Vibrant Irish Light

Image Now has been collaborating with Dublin Airport to help reinvigorate largely dull spaces around the airport with a new vibrancy and injection of arts & culture. Working together, we are giving passengers a unique taste of Ireland without ever having to leave the airport.

One of the areas we were asked to address was a link corridor within Terminal 1. On surveying the location, we noticed that when the sun shone into the space it filled the entire corridor with a powerful light. Our team knew instantly that light and colour were going to be the biggest assets for the creative installation.

Ireland is always associated with the colour green, through our landscape, our climate and our environment. However, dawn, sunset, changing weather and different seasons bring a wide variety of golds and pinks, oranges and purples to the Irish landscape. This vibrancy has provided the inspiration for words and music, myths and legends, stories and poetry and songs and lyrics. We wanted to capture this broad spectrum of light and emphasise it for passengers as they moved through the space. Our team also wanted to reimagine the idea of being at ‘the end of the rainbow’, a nod to a mythological Irish story that has been passed on from generation to generation.

Image Now imported bespoke rolls of transparent vinyl in a variety of hues and applied them to the tall windows, creating a wall of coloured glass. On the opposite wall, we typeset Swanlight, a poem by beloved Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue. John's wonderful and enduring legacy of writing celebrates nature and the human spirit. Swanlight captures Ireland's vibrancy with a purity of thought on light, harmonising beautifully with an elegant scene of swans. Each white letter was individually rendered and mounted on the newly restructured white wall. Image Now wanted to represent the purity and elegance of the poem with a neutral white tone and let the colour and energy come from the light that shone through the windows on the opposite wall. Carefully positioned neon tubes of light beside each verse allow the poem to come to life, even when the sun sets.

The solution is a vibrant walkway that feels almost ‘spiritual’ as you pass through it. John O'Donohue’s colourful poem, when combined with slabs of vivid glass, influences every passenger journey and sheds a positive light on Dublin Airport as a brand that is transforming airport experiences.