One of the world’s largest airports and winner of the Stirling Prize for the Richard Rogers Partnership, Barajas is a vast structure with all the complexities of a contemporary transport hub.

The sheer scale of the building demanded that lighting components be kept to a minimum for reasons of manageability, maintenance and budget. In addition to revealing the architecture, it was crucial the lighting could support the intuitive wayfinding that the architectural planning provides and create a calm experience for passengers. Avoiding visual clutter was essential – as was the use of floor fixtures that would restrict the future flexibility of the building.

Speirs + Major’s solution was ingenious and simple. The team devised a suspended mirror reflector system that has the simultaneous advantage of illuminating both the floor plane and providing a rhythmical glow to the roof’s dynamic, undulating form. Budgetary constraints precluded two separate solutions.

Suspended below the roof skylights are three metal halide luminaires that project light back up onto the skylight's translucent fabric light screens plus a pair of circular mirror reflectors.

The fabric softens the fierce Madrid sunlight by day, reducing the contrast between the mirrors and surrounding areas by night. The mirrors redirect light down onto the floor of the concourse and catch the colourful structure that acts as a wayfinding system. The emission pattern of the luminaires is slightly wider than the mirrors, enabling them to achieve additional highlighting of the ceiling form. Light levels were reduced towards the facade glazing to save energy.

For the lower areas, a special wide circular ceiling luminaire known as ‘the wok’ was developed. This provides downlighting, but with some light scavenged and redirected back onto a suspended spill ring. By attracting the eye to the 'woks' rather than the concrete soffit and services above, the lighting element effectively avoided the need for a suspended ceiling and thus gave a significant financial saving.