Prince Edward Theatre

London, UK

Prominently positioned on the corner of Old Compton Street and Greek Street, lies the well-known Prince Edward Theatre. Named after the then Prince of Wales, the historic playhouse has gone through a number of cosmetic changes over the years, including the refurbishment of its exterior torchieres which UFO were enlisted to assist with.

Pritchard Themis who designed the scheme wanted to replace the sodium based illuminators in the torchieres with colour-changing LEDs which would not only have a considerably longer lifespan, but would also provide theatre personnel with greater flexibility over the building's exterior lighting effects.

In keeping with the brief, we stripped out the sodium sources and removed the existing coating from the surface of each fitting, before strengthening the wall plates and fabricating new metal mounting brackets and supports.

All of the components were powder coated at our in-house paintshop; the inside of the torchiere bowls were powder coated in white whilst the outer elements were coated in Californium to perfectly match the rest of the metal work on the theatre façade.

Each torchiere bowl was retrofitted with 3000K LED uplighters that had a lumen output of approximately 3500lms, whilst the Greek Street torchieres also benefitted from the addition of LED downlights in the same specification, providing functional lighting onto the pavement below. In the rear of each torchiere's shaft we removed a channel and fitted it with LED linear detail and control cables, which were completely concealed from public view and threw quality light out onto the façade below.

Images courtesy of Greg Townsend / Light Projects / Pritchard Themis