The Auckland Cube is the final project in the Auckland City Centre development plan. It has become a shining pearl that lights up Auckland’s night sky.
The project uses a state-of-the-art lighting control system to create a dynamic lighting scene that celebrates seasonal festivals, local sports teams and cultural events associated with the local community.

The concept developed by the lighting designers for the urban central cube was to create a uniform glow within the inner crown cube and decorate the facade with four vertical beams of light, thus defining the lighting character of the building from top to bottom.
The lighting design team and the architect conducted extensive full-scale model tests to see how the lighting would behave through the facade glass, in order to select the most appropriate glass treatment and fixture placement to diffuse the light. However, the architects ultimately opted for glass with a light transmittance of only 25%, so that they could also achieve the required transparency during the day, revealing the exquisite metal structure behind the glass cube. Finding the perfect balance between transparency and semi-transparency, while challenging, is critical to the success of a project.

Thanks to comprehensive simulation opportunities and computational software, lighting designers are able to build detailed lighting models that include all structural obstacles to study the best placement for lighting fixtures. The lighting computational model was also used to explore opportunities to use different colors in crown lighting and to tell stories relevant to the Oakland-San Francisco community.

A structural platform mounted 4 feet above the top of the glass divides the lighting function into two parts. The “Level 1” scheme skimps lightly over the glass from the top edge of the cube (6 inches from the surface), which cannot be illuminated directly from the glass surface due to structural and glass cleaning limitations. The “Level 2” scheme is installed at the bottom of the platform, 3 feet from the glass surface, evenly illuminating the remaining 30 to 40 feet of glass. The third scheme, which the team called “The Drip”, is a row of lights hidden in the four corners of the cube, almost connecting the top of the building to the bottom. The Drip” uses white adjustable LED lights and is programmed according to the selected color display.

None of the lighting fixtures shine 90 degrees straight up, avoiding any dark sky problems and fully complying with Auckland’s “Dark Sky Ordinance”.

The lighting design team designed 12 lighting scenes associated with national holidays, local sports teams and community cultural events that connect locals on both sides of the San Francisco Bay
In addition to using different colors, the lighting designers also make full use of the advanced lighting control system to make the colorful lighting scene full of movement. Several lighting scenes have chase programs; When the light is rotated inside the crown cube, a dynamic effect is created.

Since its completion, the Auckland City Centre Cube has become a landmark in the Auckland night sky. Visitors can use it to find their way around the city centre. For residents, whether they arrive in Auckland by car or plane, it will feel like they have come home when they see the iconic glass crown cube illuminated by a lighting show dominated by sapphire or other celebratory colours.