Bright Double Act – Mondo ARC

“In theatre you have to think about maybe twenty five looks,” explains Koert Vermeulen. “In architecture maybe only one, but that one has to be the best.” And over the past six years, the Belgian lighting designer has been honing his skills to create exemplary architectural lighting works, in partnership with the other co-founder of ACT Architecture, Bruno Demeester.

Whereas Vermeulen learnt his trade through hands-on experience in theatre and event lighting, Demeester took a different path. He studied architecture. Together, they combine “stage lighting with architecture, as we know both fields,” says Demeester.
Making his name in the temporary lighting field, Vermeulen began to branch out into architectural lighting in 2000, and has since designed interior and exterior lighting treatments for a wide variety of public and private buildings.

The move into creating more permanent lighting works came about when Vermeulen was approached by a property developer to apply his particular artistic sensibilities and aesthetic sense to the production of longer-lasting works. Impressed by Vermeulen’s creations in the entertainment sector, the company “wanted that same look and feel, but permanent,” he says. Putting into practice the professional know-how he had acquired through the lighting of parties, clubs, concerts and corporate events since his teens, he now assumed the new challenge of illuminating spaces such as cafes, shopping malls and towerblocks.

This turning point in his career led to an eventual six-year project to design the lighting for the Dutch city of Ypenburg. Vermeulen’s approach to the urban lighting plan included the use of colour-changing light-boxes on residential tower roofs and neon street-lighting that enlivened the city centre with a “soft and joyful” evening atmosphere.

A year after Vermeulen entered into this new venture, Brussels-born Bruno Demeester approached him with an idea about working together.

Although Demeester had studied architecture, his interest in lighting had already begun to develop early on, when he wrote a university paper on the subject. He completed his degree in 1995, the same year that Vermeulen started up Act Design. Moving from Brussels to the UK, he took an MSc in Built Environment at the Bartlett School of Architecture. Part of Demeester’s studies at the Bartlett also involved looking at lighting. By 1998 he was doing a three-month stint at Speirs and Major. Later that year he returned to Brussels, and over the past eight years his growing expertise in lighting has taken him from the office of architect, town planner and lighting specialist Jean-Pierre Majot into a freelance position as lighting designer on a number of projects, including private residential work, which he did for the two years before partnering with Vermeulen.

“I had done some architectural projects and declined on a lot of them,” says Vermeulen, “because of no partner to do this work. I started working with [Bruno] first on an ad hoc basis, but soon we were working full time together on all architectural projects. It was a natural fit.”

Sharing the same office space, the partners typically kick off a project with brainstorming sessions that may also involve professionals from other fields, such as product or landscape design. The client is presented with a mix of hand sketches and computer-rendered visuals in order to communicate the lighting concept. “I normally do eighty percent of the concepts of all the projects as lead,” says Vermeulen. “Bruno then does the development as lead. I do again the last phase. We keep each other in the loop on most projects.” On a few other occasions, either designer may take a back seat, working more in the role of consultant.

In the case of the lighting of the Aspria fitness club on rue de L’Industrie in Brussels’ European Quarter, the lighting project was headed by Demeester, before he joined Vermeulen in fact, but the lessons learnt from lighting the Aspria interior are today being implemented in a current undertaking in Prague, where ACT is lighting the five-star Le Meridien Hotel. The Aspria is “the closest experience we have for that project. It is much focussed on interior design and the quality of the lighting atmosphere,” says Demeester.

The finished Aspria health centre was a £2.9 million (€4.2 million) refit of a 1960s building by architectural practice Art & Build. Inside, Demeester employed mostly uplighting to complement the warm and cool tones of materials such as concrete, plaster and wood. “The fitness rooms, the cloakrooms and the swimming pool are all uplit,” he says. “This general lighting being supplemented with downlights if required.” The illumination of a curved wall, which slices up through two floors to appear in both the centre’s fitness room and swimming pool on the floor above, was given a dynamic lighting treatment. Eight CDM-T 150W colour-changing Studio Due Minicity projectors wash the wall in vibrant colours on both floors.

Lighting Le Meridien in the capital of the Czech Republic, ACT will be focusing on making “people feel comfortable as if they are at home but also add excitement and some magic,” says Demeester. When completed in 2009, the hotel will offer the public a chance to experience a little of that lighting magic; but as ACT has already lit interiors and exteriors in Las Vegas, Paris and numerous European cities, the opportunity for an uplifting experience could be much closer than you imagine.