Phone +49 2845.98462-0 press@led-linear.com www.led-linear.com Press Release September 13, 2013 Itinerary 1st July: Devonshire Square, EC2M 4TH 8th July: St Mary Axe, London EC3A 8EP 15th July: New Street Square, London EC4A 3BF 22nd July: Finsbury Avenue Square, London EC2M 2PG Map: http://goo.gl/maps/yuIzc Project Team Design: atmos Structural Engineering: Blue Engineering Lighting Design: Arup Lighting Lead Sponsor: Architectural FX LED strips sponsor: LED Linear LED spots sponsor: Wibre Fabrication: Nicholas Alexander + volunteers Client: City of London Festival Festival Tree Sponsor: Bloomberg Funding Partner: Arts Council England Hosts: Broadgate Estates, Devonshire Square Management, Land Securities, 30 St Mary Axe Management Company Ltd Notes to Editors The City of London Festival brings the City's unique buildings and outdoor spaces to life each summer, with an extensive artistic programme of music, visual arts, film, walks and talks - much of it free. It commissioned the Mobile Orchard for 2013 as part of an ongoing annual campaign to raise awareness of environmental issues through artistic responses to the natural world - focusing this year on urban trees. 64 real trees, donated by the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers, will accompany the construction around the City - 12 of which will be planted at Middlesex Street Estate to form the City of London’s first community orchard; the remainder to be distributed to schools around the capital. The sculpture will be gifted to the Festival’s partner charity Trees for Cities as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations, and tour the country. http://www.colf.org/ atmos is a multidisciplinary practice creating innovative works of art, architecture, design, spanning scales and media. They design buildings and objects, installations and landscapes – conjuring meaningful, pleasurable, and enduring experiences. Much of their work involves cutting-edge design and fabrication technologies, complex structures, and digital mapping, exploring the connectivity of people to their precise place in the world. They believe you can have both complex meaning & incontestable beauty. www.atmosstudio.com LED Linear develops and manufactures high quality linear lighting systems based on LED for technically sophisticated interior and exterior lighting. Main products are linear and scalable lighting modules and systems based on LED and with an ingress protection from IP00 up to IP68. The product portfolio consists of various lighting systems, which have been nominated for and granted prestigious international design awards. On the basis of the modular LED tool kit more than 2,5 million lighting fixtures Seite 6 Project Website: http://www.mobileorchard.info/ Designer's website: http://www.atmosstudio.com Please contact Alex Haw, atmos a@atmosstudio.com t: +44 (0)7815 040 619 for imagery requests, interviews and media matters PR Contact person LED Linear UK : Stuart Knox Phone +44 7796 808 888 UK@led-linear.com PR Contact person LED Linear GmbH: Jutta Lichter Phone +49 2845.98462-0 press@led-linear.com www.led-linear.com Press Release September 13, 2013 can be build. Thus specific and individual custom solutions can be generated. LED Linear lighting systems are used in applications varying from mood lighting to general lighting in office spaces, from under cabinet lighting up to façade lighting in 300 meter heights. The use of high quality and long living components warrant energy savings and sustainable lighting solutions with a long life time of over 50.000hrs. LED Linear products are lead free soldered and RoHS compliant. VarioLED™, xoolum™, xoolux™, xoolight™ and TjAway™ are LED Linear trademarks. LED Linear products are sold in many locations worldwide, such as USA, Canada, Singapore, France, UK and in the Middle East. In Germany, the company employs 70 people. Reprint free of charge if source is stated – copy kindly requested Project Website: http://www.mobileorchard.info/ Designer's website: http://www.atmosstudio.com Please contact Alex Haw, atmos a@atmosstudio.com t: +44 (0)7815 040 619 for imagery requests, interviews and media matters PR Contact person LED Linear UK : Stuart Knox Phone +44 7796 808 888 UK@led-linear.com PR Contact person LED Linear GmbH: Jutta Lichter Phone +49 2845.98462-0 press@led-linear.com www.led-linear.com Seite 7