The award-winning lighting design for Harrow School’s historic Speech Room needed to be flexible, intuitive and controllable, as well as provide a discreet, unobtrusive lighting hierarchy, writes Mark Sutton Vane.
Back in early 2021, along with architects Giles Quarme, we at Sutton Vane Associates were appointed to redesign and refurbish the lighting, both day-to-day and emergency, for the Speech Room at Harrow School.
The project was completed in June 2023 and, just before Christmas, it won a LIT Design Award (for Heritage Lighting Design), something that was especially pleasing as it is a scheme we are immensely proud of.
The Speech Room is a Grade II* listed building and multi-functional venue at the 452-year-old school.
It is used for community meetings, lectures, debates, theatrical performances, projecting films and performances of music ranging from a solo piano to an orchestra and choir. It is a very flexible space in that the floor can be winched up to create one big flat area, which is a really clever piece of architectural design. There is also a wind-down screen for projecting films.
The room was designed by the Victorian architect William Burgess and is an amazing space, with intricate woodwork and a vaulted ceiling. It is lined with portraits of famous Harrovians, among them Winston Churchill, even though it is not actually known if he ever spoke there. The fact that he was a great orator, even in his youth, means that it is likely, but no one knows for sure. One purpose of the space is to teach the boys how to speak in, and be comfortable in, public spaces.
The first thing that became very clear to us as soon as we visited the site, however, was that the existing lighting was not good. It was incredibly glary, which totally flattened the architecture, and you could barely see the amazing ceiling at all. The only part you could see was the beautiful blue and white skylight, but even that was full of a complete forest of huge, opal spheres.
The school, understandably, did not like the ceiling as it was lit. The lighting was also old, all metal halide and tungsten halogen. So, it was very difficult to control; the controls were not at all intuitive. There were also huge, square floodlights that had been recessed into the otherwise fantastic Victorian woodwork.
CELEBRATING THE CEILING
We immediately set about trying to transform things. We wanted the scheme to be flexible and easy to control; we wanted to be able to light the room for any size or type of activity; we wanted to celebrate the 3D shapes of the amazing ceiling.
Wayfinding, we also knew, was likely to be challenge. It is moderately steep as a space and has hundreds and hundreds of chairs, which can be moved around. It is also a space where, often, elderly relatives will be coming to performances, perhaps to hear their grandchildren speak or perform. Their eyesight may not be the best and they may not be familiar with the space.
So, we needed to ensure there would be enough light for accessibility and wayfinding purposes, that it was not too dark and shadowy, but also that the light did not ‘kill’ the space. This was especially important too in the context of the emergency lighting.
That is why we ended up putting in tiny spotlights – which we designed especially for this project and had custom-made – on every single step. When daylight drops, you can see your way around if, say, you are suddenly feeling a little bit unwell, or if you have arrived late or need to leave early
Two discreet luminaires were installed for each step; they show the way well with little spill light and no distractions for the audience. The fittings are dimmable and so their brightness is set for each different type of event. These little stud lights were designed to be fitted with the minimum amount of fixing possible – a theme throughout the project, there are just two screws that go into the wood. The lights really do a good job.
HIDDEN LINEAR UPLIGHTING
On the tops of the columns there were clumps of incredibly big spotlights, which shone down to light the seating. Because, again, we didn’t want to touch any of the fantastic Victorian architecture, we decided to reuse those fixing points. But we added small assemblies on the dark strip at the top of each column incorporating completely hidden linear uplighting.
These then enabled us to light the ceiling, creating a lovely wash effect right up to the skylight. From every single column, there is lighting casting upwards, left, middle and right, which really lights all the amazing architecture.
Above the doorways, there were a number of original gas lights, which were not working. We toyed with the idea of putting in LEDs to make them look as if they were functioning. But eventually we decided against that, because it would have meant chasing the wall to get new electrical supplies in, and we were worried it could look a bit Disneyesque anyway.
We simply had them very gently dusted to get the cobwebs off and left them in situ. They are lovely, a great relic of one of the previous lighting schemes.
The whole scheme is, of course, dimmable; it is all DALI. We worked very hard to ensure that, as the daylight falls, the artificial lighting is able to effectively pick out the architectural features, with the central skylight dome glowing elegantly. There is very clear definition.
