Rogier van der Heide

Swarovski Crystal Palace Milan’s talk of the town

admin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:30:20 +0000

This year’s edition of Swarovski Crystal Palace was crossing the boundaries of design, art and architecture. In a spectacular setting, the works of some of the world’s foremost designers showed how crystal, light and space and sound fuse into a single experience.

Rogier van der Heide designed “Dream Cloud”, an installation consisting out of 1,500 crystals, some of them coated with transparent magenta and cyan paint, forming a surreal cloud floating above a field of genuine black tulips from The Netherlands. The piece celebrates the crystal’s finest, intrinsic quality: the beautiful and inspiring reflection of light. Rogier’s design explores the density of the cloud, and pushes lightness and dematerialisation to the limit.

Click here to view the embedded video. Listen to Rogier explaining the Dream Cloud concept.

Click for more videos of Rogier on youtube

The entire installation was realised by students of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, coordinated by their professor Mr. Dick Vonk. Ülkü Oguzkurt, Nina Celovic, Robin de Bruin, Burak Gul, Sergan Tezcan, Fatih Ilgun and Valerie, and Dick Vonk, thanks a million for all your hard work and incredible result!

The other designers presenting their work in the 2010 edition of Swarovski Crystal Palace are Yves Béhar, Vincent van Duysen, Tokujin Yoshioka and Gwenael Nicolas.

Client: Swarovski
Artist: Rogier van der Heide
Technical Detailing and Realization on Site: Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, building engineering faculty

Rogier van der Heide joins Philips as Chief Design Officer

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:00:03 +0000

As of March 2010, Rogier van der Heide joins Philips Lighting as Chief Design Officer.

“Lighting design can explore new and unique ways that lighting can meet people’s needs and aspirations through form, function and emotion. Rogier’s work has shown that he truly understands how to simply enhance people’s lives with light. By bringing Rogier into the design leadership of the company we are strengthening our commitment to the field of lighting design and becoming a better partner for our customers,” says Stefano Marzano, CEO Philips Design and Chief Design Officer for Philips.

At Arup Lighting in Amsterdam, things will continue with the experienced lighting designers Simone Collon and Siegrid Siderius and their team.

Click here for the official press release on philips.com

Download images for publication here

Holland Casino Rotterdam: the experience

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:57:58 +0000

This project was done at Arup

Holland Casino recognised the emergence of a new kind of casino: an integrated entertainment venue offering gambling, music, dancing, food and drink within a stylish and contemporary atmosphere. Arup and iCrave architects were appointed to re-conceptualise the Holland Casino Rotterdam that opened November 2009.

The solution is a flow of space and light that feels more like a nightclub than a typical casino, featuring several areas with no gaming machines at all. The main spaces are defined by lighting features which give each area a unique atmosphere. The walls of the existing casino have been clad in glossy, reflective black panels, tilted to reflect the lighting design and give a feeling of infinite space.

An open screen-wall of curving wooden beams marks the restaurant area. Highlighting the beams from top and bottom sculpts light around them creating a sense of enclosure for patrons.
Working to a strict budget and power consumption requirements, the lighting scheme plays an important role in defining the space and creating atmosphere. Also, by creating separate lighting systems for work and casino lighting, perfect light levels can be achieved for each space. This allows the use of efficient, long-lasting sources for work lighting and crisp halogen light sources for casino lighting. Images below linked from www.icravedesign.com.

Architect: iCrave
Lighting design: Arup Lighting
Lighting design team: Rogier van der Heide, Siegrid Siderius, Susheela Sankaram

The National, Dubai’s leading newspaper

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:40:59 +0000

11 December 2009: “Just Brilliant.” Lighting design wizard, Rogier van der Heide, was in Dubai recently explaining how his projects – from The Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi to the “cloud of lights” installation in Tallin, Estonia – are all about getting under the skin of the client. “Why put so much effort into something temporary?” queried a local design student. Without missing a beat he responded, “It’s down to designers to inject beauty into our lives.” Whether permanent or temporary, the stuff around us should be designed well. Needless to say, the student saw the light.
Read the full article on www.thenational.ae.

05 December 2009: “All that glitters.” Nadja Swarovski is fascinated by the creative process. After chatting animatedly with clients during a business dinner at Dubai’s Cavalli Club (which features sinuous five-metre-high curtains made of Swarovski crystals), she spent almost an hour in deep conversation with Rogier van der Heide, a Dutch lighting designer who happened also to be in town. Whether that means another potential collaboration remains to be seen, but her passion was obvious.
Read the full article on www.thenational.ae.

