The UK’s leading electrical distributor, Newey & Eyre, has helped bring one man’s vision to life – with lights and light fittings for the famous Channel 4 ‘Grand Designs’ building project, Cloud 8.
Described by ‘Building’ magazine as “the most exciting building in Britain”, Cloud 8 is the brainchild of Tom Perry, who describes his project as ‘my mid-life crisis’. The idea for his extraordinary house was borne out of his dream of a truly contemporary home and the result is ‘a symphony of angles, glass walls and exposed steel, with a dramatic inverted roof’ in the Chilterns.
The Cloud 8 team chose to work with Newey & Eyre because the company was able to offer a range of value-added concepts, which were conveniently serviced through its local Reading branch.
The project has been extremely complex, particularly since a large proportion of the house’s facade is constructed from glass. Whilst glass houses look beautiful when well-lit, effective lighting can be very difficult to achieve.
Indigo Light Planning designed the creative solutions for Cloud 8 and the final design included trough lighting in the floor and concealed ceiling lights, both of which use the few walls in the building to reflect light. In the living room and kitchen, specialist lighting trays have been made, which also accommodate blinds. These trays include concealed uplighting to reflect on the gullwing ceiling, and downlights for reading and working.
In total, there are 106 controllable lighting circuits in the house and LED lights that change colour according to weather conditions, warmer colours on cooler days and vice versa. The Cloud 8 project team are convinced they’ve realised the architect’s goal.
The house has already featured on Channel 4’s Grand Designs programme and achieved record viewing figures of 4.6 million. A sequel is in the pipeline.
Tom Perry says, “This has been an enormous project, which has been running for three years now. To make progress, we’ve relied heavily on strong working partnerships like the one we’ve enjoyed with Newey & Eyre. The team at the Reading branch have been a fantastic support throughout this latest stage of the project, being on hand to offer sound advice and able to supply us with well-serviced and cost-effective solutions to meet our needs – an excellent service all round.”
If you want to know more about Cloud 8 and keep an eye on progress, read Tom’s regular website updates by visiting: www.cloud8.org.uk
Photo caption: (left to right), Newey & Eyre’s Reading branch business manager, Mark Phillips with the creator of Cloud 8, Tom Perry.
ENDS
For more information or an image to accompany this press release, contact Paul Myerscough ([email protected]) or Martha Browes ([email protected]) of Brahm on 0113 230 4000.
Notes to Editors:
Newey & Eyre, the leading professional electrical distributor, was established in 1926 and currently operates a network of 176 branches throughout the UK. With the widest stock profile and expansive branch network of any electrical distributor, Newey & Eyre has a customer base of over 60,000 including engineering, electrical and facilities management contractors.
Newey & Eyre is supported by a £20 million, 315,000 sq ft National Distribution Centre (NDC) in Runcorn and 13 Area Support Centres providing the industry’s leading distribution and logistics function. Designed to deliver exceptional service to enforce Newey & Eyre’s reliability, the NDC holds over 43,000 stock lines all with next day delivery to the customers’ preferred site or branch location.
Newey & Eyre is part of Hagemeyer UK.
