How 1,600 industrial floodlights transform Singapore into a global stage every September while remaining sustainable

Every September, Marina Bay undergoes one of the world’s most complex temporary transformations. What begins as ordinary city streets becomes a Formula 1 circuit bathed in light bright enough to be seen from space — and then, just days later, returns to normalcy as if nothing had happened.

The Singapore Grand Prix presents a unique technical puzzle that extends far beyond motorsport: how do you light a 4.94-kilometer street circuit to Formula 1’s exacting standards, broadcast it to half a billion viewers worldwide, then dismantle the entire system within weeks?

For Signify, the lighting systems company that has, in partnership with DZE Engineering, illuminated the race since its inception, it has become an annual test case in the possibilities and limitations of temporary infrastructure. The challenge, according to Jitender Khurana, the company’s General Manager for Systems and Services in Asia Pacific, lies in achieving instant perfection: “Illuminating a temporary street circuit like Singapore’s Formula 1 night race presents a distinctive set of engineering challenges, unlike those of a permanent venue such as a stadium.” 

The numbers alone hint at the complexity: over 1,600 Philips ArenaVision LED floodlights and more than 220 kilometers of cabling must be deployed, calibrated, tested, and later packed away — all under intense time pressure and with no margin for error.

The paradox of visibility

The lighting system must satisfy two fundamentally different sets of requirements, each pulling in slightly different directions. Drivers navigating tight corners at 300 kilometers per hour need consistent, shadow-free visibility where glare and inconsistency aren’t merely inconvenient — they’re potentially catastrophic. A miscalculated beam angle or an unexpected shadow could mean the difference between a clean lap and a barrier collision.

Simultaneously, television broadcasters require the kind of color accuracy, consistency, and visual depth that translates compellingly to screens in living rooms from Singapore to São Paulo. The same lighting that eliminates dangerous shadows for drivers must also create the visual richness that makes for engaging television coverage.

“We see ourselves as both” safety engineers and experience creators, Khurana says, though the dual mandate creates inherent tensions in system design. What appears effortlessly smooth to television audiences represents countless hours of calibration, with engineers fine-tuning beam angles and color temperatures to satisfy both the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile’s strict safety requirements and broadcasters’ quality demands.

The result, according to Signify, is a system that is “literally cinema-ready” — lighting with the color precision and consistency typically reserved for film studios. Whether this claim holds up in practice becomes evident each year when broadcast cameras capture every detail of the race for global audiences, though the technical specifications remain largely invisible to casual viewers.

The temporary infrastructure question

Still, the race raises broader questions about the efficiency and sustainability of temporary mega-events. While permanent stadiums can evolve their lighting systems over decades of refinement, the Singapore circuit must be built to full specification from scratch each year, then completely dismantled afterward.

Signify argues this apparent inefficiency actually drives innovation in equipment durability and deployment speed. The LED fixtures are designed for 100,000-hour lifespans — far exceeding what’s needed for a single three-day event — allowing extensive reuse across multiple installations. Components that don’t return to Singapore often find second lives in permanent venues or other temporary events worldwide.

The company claims a 30 percent reduction in energy consumption compared to previous lighting technologies, positioning this as evidence that even temporary mega-events can reduce their environmental footprint. The efficiency gains come partly from LED technology’s inherent advantages and partly from more precise light distribution that reduces waste.

Whether these efficiency gains offset the environmental costs of annually shipping, installing, and dismantling such massive infrastructure remains a subject of broader debate about mega-events and sustainability. Signify’s approach represents one attempt to address these concerns within the constraints of an inherently resource-intensive spectacle.

Urban theater and technical precision

The Singapore Grand Prix occupies an unusual position in the landscape of Formula 1 racing. Unlike purpose-built circuits in remote locations, it transforms a functioning city center into a racetrack, requiring the lighting system to work within existing urban infrastructure while meeting the sport’s most demanding technical standards.

This integration creates unique challenges. The lighting must be bright enough for racing but not so intense as to disturb nearby residential areas and it must work seamlessly with Singapore’s existing traffic management systems and urban lighting grid. Cable routing, then, becomes a three-dimensional puzzle involving not just the track surface but also the city’s complex network of utilities, pedestrian bridges, and architectural features.

The annual installation has become a kind of urban ballet, with crews working around the clock to thread hundreds of kilometers of cable through a living city without disrupting daily operations any more than necessary. Local authorities coordinate with lighting technicians to ensure that essential city services continue functioning even as Marina Bay is transformed into a global stage.

For Singapore itself, the race demonstrates urban sophistication and technological capability that extends well beyond motorsport. The successful execution of such a complex temporary installation projects an image of a city that can manage ambitious technical challenges while maintaining its role as a regional business and cultural center.

The business of invisibility

Still, the most intriguing aspect of Signify’s work lies in what Khurana describes as lighting’s fundamental paradox: “Exceptional lighting, when masterfully executed, recedes into the periphery.” The most successful lighting systems are those that viewers don’t consciously notice — they simply enable the main event to unfold without distraction.

Yet the Singapore Grand Prix makes lighting temporarily visible, turning it from invisible infrastructure into a key component of the spectacle itself. The interplay of light and shadow across Marina Bay’s distinctive skyline becomes part of the race’s visual identity, as recognizable as Monaco’s harbor or Silverstone’s countryside setting.

This visibility creates both opportunity and pressure for Signify. Success means not just meeting technical specifications but contributing to the race’s distinctive aesthetic appeal. Failure, conversely, becomes immediately apparent to global audiences — a malfunction that might go unnoticed in a permanent venue becomes a broadcast crisis when it occurs during one of motorsport’s premier events.

Looking ahead

Increasingly, as environmental scrutiny of mega-events intensifies and cities become more conscious of their carbon footprints, the Singapore model faces questions about its long-term viability. Can temporary installations justify their resource consumption through efficiency gains and reusability? How do the economic and cultural benefits of such events weigh against their environmental costs?

For Signify and DZE Engineering, the Singapore contract represents both business opportunity and technical showcase — a chance to demonstrate capabilities in one of lighting’s most demanding applications. The innovations developed under the pressure of the annual installation cycle often find their way into the company’s broader product development, creating a feedback loop between temporary spectacle and permanent infrastructure.

Whether this approach proves sustainable in the broadest sense — environmentally, economically, and culturally — will likely influence how other cities approach similar spectacles in the years ahead. As urban populations grow and cities compete for global attention, the balance between ambition and responsibility that the Singapore Grand Prix represents may become increasingly relevant.

The lights will go up again in a few days, presenting the same engineering puzzle with the same time pressures and the same global audience watching. In that annual cycle of construction and deconstruction lies both the challenge and the appeal of temporary infrastructure — the chance to create something extraordinary, however briefly, in the heart of a living city.