The ILP’s 2025 ‘How to be brilliant’ programme kicked off in April with a talk by Iain Ruxton of Speirs Major Light Architecture on the challenges – and rewards – of lighting the UNESCO World Heritage of At-Turaif in Saudi Arabia. This is an abridged transcript of his presentation.
By Iain Ruxton
At-Turaif was, in many respects, an outstanding project. As lighting designers, we’re all involved in all kinds of projects, and a lot of them are relatively straightforward and there’s nothing wrong with that. But some of them are particularly memorable, and this project was definitely one of those…
The project – led by Keith Bradshaw, Adrien Flouraud, James Fuentes McGreevy and me – brought with it the challenge, firstly, of lighting a UNESCO World Heritage site. And, secondly, Saudi Arabia has, comparatively speaking, been quite closed off to the west for a long time, although recently has begun a program of ambitious development across the country. This made it quite a challenging environment to navigate as a lighting designer.
First founded in the 1400s, the district of At-Turaif is a hilltop, semi-fortified city on the outskirts of Riyadh. It was home to the Saud family, who first united the region from being several nomadic tribes, into a cohesive country. It was the first capital of the Saudi state, from 1727 to 1818, at which time a siege by the Ottomans led to it being abandoned.
The Saudi capital moved to Riyadh, but At-Turaif remained culturally very important. During the last 20 years, it was recognised that the site – which had become severely derelict – must be preserved and celebrated, and a restoration project was begun.
Over the years, a few new buildings and museums were added within the old ruined shells, but the most important thing was that they stabilised the site. The whole city is mud brick and, while it doesn’t rain that much in Riyadh, when it does it is really heavy, and the mud brick can dissolve. So, they dug it out, down to ground level, stabilised all the foundations, and capped the ruined walls to reduce further erosion.
NATIONAL PRIDE
In 2010, At-Turaif was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the archaeology and restoration there is ongoing.
In 2021, a limited invitation competition was run to design the lighting for the site, and Speirs Major Light Architecture were invited. The drive for this was to celebrate their nation and its history – the site has a real spiritual connection for the Saudi people. But also, the opportunity in terms of attracting tourism was part of the long-term vision for the site.
This site is an anchor for a massive development, Diriyah Gate, which will include 40 hotels, 300+ branded residential developments, 556,000sq m of retail; at 14 km2 it is enormous and, especially as much of it starts as virgin desert, will take something like 20 years to build. It all stems from the ‘Saudi Vision 2030’ for the future of the country.
The group chief executive of the Diriyah Company, Jerry Inzerillo who drives the vision behind the Diriyah Gate project. The first time Keith and I met Jerry was in September 2021, having won the competition. He was very enthusiastic about the transformative effect of light, and when it came to colour, he was interested in gold light, which was flattering to the materiality of At-Turaif. He also wanted it to be the largest lit UNESCO World Heritage site in the world.
We talked about the shifting light of the desert, about how the city radiated out from the palace in the middle. We identified a hierarchy of narrow streets, key external façades, interior spaces glimpsed from outside, and the fortified perimeter of this hilltop citadel. Once we visited and explored, we quickly realised that our idea of a central point was a complete misreading of the morphology, but that our hierarchy was essentially correct.
We wanted to create a contrast between exterior and interior walls, rather than just lighting everything uniformly; we wanted to express the meaning and stories held in the structures and spaces of site, to reveal its composition and give a feel for how the district may have felt when it was lived in all those centuries ago. Our idea was to light ‘within’, and work with the ebb and flow of light through the site.
As we developed the lighting concept, we were challenged by the client to create a serious of high-end photorealistic CGI images from various key viewpoints. We were provided with a 3D drone scan which was an invaluable tool for understanding the site when we weren’t physically there, and which provided a base for CGI renders.
However, this took the form of a single massive mesh with the photographed textures baked in, shadows and all. Our visualisation team – in an almost Hollywood-level workflow – turned this starting point into a series of incredibly realistic images with accurate lighting.
COMPLEX MANAGEMENT AND LOGISTICS
Managing this project, we quickly discovered, would be extremely complex. Within the Diriyah Company there are many departments – Development, Design and Delivery, Heritage and Culture, Asset Management, Facilities Management, and Operations. Then there were the finance people and – in separate companies, but absolutely critical – the project managers, the various contractors, and the suppliers.
There was also an events team who would arrange events on short notice, and the royal family, including King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan, who would visit on occasion with VIPs; their needs taking precedence over all work schedules.
Inevitably with this number of stakeholders, it was very difficult, and we had to deal with input and changes from multiple directions on an ongoing basis. Given this, simplicity and pragmatism were key.
We realised early on that the best way to get this done would be to go with one manufacturer and one supplier and do it as a single contract. We knew we had to design it around specific, products – we couldn’t put things out to tender and then redesign based on the finished products chosen, especially given the client desire for fast-track delivery of the project.
The luminaire palette comprised long linear graze, short linear graze, three sizes of wash light and various accessories – that was it. We then sat down to create the best drawings we could and started adding lights in, based largely on photographs and the 3D scan model we were provided with.
Then – and this was critical – it was simply a case of getting on site and walking around. We went back again, and again, and again, walking the site and fixing the drawings; figuring out what should be lit and what shouldn’t, where lights could go and couldn’t go. It was days and days and days – miles and miles – of walking.
