By Dominique Tassell
St Mary’s Church in Warwick recently won the LIT Lighting Design Awards for 2021 in the heritage lighting category.
Jenni Gillard from Gillard Group was the lead designer on the project.
Prior to the project, the lighting at the church was very minimal. The 30-metre Bell Tower had one lamp. Outside, two huge old sodium flood lamps sat, unworking.
Father Franco Filipetto said the first step in the works was to remove the old floodlight at the front of the church.
Jenni Gillard came up with a lighting plan for the church, which Father Franco said highlights the church’s features like the sandstone and stained glass.
The bell tower of the church is also a feature, backlit by lighting from the ground and inside the tower itself
Father Franco said the fire at the church in 2017 also factored into the plans.
When repairs were undertaken, they discovered the wiring was black rubber wiring.
“It’s very old and very unstable,” Father Franco said.
When they started to pull it out, it was all the original wiring from 1926.
Father Franco said they then had to rewire the whole church.
St Mary is now one of the first 100 per cent LED lit churches in Australia.
While the lighting project was underway, they also took the opportunity to paint the inside the church at the same time, so they didn’t have to take the pews out twice.
The LIT Design Awards was created to recognize the efforts of talented international lighting product designers and lighting designers.
Each submitted design was evaluated by a grand jury panel composed of experienced and prominent academics, professionals, press members, entrepreneurs, and key leaders in the lighting industry.
Other winners in the Heritage Lighting category include the Acropolis of Athens and Monuments, the Hyde Park Barracks Museum, and the Bath Abbey.
The project was completed in August 2021, 95 years from the church’s opening day.
