cundall adorns NOMA earth tubes with nearly 29,000 independent lights

cundall adorns NOMA earth tubes with nearly 29,000 independent lights  
all images courtesy of cundall

NOMA — standing for north manchester — is a £800m, 20 acre mixed-use redevelopment project by the co-operative group, in partnership with hermes investment management and with support by the european regional development fund. the massive effort includes the creation of 4,000,000ft² of office, residential, retail, and leisure space. multi-disciplinary consultancy cundall, won a contest to beautify three centrally located concrete and aluminum fin ‘earth tubes’, which supply fresh air to the co-operative group office.

‘earth tubes’ with paved plaza surroundings 

following the growing trend of lighting installations in the public sphere, cundall was asked to deliver an interactive, ever-changing light installation. rather than a static display, or one with a limited range of animations, the NOMA ‘earth tubes’ were designed to evolve, and are capable of translating community-made content — provided by schools and students, artists in residence, and data from a specially created app — into dynamic light compositions.

two different animations 

studiotech, using OSRAM lighting components, worked non-stop over a period of three months to complete the project. the ‘earth tubes’ installation totals 28,440 individual lights, or 9,480 light filled tubes. a total of 14km of cable was used to provide power and data to the ‘earth tubes’, and as far is energy is concerned each runs on 15amps. 

lights detail 

reflections of light on curved fins

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions  feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: nick brink | designboom