The garden commemorating the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War and it is located at Wellington Barracks, alongside the Guards Chapel, which is adjacent to Buckingham Palace. The ‘Flanders Field 1914-2014’ Memorial Garden has been designed by internationally acclaimed landscape architect Piet Blanckaert from Bruge, Belgium.
Piet wanted to use light to enhance the memorial garden. The lighting was to assist in embellishing the main features in the garden as well as to provide general illumination across the space.
There were three key area areas of consideration; a low wall featuring the nine shields of regiments that fought in the battle, a commemorative circular bed in the middle of the garden which contained soil from the battlefield and a statue of the Field Marshall Earl of Alexander of Tunis.
To light the nine shields, Logic wall washers were used with sand blasted glass to soften the beams and to minimises the shadows from the relief of the shields. The gold leaf used in the engraving sparkled under the light.
In order to achieve the general illumination, Deltalight developed a modified version of their Kix flood light, with double the light output (more than 1000lm). Three of these were mounted on an existing pole in the garden at about 4-5 meters high. Two of these flood lights were aimed at the statue from differing directions and the third flood light lit up the commemorative circle in the middle.
To create a sense of drama, trimless Logic uplights were used under the trees; giving depth to the space and preventing the area from looking flat.
Every aspect of the garden had been carefully considered so that it becomes a very special memorial to all those who lost their lives or were injured in the battlefields of Flanders.