Architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners have collaborated with lighting brand Reggiani to produce a light fitting for retail and exhibition spaces.

Called Ambar, the lamp was originally designed for the travelling exhibition Richard Rogers + Architects From the House to the City, first shown at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2007 (see our previous story).

The system can be track- or ceiling-mounted and can be adjusted 356 degrees horizontally and 90 degrees vertically.

Images copyright John Short.

Here's some more information from Reggiani:

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REGGIANI AND ROGERS STIRK HARBOUR COLLABORATE ON NEW ‘AMBAR’ LIGHT FITTING

Leading European lighting specialist, Reggiani has teamed up with renowned architecture practice, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, to create ‘Ambar’, a new versatile light fitting for exhibitions and retail spaces. Ambar was designed for the fit-out of the ‘Richard Rogers + Architects From the House to the City’ travelling retrospective exhibition - which debuted at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2007 before moving to the London Design Museum in 2008 and Barcelona’s CaixaForum in 2009. For its next stop, the exhibition will be opening at the CaixaForum in Madrid, Spain this week and will run from 9 July to 18 October 2009.

An interesting departure from traditional exhibition lighting, the elegant design of Ambar, with its die-cast aluminium, and translucent casing that expresses the workings of the lighting system, was designed specifically for display lighting. Ambar has the flexibility of being either track or ceiling mounted and is fully adjustable to 356º in the horizontal axis and 90º in the vertical.

For the exhibition, Ambar has been fitted with cdm-tc 70w 6500k lamps to illuminate the timeline walls and hanging graphics in the exhibition and 70w cdm-tc 4200k to illuminate models. These provide a white luminescence that was of prime importance to Ab Roger Design - the exhibition designers - to display the vibrant colours of the architecture. Lighting is concentrated in order to highlight the models and graphics and glare is controlled by using a honeycomb accessory.

Ambar was used to solve the problem of finding a light that would give a precise source of directional light without interfering with the simple design of the exhibition. As designer Amarjit Kalsi, Director at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners explained: “Ambar is suspended from a fine cable, it appears to hover in the air, and directs the rays of light that are precisely focussed on the objects. Working with Reggiani was a collaborative experience, with the objective of developing a product that was not only functional, but a beautiful design.

Ambar is fitted with Reggiani’s IOS reflector technology. The IOS is a significant advancement in traditional reflector systems used to improve the energy efficiency of lighting (LOR 90% Lighting Output Ratio). Whilst the flexible nature of the IOS enhances a typical performance of the output ratio by 25 per cent, power consumption is reduced by over 20 per cent.