INSTALLATION CHALLENGES
There are approximately 3,500 lights in total, all RGBW and DMX-controlled; the long ones are four segments of RGBW. The channel count was in the region of 32,500. We used the site network and its many ‘server rooms’. We had a number of controllers located around the site and many, many output nodes – Pharos EDNs – to get all the DMX data out reasonably close to the lights.
Of course, 3,500 lights is a lot of lights. With Martin, we therefore developed a tight tagging system for each light. That meant we had coherence on the drawings. Every light has its own ID number. Every cable is identified. Everybody has the same understanding of what goes where.
I was then able to take that spreadsheet, import it directly into Pharos, and create an enormous list of thousands and thousands of lights without having to put them in manually, which would have taken me weeks and probably driven me mad. I could also use this to create the entire patch for all lights and import that too.
Within the control configuration we also created quite a lot of bespoke code, for example around power-failure recovery and for the regular projection shows on the facade.
The ‘moon’ scene is one of the most notable elements of the scheme. The Islamic calendar is lunar, and so the full moon has great significance. In this scene, the lighting shifts to a shade of silvery moonlight on ‘exterior’ surfaces, offset by much warmer light within the buildings.
From a controls point of view, this is not as simple as it might seem. The full moon can be at any point in a 24-hour cycle- it could be at lunchtime, which is a bit counter-intuitive because of course you can’t see it then. We had to decide, ‘when do we do the full moon thing?’.
The logical answer was the nearest period of darkness to the full moon moment. That, again, sounds like a reasonably simple solution but it was actually very difficult to achieve, because it required the controller to look into the future but also into the past. When you turn on at sunset, and the full moon has just happened – perhaps at 4pm – you’re on full moon mode. But if it hasn’t happened yet but is going to happen before solar noon the next day – it is also full moon mode! So that created quite a programming adventure.
When it came to installation and focusing, we were working on significant historic fabric. Either way, we didn’t want to be messing around with it; we couldn’t have installers drilling holes in walls or recessing things into the ground. The project managers also had to get permissions from the heritage team regarding where the contractors could dig.
A lot of the routes, happily, had a gravel section along the edge for drainage, which helped. There, the installation team could clear out some gravel and semi-recess cables and fixtures. We didn’t want people being able to reach – or even kick – the linear wall-grazers. We created a very simple steel casement structure, with a bottom piece that the light and cables went into, then a cover piece which screws down on top. This is covered in a render which is matched into the surroundings. That worked superbly well, providing protection, concealment, and glare control in one.
With the wash lights, it was simpler because they are generally not in places where people can see them, and even where they are visible, they are well out of reach. Some of them are on roofs, some are in interior courtyards, with the cables buried in the gravel.
In a few places, we were able to reuse supports that had been there for previous lighting. It was all very pragmatic, very much based on us walking around and coming up with solutions on the spot. This is not the sort of stuff you can do on paper.
FOCUSING THOUSANDS OF LIGHTS
Everything had to be focused, every one of those 3,500 lights. We had a very good contractor, and we had a great team in Martin Middle East, and there was me and Adrien. Every single one of those lights was visited by our team, which as you can imagine took a considerable amount of time.
Even if it’s just a ‘quick’ focus, by the time you’ve unlocked it, moved it, locked it again, it takes time – x 3,500 – and some of them were really awkward. The spots, too, were more demanding in that they had lenses of different beam angles to be fitted as well as glare reducing accessories.
There is no point doing all this work on the focus if you don’t record it, which also takes time. Somebody else, after all, has got to be able to look after all this once you’ve completed your work. So, there is a full set of as-focussed drawings for the entire site, which Adrien generated. For every single light, we know what it is, what accessories are on it, and where it points. It was a massive piece of work, but worth it.
We are very pleased with the result. There is a difference in intensity and tone from inside to outside which helps to give depth and modelling. There is light and shade; there is variety but also consistency.
You look at At-Turaif during the day and initially think it is all the same colour, but it isn’t – there are so many different shades of brown. There is one set of core colour mixes in our programming but then lots of places where the mix is slightly different because the wall colour is slightly different. There was one particular pair of walls that for some reason were slightly greenish; they have their own lighting values because we had to try and get them looking like the rest. They never quite matched but it’s probably only Adrien and me who know where they are… and we’re not telling.
On a full-moon night, as I touched on earlier, the lighting switches to silver, which feels like the light of the moon. But inside each building it is a really warm amber, hinting at the candlelight or oil lamps that the inhabitants would have used. You get the contrast between the blue and the apricot gold, which is delicious. There is a very slight ripple through the silvery blue as well; we are very proud of the effect we managed to achieve.
On Saudi National Day, or whenever they want to celebrate a special national occasion – like beating Argentina in the 2022 World Cup – the lights can switch to green to reflect the Saudi flag. It looks brilliant; you wouldn’t want it every night, but it is great for occasional special evenings.
There is also a white scene for Founder’s Day. It uses two slightly different white mixes, slightly cooler on the outside and warmer on the inside. This is used for another public holiday, too, called Flag Day.
In conclusion, At-Turaif is a very striking, very dramatic site. Everyone who has been there seems to like it. Quite a few lighting designers we have spoken to who have work in Saudi have visited it and been very complimentary about it, which is flattering, coming from our peers.
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the July-August edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
Image: Iain Ruxton at work at At-Turaif. Speirs Major Light Architecture and Martin Professional
