FOUR SEASONS ASTIR PALACE

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Astir Palace in Athens, Greece is known for its iconic hotel bar and restaurant. Known and loved by the locals and visitors, the resort first opened its doors in 1958 and has seen its fair share of famous dignitaries over the years from Jackie Kennedy to Liza Minnelli, President Nixon and Nelson Mandela to name a few. In 2019 the hotel saw a complete overhaul with the building being completely renovated, preserving only structural elements and some of the exterior walls.

This Four Seasons Hotel overlooks the waterfront, Avra Lounge is an all-day lounge bar venue: relaxing in the day and with a buzzing vibes in the evenings. For a spot like this, the bar lighting complements the changes in daylight and adapts to create a welcoming, intimate atmosphere throughout the day. London based Lighting Design International (LDI) were chosen to create and implement the lighting design for Avra Lounge and Astir Palace Hotel, Athens as a whole.

The breath-taking setting of Avra Lounge, carefully created by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio (MBDS), boasts bespoke feature pendants which provide an unforgettable first impression on entering the space. The ribbed glass globes are lit with 2200K lamps providing warm light to the whole area, while discreet accent lighting lights up the tables and the décor below. A lighting control system was used to allow the lit canvas to be set seamlessly using adjustable scene settings.

LDI chose a selection of Zico’s 1-100% dimmable flicker-free candle, GLS and golfball 2000 – 2200K lamps for this project. Sandra Brookes, Senior Designer for LDI said: ‘We used Zico lamps everywhere in the project for their great dimmability and fantastic compatibility with Lutron system.  The lamps were mainly used for the decorative light fittings and they helped solve the dimmability issues we always had in the past, where the decorative fittings will present different lamps that did not dim appropriately, had flicker or their visual appearance was not right both in terms of lighting and the look of the lamp. Zico lamps look their best within the pendants of Avra Lounge producing a lovely golden glow.’

Avra Lounge in Athens, Greece won the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards 2020 in the Lighting category, an absolutely stunning hospitality venue.

Photography by  Gavriil Papadiotis