24.03.2024

UNIQUE & INNOVATIVE MARKET SQUARE LIGHTING

Old Cotton Mills Floeha, Saxony / Germany

Last night we did a test run of the NEW Lighting Masts for the beautiful Old Cotton Mills Market square.

Official opening – 9 May 2026

BACKGROUND

Alte Baumwolle Flöha – Light as a catalyst for urban transformation

We are currently finalising our lighting concept for Alte Baumwolle Flöha — a 6.5-hectare site with outstanding historic industrial architecture and over 40,000 m² of usable space.
Once a key monument of Saxon industrial heritage, the area is now being transformed into a new urban centre for the city.
Our work spans from the overall lighting strategy for the entire site to detailed design for key areas, including the market square with town hall, green area and water features, entrances and open staircases, the tower elements of the historic factory buildings, and the surrounding streets. A great joy was the opportunity to develop for the town of Flöha the Special lighting masts which are a unique one off bespoke design.

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FUNCTIONALITY & LIGHT ART

The heart of the project is the new market square lighting concept, combining functional clarity with atmospheric quality:

• 10 luminaires at 5 m height
• 10 luminaires at 9.20 m height with integrated glass elements
• 4 suspended pendant luminaires
• An illuminated water feature

The project also includes a distinct “LIGHTHOUSE” for the corner tower of the old cotton mills and the entrances to the historic buildings, which received a Recognition Award in the competition “Ab in die Mitte! Die City-Offensive Sachsen” (2022).
This project reflects our ongoing interest in using light to reveal and communicate identity, to structure space, and support the transformation of heritage into contemporary urban life.historic sites into contemporary urban life.

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PROJECT INFORMATION

Client: City of Flöha
Lighting Design: Ruairí O’Brien Lighting Design
Landscape Architecture: Lohaus – Carl – Köhlmos PartGmbB
Manufacturers: WE-EF | L&L Luce&Light
Contractor: Elektro Krause Dresden
Completion: April / May 2026
Opening: 9 May 2026 – Day of Urban Development Funding

LIT Awards 2025

WINNER

Soundless Music

Prize: Winners in Event Lighting Installation

Lighting Design: Ruairí O’Brien . Lichtdesign

Lead Designer: Ruairí O’Brien

The Soundless Music light composition “The Colors of Light and the Thermodynamics of (Urban) Life” transformed 21 architectural landmarks in Potsdam’s city center into a radiant winter journey. For seven hours, rhythmic color changes and media art – incl. a canal laser show and Barberini Museum façade projections – turned the historic city into a living walk through immersive experience for young and old. In condensed seven-minute sequences, shifting moods reflected seasonal cycles, renewal, and transformation. This third part of a trilogy explored tertiary and analogous color harmonies, evoking atmospheres from vibrant joy to quiet reflection. Beyond spectacle, the project showed how light art can invigorate inner cities during the quiet winter months. By drawing locals and visitors into the heritage core, it created community and commerce while respecting energy efficiency and orchestration. Seventy light moods, tailored to each building’s architecture and synchronized across the city, merged science and art: light as natural phenomenon, emotional catalyst, and poetic homage. In January, when cities often struggle for liveliness, Potsdam’s center became an open, shared stage – demonstrating that light, like music, can move the emotions, silently yet powerfully, celebrating public space and making our cities attractive and lively places to be for all citizens at night.

_{Photo: Alexander Rentsch}

LIT Awards 2025

HONORABLE MENTION

Lichtkonzept for the Kunstbahnhof Flöha

ARCHITECTURAL LIGHTING DESIGN / Interior Architectural Illumination

Lighting Design/Product Company Ruairí O’Brien . Lichtdesign

Lead Designers Ruairí O’Brien

The lighting concept for the historic station concourse in Flöha (Saxony, Germany) combines functional and artistic lighting to create impressive lighting moods with appeal by atmospherically highlighting the impressive architecture of the concourse.The station has been renovated after standing empty for several years. In April this year, it reopened in its new role as a multifunctional art and exhibition hall. The reuse of the existing building is not only removing an eyesore and beautifying the cityscape, but also creating added value for society.
The lighting concept highlights the architectural monument and enables variable lighting for exhibitions, events, and the general traffic safety.
The custom-made LED neon-lines with color control serve as wall-mounted light art and the big window’s wall completes it as architectural light installation with interior and exterior effect. Dynamic colors and scenes can create individual lighting moods, from active daylight or atmospheric warmwhite light to colorful light displays.
The station concourse, which is also one of the program items in Chemnitz 2025–European Capital of Culture, is set to remain a venue for exhibitions and encounters with changing installations and a distinctive nighttime identity beyond the festival year. Flöha Art Station will thus become a lively intersection of mobility, art, and urban life–day and night.

