Scottish Parliament

The Scottish Parliament with its asymmetrically vaulted ceilings, its visible roof supporting structure and its seating arrangement for the Parliament has a complex geometry that complicated the lighting design. This situation required the use of light simulations to ensure compliance with the specifications relating to the direction of light and the illuminance for television broadcasts. Due to the fact that the varying distances between luminaire and area to be illuminated resulted in substantial brightness contrasts, the illuminance was calculated on the basis of the faces at the conference table and increased, where necessary, by additional luminaires. The “Autodesk 3ds Max” program enabled the use of virtual luminaires with 3D geometries and photometric data records, which also allowed the designers to check the size of the luminaires in the room.
For the execution phase, a separate application was developed to translate the 3D data on the 900 luminaires of the simulation into 2D drawings and provide the luminous flux, position, alignment and view of each luminaire.