The Ritz Carlton, Grand Canal

Set amidst beautifully landscaped gardens, the Renaissance-styled Ritz Carlton Grand Canal in Abu Dhabi offers a luxury beach resort experience minutes away from the city centre. This beachfront 5-star hotel is situated next to the iconic Sheikh Bayed Grand Mosque and features a 2,000-square-meter rejuvenating spa, ten on-site restaurants, sophisticated lounges and pool-side bars, and spacious meeting facilities.

Visual Energy were approached by Otak International architects on behalf of Abu Dhabi National Hotels (ADNH) to help designing the lighting scheme for the project. With 447 first-rate guest rooms and suites, and 85 private villas, the project was both demanding and challenging to meet the standards required for such a prestigious project in a prime location of Abu Dhabi, but the Visual Energy team rose to the challenge and deliver a first class solution on both the facade, landscaping and interior elements of the hotel. One of the most challenging features of the project was the facade lighting. Due to the complexity of the Renaissance styling on the facade, Visual Energy had to find a solution using precision, narrow beamed projectors to gently accent light the different areas of architecture. This sympathetic approach using a warm white solution allows the building to come to life at night and the use of an LED solution should mean the scheme should maintain its prowess for years to come. The iGuzzini fittings were chosen based on both technical performance and aesthetical reasons. They had to be small enough not to detract from the architecture of the building but, in the case of the façade, powerful enough to throw light up to 3 storeys high. To this end, the selected luminaires were Light Up Balisage, for its perfect grazing light emission and integration with the surrounding for the landscape area, Linealuce is used as wall washers allowing a great uniformity effect, and a special glim cube has been picked as the ideal solution for accentuating the features and dynamics of the façade.