The award-winning Wexford Opera House, Ireland’s newest multi-purpose, arts performing centre includes a horse-shoe shaped main auditorium lined in warm, black American walnut with 780 contrasting, cool, pale purple leather seats.
Sutton Vane Associates designed the house lighting to emphasise the architecture while also accommodating different levels of occupancy in the building. So each level of seating can be dimmed to the point that the theatre appears to shrink.

The edges of the balconies are lit with IRC tungsten halogen lamps partly because their spectrum enhances the colour of the wood. They are housed in specially designed linear slots which also light the walls so that the light on the seating is indirect and soft, in sympathy with the fluid design of the space.

In the front of house areas the lighting is all linear, sharp edged and clean, in keeping with the angular style more usually associated with the building’s architect, Keith Williams. Here the lighting is compact fluorescent or dimmable T5 fluorescents housed in bespoke fittings that join lamps at angles without creating tell-tale dark spots.

The remainder are in rectangular pendant shades over areas such as the box office reception. Specially created linear fittings are used to create crisp, irregular lighting that gives an edge to the clean lines of the building’s public areas: a fittingly dramatic solution. Sutton Vane Associates and the architect for this project, Keith Williams had previously worked on another Irish project, the Athlone Civic Centre, in County Westmeath which won the 2005 National Lighting Design Award.

Shorlisted for RIBA Award