Intercontinental Hotel

Dubai

Intercontinental and Crowne Plaza Hotel

Situation

  • Inspired by a graceful sailboat, the hotel stands tall on Dubai Creek and is ideally located for business close to Burj Khalifa and Dubai World Trade Centre.
  • Intercontinental Hotel stands next to Crowne Plaza Hotel, which is a conglomerate subsidy of IHG family of hotels around the world.
  • Considered a landmark location in Dubai due to its proximity to Festival City Mall and Dubai Airport.

The Challenge

  • The replacement of cold-cathode facade lighting that accentuates both Crowne Plaza and Intercontinental Hotel using low power consuming lighting.
  • The Facade lighting must have the ability to create color effect scenes that would beautify the buildings and surrounding area.
  • The Facade lighting must be able to be synchronized to play animated shows or scrolling text and images for special events and holidays.

Actions

  • A design was proposed by Philips to replace the existing cold cathode lighting facade lighting fixtures using Philips Color Kinetics iColor Accent Powercore. A joint venture project was agreed upon with Lumasense to prepare the DMX control system design as well as supervise the installation and commission the site.
  • ColorGraze Powecore fixtures were added at the roof deck of Crown Plaza to increase the ambient effect of the newly installed lights and highlight the building's signage.
  • The LED Lights are controlled using Philips Color Kinetics Kinet Protocol via Ethernet wired connections.
  • Two Philips Color Kinetics Light System Managers and Two dedicated Ethernet Controller Keypad were installed inside the Engineering Office to individually control both buildings.

Results

  • The installed lights have vastly improved the buildings' physical structures due to its current disposition of running pre-programmed shows throughout the evening.
  • The project was the first joint venture between Philips and Lumasense due to the acquisition of Color Kinetics by Philips at the time. With the success of this project, it established the foundation of the working relationship between Lumasense and Philips that is still held to this day.
  • The Light System Manager's official firmware was updated because of this project due to the lighting system's great requirement of IP addresses to run the lights.
  • The project is the second largest installation of iColor Accent Powercore lights in the Middle East.
  • The DMX control system is able to run pre-programmed shows where it has become a landmark location to run special shows for New Year's and other local Holidays.