Bespoke lighting to stand out from the competition.

A place of elemental power and beauty, Cornwall’s Tintagel Castle is an outstanding example of a man-made feature interacting with a natural feature. With the existing ancient land bridge now lost through collapse and erosion, English Heritage ran an open international competition to design a new clifftop footbridge. This bridge, 72m in span, would sit 28m above the existing ancient crossing to open up exhilarating views of the island, coastline and Atlantic seascape, and transform the visitor experience.

We were commissioned by William Matthews Associates and Ney & Partners to produce images for their competition entry. The team’s proposal created an elegant, poetic structure that explored many of the contrasts that make Tintagel Castle so special and intriguing – the transition between the mainland and island, the known and unknown, reality and legend – so we wanted to create images that fully conveyed the drama and contrast inherent in the site itself.

Although the organisers had supplied site photography to all entrants, we felt that it wasn’t sufficiently atmospheric to showcase the teams’ proposals. We wanted our images to fully capture the experience of the Cornish seascapes and skies, so we set about modelling the island site in 3D. We then wrapped the model in the original photography, relighting it to draw out the true visual potential of the site.

The team went on to win the competition, beating 136 other submissions.