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Original unfinished Temple of Divine Providence (1792) in Warsaw's Botanical Gardens (Wikipedia). Photo credit: By Hubert Śmietanka
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First inspired in 1791, shortly after adoption of Poland’s first constitution, the Temple of Divine Providence was planned to be one of the most significant Roman Catholic buildings in the country. But Russians attacked and later Poland disappeared from Europe’s map and only a small ruin of a chapel remained. Later World War II and financial difficulties stood in the way of construction, but finally in 1999 Pope John Paul blessed the cornerstone and prayed, "May this shrine become a place of special thanksgiving for freedom of the Homeland. I pray that no painful experience would disturb this thanksgiving for which we have waited 200 years." On Poland’s Independence Day, November 11, 2016, the temple opening was celebrated.
The church is built in the trendy developing Wilanów district south of the Polish capital and designed by architects Wojciech and Lech Szymborski. Finishing touches installed this year include Robe Actor 6 and ParFect 100 LED fixtures as part of the architectural lighting.
Its spacious interior culminates in a rotunda gallery and a central glass dome at the top, all making high visual impact and defining the space. The pale coloured render of the columns and other interior features is perfect for lighting, so the Temple’s management company, The Centre of Divine Providence, reached out to lighting specialists Prolight to design and specify a scheme to transform a somewhat cold and austere interior into a dynamic, warm and interesting space. Lighting was seen as an ideal way to reflect the changes in the church calendar and shift the mood accordingly.
With cutting edge acoustic treatment, the 3,000-seat Temple is designed for concerts, choral and orchestral recitals and televised music events. It also contains a museum dedicated to Pope John Paul II and Stefan Wyszyński leader of the Catholic Church under Communist rule and a Pantheon of Great Poles.
Prolight’s Tomasz Adamski created the lighting design, which includes a substantial quantity of DMX controlled LED fixtures, and his colleagues Michal Kaczmarek and Rafal Rzeczkowski helped co-ordinate the installation process and the team.
The 16 x Actor 6s – a static version of Robe’s LEDWash 600 – are installed on special outrigging brackets to illuminate a circular rotunda at the lower apex of the dome. The design team chose them for their robustness and reliability. Being placed in a position not easily accessible, they needed fixtures that would require minimal maintenance.
Above these, the 80 x ParFects are installed at the base of the curved dome walls – which stretch upwards for 60 metres to the top of the glass dome, complete with alternating variable height windows. For lighting this, they needed fixtures with great colors and plenty of intensity allowing different areas of the dome to be delineated, picking out the detail of the overall design.
“The ParFects are doing a fantastic job of lighting the walls in rich and beautiful colours,” comments Kaczmarek.
A series of LED colour changers were also installed at the base of the 26 arched columns as part of the scheme, so different surfaces in the Temple can be illuminated, bringing the environment alive with depth, character and a real sense of occasion. All lighting is run through a Pharos controller, which can be accessed remotely via iPad.
224 years after the first cornerstone of the current Temple building was laid, a Russian invasion and two World Wars later, an inaugural Mass was celebrated. Since then it has been used for many concerts and events, with lighting that brings ambience and a feeling of elegance to this unique architecture.
