MAC-Forum, Munich Airport (DEU)

With a total floor space of around 10,000 square meters (110,000 square feet), the MAC Forum in the Munich Airport Center between Terminals 1 and 2 of the Munich Airport is the largest roofed open space in all of Europe and, in functional terms, it is a jack of all trades.

An open, 41 meter (135 foot) high hall, a space between indoors and outdoors, with multifunctional use for numerous large-scale events. The hall, which was designed by star architect Helmut Jahn, is spanned by a light, delicate roof construction made of glass and translucent fiberglass membranes, with an enormous span of 90 meters (nearly 300 feet). An architecture, therefore, that virtually embodies flexibility, and consequently an ideal opportunity for ewo to fully play out the possibilities of the modular lighting system.

The requirements were complex: the membrane construction of the roof becomes thinner at the points of support and widens at the center, but the light distribution of the lighting that is mounted there is to absolutely illuminate equally. Instead of applying several different products, ewo decided to solve the problem with one single product in which different lenses were installed depending upon the position in the room.

Not only is the light distribution flexible, preprogrammed scenes can also be retrieved in close coordination with the customer by means of dynamic lighting control. For instance, the corporate colors of the Munich Airport, special additional colors, and scenic illumination of events that are held in the MAC Forum, such as Christmas markets or public viewings.

In this space, the light, in symbiosis with the customer’s special requirements, becomes a total solution which is the same as the architecture itself: a jack of all trades.