The lighting design for the Macallan Distillery and Visitor Experience draws from the dynamic light qualities of the local landscape to shape a highly memorable experience of the brand and the setting. Deeply integrated into the project, it delivers on the multiple considerations of the brief without compromise to any single aspect. Specifically, light helps to express the relationship between the architecture, landscape, and brand heritage, supporting and enhancing the theatrical telling of the Macallan story while also providing separately controlled working light for the production facility.

The design crafts a balance of light, darkness, colour and texture to build a sense of revelation and wonder into the visitor journey. From the dramatic first glimpse of the illuminated undulating roofline, light guides and enhances the experience.

Inside, skilled choreography of lit effect celebrates the impressive scale and form of the architecture while evoking the alchemy within the pipes and distilling equipment. The roof appears to float, its peaks revealed in soft warm light. Colour provides visual cues; cool blue for the stainless steel cold process equipment, and amber red hues for the hot copper stills. Programmed scenes further reveal the space, allowing focus on a single entity, or the entire area. Lighting cues allow these scenes to evolve over the course of a tour, bringing the whisky-making process to life and culminating in an immersive dynamic light experience in the circular whisky store, the Cave Privée. Each exhibit on the tour features meticulously integrated details that form a fundamental part of the experience.

The retail and hospitality spaces are enriched by the magical play of light: a soaring brand wall made of hundreds of bottles forms a dynamic tapestry of light, glass and liquid behind the shop and bar, contrasting with the quiet, contemplative shadows of the VIP bar.

Credits: Arup, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Gillespies, Atelier Brückner