THEATRICAL RIGGING BAR
If you look closely at the red columns in the space, you can see there is a vertical 50mm standard theatrical rigging bar. A couple were there already but we added a whole load more. This means the school can, if they wish, bring in theatrical lights, clamp them on the bar, and then attach them to hidden DMX sockets at the top of each column. So, they can plug in to a complete DMX network.
They give surprisingly good theatre-type lighting angles down on to the central part of the stage. They run most of the way round, so there is enough to do a pretty good full theatre lighting rig. We also highlighted the organ at the sides of the space. So when they do organ recitals, it works really effectively.
In the ceiling, there were previously a whole load of incredibly glary downlights. However, we didn’t want to drill any new holes into what is an amazing structure. So we reused the existing downlight locations and upgraded to dimmable, adjustable LED spotlights. The beams do in fact cross over, so it is not all straight downlighting on the stage; the lighting comes in from a range of angles.
We also made a point of having downlights in the ceiling that were the same size or smaller than the original holes, so none of the fantastic, original woodwork was cut into in any way at all. It is the same with the cabling, in fact; we reused all the places where the cables had gone before; there were no new wiring runs.
The use of a range of angles means someone sitting stage left, for example, doesn’t get that awful ‘panda eye’ effect you can get with plain downlighting. Even if there is no theatre lighting on, the architectural downlighting, with its range of angles, softens the lighting on the face as much as we could.
In the ceiling, we also designed the new hanging fittings, which downlight on to the stage but also uplight into the rather unique little upside-down domes. They are an absolutely lovely piece of Victorian architecture – extraordinary but lovely – in that they are domes within domes.
Each oil painting is also individually lit, from spotlights located on the back of each column. We were slightly concerned because, actually, this is not an ideal angle from which to illuminate a portrait, and you can get reflections. Luckily, however, the portraits are not too heavily glossy or varnished, so it does work.
LIGHTING HIERARCHY
We’ve very deliberately given the space a proper lighting hierarchy. In other words, when you are having a performance, the stage is the brightest thing, and then the view dims down from there. There are a whole number of scenes for different events, which leave the architecture well revealed, yet still in the background.
When the school does tours, for example, there are scenes they can use designed specifically to show off the architecture, to show off the ceiling in particular. The architects did a great job, too, with the ceiling, because it was looking really quite tired and dark. It has been completely cleaned and restored and is now much brighter.
Finally in terms of the scheme itself, at the entrance there was a lantern in place that had an ancient compact fluorescent in it. We changed it to a dimmable LED and then secretly added a ring of linear lighting concealed at the top to light the whole ceiling. It meant the whole of that entrance space became welcoming and attractive, rather than the darkness up there as it had been. For the first time ever, the rather lovely Victorian architecture and brickwork up above was revealed. The school likes it so much that, even though it is dimmable, they normally keep it at full brightness.
So, what did we learn from this scheme? Well, the first thing was about understanding the important, historic nature of the space you’re designing for. The brief from the client was that they wanted very flexible lighting for a whole range of events, which was all possible. Then they wanted the ability to add in a full theatrical lighting rig, with all the DMX infrastructure, which again was possible.
However, we then added on this an extra layer of challenge ourselves where we said, ‘we are not going to in any way add to or take from the building’. We wanted to make sure that any tiny thing we did was always completely reversible and, in the end, we ended up doing no damage at all to existing infrastructure. We were really pleased about that.
It gave ourselves a challenge but we wanted to be absolutely sure that no Victorian woodwork had to be chopped away. When it was designed of course it didn’t have downlights in the ceiling, so someone in the past drilled a whole series of round holes and big square holes – for the floodlights – in the ceiling. But we were adamant we were not going to do anything that cut anything more away; we reused all existing routes of cables.
That was a whole new layer of challenge that we added ourselves to our brief – but we are really glad we did and it was totally the right thing to do.
Mark Sutton Vane FSLL is director of Sutton Vane Associates
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the March edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
Image: the ceiling of Harrow’s Speech Room, by James Newton
PROJECT CREDITS
Client: Harrow School
Architects: Giles Quarme Architects
Lighting design: Sutton Vane Associates (lead designers Mark Sutton Vane, with Julie O’Reilly and Edward Sutton-Vane)
Photographs: James Newton