^{Photo: Peter Fischer}

Light Sculpture and Welcome Signage for Thermalbad Wiesenbad

Architectural city-marketing and orientation elements for the spa town

For the well-known Saxon spa town of Thermalbad Wiesenbad, we developed a cohesive and distinctive welcome and wayfinding system that combines orientation, recognizability, and a strong culture of hospitality within the public realm. The objective is a clear, high-quality address to all arriving visitors, as well as a positive and friendly farewell for those departing.

At all town entrances, welcome signs approximately three meters in height are planned. Designed in a contemporary, reduced formal language, they mark the transitions into and out of the town. Clear typography, high-quality materials, and an individual mode of address create trust, provide orientation, and leave a positive first impression.

The system is complemented by a four-meter-high artistic-architectural light sculpture serving as a central landmark within the roundabout. It translates the signet of the thermal baths into a contemporary three-dimensional form, uniting regional heritage, the power of the thermal springs, and the spa tradition into a clearly legible symbol. Its perforated metal structure and integrated lighting ensure a strong presence by day and a powerful long-range visibility at night. As a visual guiding element, the sculpture structures space, directs sightlines, and supports intuitive orientation at a key traffic node.

Together, the sculpture and the welcome signs form a coherent city-marketing and orientation system. They translate the identity of the spa town into a contemporary design language, strengthen its presence within the urban space, and shape the image of Thermalbad Wiesenbad — clear, welcoming, and memorably enduring.

Guidelines for optimising commercial outdoor lighting

Our lighting design for a dark sky

Sustainable and environmentally friendly outdoor lighting for commercial and industrial areas offers great potential. Our guide to optimising commercial lighting reduces light pollution – while maintaining safety and efficiency.

The basis is a study carried out by Ruairí O’Brien on behalf of the Brandenburg State Office for the Environment in the Premnitz Industrial Park, located in the Westhavelland Nature and Star Park (approx. 70 km west of Berlin). The region was recognised as Germany’s first star park in 2014 and is committed to preserving natural nocturnal landscapes through responsible lighting. The measures presented here were developed in collaboration with two local companies and serve as a model for other locations.

Core measures:

• Targeted lighting (only where necessary)
• Optimised light distribution (minimised light spill)
• Shielding against stray light
• Reduced reflection (through darker surfaces)

Advantages:

• Environmental protection (nature, night and climate)
• Cost reduction (lower energy consumption)

The guideline serves as a model and is suitable for commercial and industrial areas.

Dresden International Airport – Lighting concept for the departure terminal

Our lighting concept for Terminal 1 at Dresden International Airport aims to build a bridge to the future. In addition to technical lighting to ensure traffic safety, precise light differentiation of individual areas, levels and elements helps travellers find their way around.

The architectural lighting design emphasises the spatial quality and the unmistakable industrial architecture of the terminal and underlines the uniqueness of Dresden Airport. It supports the positioning of the airport as a modern, open and future-orientated location of international stature.

The lighting concept combines technical lighting and light art to visually depict themes such as flying, the sky and mobility and to create a symbolic link between the past, present and future. This concept gives the previously anonymous hall a narrative dimension that offers a special experience for air travellers from all over the world.

The “flying carpet“,(a carpet of light) consisting of numerous curved downlights under the hall roof, creatively provides adequate illumination of the floor and creates a unique aesthetic. A “cloud of light“ immerses the entrance hall in dynamically changing lighting moods and uses reflective moving elements to create a constantly changing interplay of light and shadow, which has a fascinating effect both in natural daylight and with artificial lighting.

A light and glass sculpture, made of holographic and dichroic elements, enables visitors to be symbolically “beamed“ into the universe.

Client: Flughafen Dresden GmbH

Services provided: Terminal 2017 lighting concept

23.08.2024

Design guidelines for Lehnin Monastery

Old Cotton Flöha

lighting design presented for urban development funding day

On Saturday, May 4th, 2024, the City Funding Day took place again across Germany. Always a good opportunity to experience the funded projects directly on site.

We supported the city of Flöha with visualizations, the redesign of the Old Cotton with the day and night lighting concept by Ruairí O’Brien. Presenting lighting design to the public.

With the help of QR codes on four different banners that were hung around the construction site, visitors could and can take a look into the future and explore the new marketplace for themselves, day and night, from four different perspectives in 3D format. The banners and perspectives will continue to be visible in the future.