TAJ CAPE TOWN
One of the most recognised hotel groups in Asia is Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, which was incorporated by the founder of the Tata Group, Mr Jamsetji N Tata. Its first and most famous property, the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, was opened in Bombay in 1903 and became renowned as the apogee of Indian hospitality.
The latest Taj Hotel to open its doors is in Cape Town, in a grand old building that was once home to The South African Reserve Bank, Temple Chambers, and later the BOE (Board of Executors). The new 5-star hotel is a magnificent melding of old heritage and new luxury, combining the original facade and finest features of the historic building with elegant furnishings, contemporary amenities and cutting edge technology.
Its facilities include 177 guest rooms, three restaurants, a Club Lounge, a Cigar lounge, a number of banqueting and meeting rooms, a fitness centre incorporating gym and pool, as well as the Jiva Grande Spa.
Position, position, position
Located on the corner of Wale and Adderley streets at the entrance to the famous pedestrian precinct, St George’s Mall, the hotel is perfectly situated for visitors wanting to explore the Mother City’s unique blend of fascinating history, exotic culture, soulful art, lively entertainment and delectable cuisine.
When guests choose to dine at the hotel, the Taj Cape Town offers three distinctly different experiences: the Bombay Brasserie, specialising in Indian cuisine; the Twankey, an exclusively champagne and oysters venue; and Mint, an all-day restaurant with a menu to suit all tastes.
The two year refurbishment of the building was undertaken by David Edwards of JPA Design who manages all of the Taj Group’s interior design requirements, and the lighting was designed by British lighting consultant, Tony Corbett, who designed the original lighting for Cats and numerous other West End theatre productions. The Taj Cape Town is his 200th commission for hotel lighting design.
Corbett enlisted the help of Advantage Project Management to invite proposals for a comprehensive distributed dimming system for the Taj Cape Town. His preference was for the Helvar range of products manufactured in the UK.
Within 2 weeks of being invited to tender, Electrosonic SA’s Bruce Schwartz flew to Cape Town to present drawings and estimates for Corbett’s evaluation. While hitting the right button in terms of products, Advantage felt that Electrosonic was not bang on the money and asked for a revised costing by 8am the following morning.
Many hours were spent that night creatively re-designing the system and sharpening the pencil across 600 lines of an Excel spreadsheet to finally bring the estimate in on budget and be awarded the contract!
The final system relied on the newly released Helvar 458 Dimmer and Helvar 920 SDim Router which - being small, compact, flexible and networkable - provided the perfect solution for the Taj Cape Town.
Taj gets the Helvar treatment
The requirement was for 340 x Helvar 458 Dimming Channels over 3 different floors. All public areas, restaurants, conference rooms and the fitness centre and spa received distributed dimming controlled from 3 Helvar 920 Routers which managed all the processing and allowed Corbett to create up to 8 scenes per day in multiple areas.
After Goddard Electrical had installed the dimmer chassis, the Electrosonic team returned to Cape Town in December to install the dimmer modules and the routers. Keith Pugin ensured that all the circuits were correct and commissioned the dimmers, and Kobus Visser managed all the programming.
“The great thing about the 920 routers is that they incorporate everything – Dali, S-Dim and DMX - into one system,” said Kobus. “It means you don’t need different interfaces and you can use the best lighting control signals for the application. The control panels run on Dali, the dimmers run on S-Dim because you can have a much longer fade than you get with Dali, and the LEDs run off DMX”.
In January this year, Tony Corbett arrived for a week of rigorous plotting with Kobus, and had both staying up until the early hours of the morning to set up hundreds of scenes.
“Day and night, I went everywhere with my laptop, plugging in for Tony to set the day and night levels in each venue, and then testing and altering until we got it right”.
When the hotel opened to the public in late January, it showcased a marriage of technology and luxury at its best in every aspect, not least of which was the lighting.
“In many hotels, the lights are simply spread across the whole space. In the Taj Cape Town the lighting is meaningful, with focus on individual pieces of furniture and art works, and on each setting of table and chairs,” said Kobus.
Helvar Designer software was used to set up and program the time based system for the all lighting in the hotel, providing individual settings for each venue and altering not only the light levels at different times, but also the colours – using straw, light gold, lavender, true blue and midnight blue to create mood in the various venues.
The Entrance Lobby, Foyer, Cigar Lounge and Elevator Lobby have 10 programmed scenes beginning with an early morning setting when guests are checking out, daytime settings of brighter light that continue until just before dusk, followed by early evening when the lighting dims slowly over an hour from 5.30 pm to 6.30 pm.
The mid-evening setting also dims down gradually until it reaches the cosy late night setting at 10pm. This is when the lights are very low, especially in the restaurants when there are candles on the tables and diners are lingering over their last glass of wine or coffee. Finally, the very late night setting from midnight to early morning has only artworks lit in the public areas and the chandeliers at a very low light level.
Eating in style
The Club Lounge, which is an ideal venue for breakfast or lunch or just to read the newspapers over a cup of coffee, has a mix of standard and table lamps as well as chandeliers and downlighters, all of which are dimmable and programmed with a daytime scene and a night time scene.
The Bombay Brasserie has only its blue chandeliers lit during the day, with downlighters coming into play at night, transforming the tables with lavender light and turning the white marble on the walls a midnight blue.
In the Mint restaurant, the tables are lit by a specially designed downlighter that gives no glare when you glance up at it, and focuses a small pool of light on each table. The vast wall length wine chiller incorporates LEDs which highlight the bottles but do not heat the wine.
More controlled lighting is at the buffet and in the show kitchen which is separated from the restaurant by glass so that diners may enjoy the experience of watching their meals being prepared. Four scenes have been programmed for Mint – one daytime and three evening settings for early, mid and late evening.
The Twankey Champagne and Oyster Bar also has four staged settings, with downlighters pooling yellow light onto the expanses of white and grey veined marble during the day, changing to a combination of yellow and blue light in the early evening and deepening through mid evening to midnight blue light in the late evening.
In Phase 2 of the lighting project, there will also be LEDs washing the face of the marble bar and some use of neon lighting in specific areas.
“Lighting is a critical element of the experience we want to create. As a guest you need to own the space you’re in, and lighting does that – it creates a little capsule that only you and the companions at your table inhabit. It creates a sense of intimacy and luxury,” said Theo Cromhout, Director of Sales & Marketing.
These key words – intimacy and luxury – are indeed as much the cornerstones of the Taj Cape Town as its original time-aged, hand-hewn granite.