LIGHT UP 13 LAYER REMAINS | A Successive Winner of International Design and Lighting Awards - Award-Winning Case of StrongLED

The 13 layer remains of Shuinan Cave is an abandoned copper smelter

Located in Lianxin Lane, Ruifang District, New Taipei City

It is honored as the mysterious and sacred city of sky, and the Potala Palace on the mine

In 2019, TAIDEN, upon the promotion of public art revitalization of cultural assets plan, cooperated with international lighting master Chou Lien, artist Joyce Ho and YI.ng Lighting Design Consultant team to initiate an activity on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2019 to light up 13 layer remains that have been dusted for more than 30 years, reproducing the past golden days of mining industry, which had been witnessed by thousands of exciting people in Ruifang District.

LIGHT UP 13 LAYER REMAINS is a successive winner of international design awards! After winning the Red Dot Design Award Winner 2020 and the IES Illumination Awards of this year, it won the Street and Community Development Award of the Good Design Award and the MUSE Design Awards in October.

Chou Lien, an international lighting artist who once designed the lighting for the Statue of Liberty in New York with a number of works in major cities around the world, is still very excited about the lighting design on the 13 layer remains and frankly talks about many of the ideas behind it.

Macro-to-micro lighting is a reflection of history awakening the inner feelings

Mr. Chou explains: "Generally, we refer to urban scale, street scale, and pedestrian scale in the architectural lighting design. However, the regular lighting logic is not suitable for the 13 layer remains, without these scales. Therefore, the lighting on the 13 layer remains is closer to the psychological level. The 13 layer remains are illuminated with the soft amber light and the different brightness levels, to quietly present the appearance of refinery inside." He emphasizes that it can be distinguished from the surrounding fishing villages through the color temperature and saturation, rather than the brightness. The brightness can be outstanding without interference. Even if the macroscopic vision is not powerful, it can evoke a lot of inner feelings.

Each layer of light is carried and installed manually by the workers after climbing the mountain

The construction officially started in May of this year. The machines cannot be used due to the unique topography of the layers. All construction materials such as lamps and lanterns need to be handled by hand. All the layers have to be climbed manually due to the height of each layer ranging from 2 meters to 12 meters, in addition to the weight for more than ten or twenty kilograms. It takes more than an hour to get to the construction site. For this reason, Ginny Chu says that all the previous works are "no longer a difficulty" after finishing the project of the 13 layer remains.

StrongLED Lighting Systems provides the lighting equipment and control systems and professional technical debugging support for the 13 layer remains in Jinguashi. The design team not only pays attention to the color of light itself, but also focuses on the luster that is seen on the building. The ideal combination of 2100K low color temperature yellow light and amber light is finally determined after the testing of many colors. With the long-term testing and adjustment, it finally shows the elegance of mining history and culture in the past golden days of 13 layer remains, and presents the natural beauty described in the "Chuang-tzu" that "heaven and earth have great beauty without words".