Lighting makeover to throw light on VMH finer details

Kolkata: The lighting at Victoria Memorial Hall, one of the first heritage buildings to be lit up in Kolkata, will undergo a makeover, with a lighting designer working on dynamic illumination that will highlight and accentuate various architectural details of the marble edifice, which is considered a masterpiece of Indo-Saracenic revivalist architecture.Anurag Kumar, who just retired from the post of curator at Victoria Memorial Hall, said that while the existing illumination, done by National Buildings Construction Corporation nearly 15 years ago, made the building sparkle like a jewel in the Maidan at night, the architectural details got washed over by the flat, high-wattage floodlights trained on the Raj-era monument.
"We received a proposal to do the lighting afresh that will accentuate the architectural features. Kolkata Restorers, who last year lit up the angel atop the Victoria Memorial dome, offered to do up the southern facade. If the new illumination works, the eastern, northern and western facades will also be similarly lit up," said Kumar.Lighting designer Suyash Narsaria said he intended to use a mix of narrow beam, wide-angle and flexible ambient light to illuminate the southern facade. "The challenge of working on such a prestigious heritage structure is manifold. We have to use scaffolding in some places to fix the lights. But for those places that are below the terrace, technicians have to drop 1 level below using a harness to set up the lights. Also, since nothing can be screwed, we will use a special glue to fix the light in place," he explained.The dimmable and controllable lights will be dynamic. For a given duration of time, certain features will be highlighted more prominently than others. Thereafter, the former will get muted and the latter will get highlighted.While 80% of lights were installed, the rest will take around one week. "The lighting should be complete by mid-March," said Narsaria.The lighting project is being funded by Techno Electric & Engineering Co Ltd (TEECL), which recently funded the restoration of the New Market clock tower. "We are happy to be a part of the illumination of the most loved historical monument of Kolkata," said TEECL director Avantika Gupta.