Skylight fixture

Foster+Partners and Buro Happold designed the preliminary concept of the Haramain Rail Stations. Sonimetal Debbas worked with all parties to realise a challenging design specification in a very demanding environment. Sonimetal are delighted to be supplying and supervising our solution to this complex and iconic project. The fixture is composed of 24 faceted aluminium structures, assembled to form a 15m (47m circumference) circular pendant and a weight of 4500kg per unit. 192 acrylic panels (per unit) have been hand assembled with each acrylic panel milled directly from a sheet of pure cast acrylic. Each unit contains 3400 prisms and were manufactured utilising a CNC axis machine with each facet polished by hand individually (each panel took to 10 hours of machining and 3 hours hand polishing). The end result perfectly recreates the original concept by utilising the intense natural daylight penetrating the roof lights in order to create a stunning dappled rainbow effect through the prisms on the floor of the station, this effect moves across the floor as the sun tracks through the sky, animation in its purest form.