YAS Marina Hotel has opened

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 05:40:02 +0000

This project was done at Arup

Fall 2008 Hani Rashid of Asymptote Architecture, the award-winning, New York-based practice, approached me to ask if I wanted to join his design team for an exciting new project: the Yas Marina Hotel in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The Yas Hotel is a 500-room, 85,000-square-meter complex now under construction by Aldar Properties PJSC.
Targeting an opening date of October 30, 2009, Asymptote has done the impossible: to design, engineer and realise a highly complex architectural marvel within an extremely short time frame.
The main feature of the project is a three dimensional gridshell wrapping around the hotel buildings and radiating a design language similar to that of the Formula 1 racing industry. Curved surfaces, high-tech materialisation and dynamism are keywords.
The lighting design, developed with Asymptote and Arup Lighting’s teams in Amsterdam and New York, uses colour changing LED technology within custom designed fixtures to create the kinetic effects the architects had in mind.
Asymptote, as well as all consultants and client Aldar: congratulations with this amazing achievement!

Architect: Asymptote Architecture
Lighting design: Arup Lighting
All other consultants: See Asymptote’s press release

Rogier to give talk at Lovelight event 8 October in London

admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:21:26 +0000

The aim of LoveLight is simple: to put lighting at the heart of architecture. Lovelight want both daylighting and artificial lighting to inform the design process from the very beginning, with the aim of creating vibrant and beautiful spaces where people want to be.

LoveLight has been created by the Professional Lighting Designers’ Association working with a range of publications including the Architects’ Journal, Architectural Review, AJ Specification and Lighting magazine.

The event aims to unleash the potential of lighting to articulate and reinterpret architecture. And we need architects and other design professionals who recognise the importance of the medium, to spread the message.

Confirmed speakers include Rogier van der Heide, Eva Jiricna, Laurie Chetwood, Jonathan Speirs and Paul Finch.

Lovelight website

Rogier to deliver keynote speech at World Architecture Congress in Dubai

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:02:39 +0000

The World Architecture Congress that is co-organised by the AIA (American Institute of Architecture) takes place in Dubai early October 2009. As the conference’s website states, the event “set against the backdrop of the recent unprecedented calamity in the global economic arena this conference aims to break free from the doom and gloom we’ve all been bombarded with over the past few months on offer some constructive ideas and strategies.”

Rogier will present his keynote on Tuesday, October 6 and will discuss strategies to converge placemaking concepts and and the creation of meaningful environments with sustainable solutions to urban and property development.

Amsterdam Public Library

admin — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:22:34 +0000

This project was done at Arup

When the Amsterdam Public Library opened its doors to the public, it officially became the largest library in Europe. Designed by architect Jo Coenen & Co, the 28 000m² building includes seven collection floors and provides a storage area for books, a theatre, a readers’ cafe and a restaurant overlooking the city.

Space and light
After the concept by architect Jo Coenen, I developed a lighting design to create a building where space and light are central to the users’ experience. To help achieve this, the Library has various terraces and squares situated in a high atrium, reached by inviting, luminous escalators that guide visitors upstairs.

Holistic design
With the library, Arup in Amsterdam delivered its first building of which the local office worked on all engineering and design discplines shoulder to shoulder with architect Jo Coenen. By close collaboration between the various specialisms, the team created a building that breathes a holistic approach to climate, space, and light.

The library is also featured on arup.com

Photos with this article: Michael van Oosten
Architect: Jo Coenen & Co
Lighting design: Rogier van der Heide and Jo Coenen
Product design escalators, columns and handrails: Rogier van der Heide (concept and principles)
Arup project team: Rogier van der Heide, Ben Kreukniet

Long awaited new arup.com goes live

admin — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 04:39:04 +0000

Last week the new global website for Arup has gone live. Have a look at www.arup.com how a large design and business consulting practice present themselves. Clean yet with ample space for information and media. I like it. And what’s more: the landing page shows the Water Planet project for the California Academy of Sciences, for which I did the lighting design together with Jason Edling (Arup San Francisco office) and exhibition designers THinc with Urban A&O from New York City. Thank you Arup web team, for recognizing this project!

Mondoarc about Star Place

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:51:16 +0000

I have added the PDF of an article in Mondoarc, the British magazine on lighting design for architecture and retail. Star Place made it to the cover of the April 2009 issue! Click here to read the article.