light products - Illuminating Engineering Society

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The upper level with the Buddha and stupas would be illuminated to 350 to 400 lux, approximately eight times brighter than the lower walls.
civilization in Java. The highest level is split into four sublevels
where there are 72 bell-shaped stupas located in
four concentric rings.
With all of the walls containing carvings and Buddha
statues it became apparent that the temple needed a special
kind of lighting. To create a three-dimensional shape,
the light would need to come at 45 deg angles and not
The main stipulation for any
lighting design was the fixtures
had to be mounted on poles,
hidden from daylight view by trees
straight on. After studying pictures of the temple, it was
determined that angular key light would best bring out
the vertical lines of the wall carvings and the protruding
steps on each of the sides.
To best achieve the angles of light near the middle
stairway, the fixtures were located on the opposite side of
the center pathway, so the light crossed sideways over
the center path in a cross-fire pattern. Each cross-fire
pole was located approximately 28-32 ft from the center
walk. There are a total of eight cross-fire poles illuminating
the four slanting pyramidal faces.
The biggest problem was the distance from the pyramid
face. The flat, bare apron varied in the distance from the
tree line to the temple. Borobudur is a symmetrical structure
with asymmetrical pole locations, so if the lighting
output from each was equal then the effective illumination
on the temple would be unequal. To compensate for this,
four, 400-W MH fixtures on the close cross-fire poles (east
and west sides) six, 400-W on the north side and eight,
400-W on the south side were part of the design.
The PF400 fixture was selected to do most of the crossfire
work. The 3x2 beam optic pushed a soft spot of light
onto the walls of the pyramid 80 to 120 ft away without
making hot spots. For the longer distance positions on
the far corners of the south and north sides, two 400-W
1x1 stadium lights were used on each of the cross-fire
poles. The fixture height on the cross-fire poles was set at
12 meters above the apron level to get all the cross-fire
fixtures above a horizontal ledger line at the second level.
However, each pole length had to be adjusted to the varying
height of the footing below the apron grade. The
result of the lighting was not only vertical shadowing of
the wall carvings from the cross-fire technique, but a horizontal
shadow line accenting the second level as the fixtures
created downlighting over the ledge.
The fill light used to cut the shadows from black to gray
was accomplished by reusing the existing 1000-W quartz
fixtures that had previously been installed. The quartz fixtures
were located near the corners and aimed back
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