We're working on illuminating a commercial lobby floor for a project in Perth, Australia. To firm up our strategies, the specified glass panels were shipped to us so we could study their relationship to our backlighting. Creating even illumination for this highly translucent glass surface in a load bearing floor application presented a fun challenge for our team. Photographer and videographer Andrew Thames spent a few days with us capturing the process.
Take a look at how we arrived at the final design - you'll see hot spots and any distracting evidence of the light source slowly disappear.
We're so pleased with the progression of this backlit glass floor installation at the Dallas Convention Center Hotel, we wanted to share the on-site photos immediately! The project is another great testament to the importance of not only mock-ups, testing, and coordination from one source, but also to being flexible and ready on-site with an arsenal of lighting tricks.
Stay tuned for the full project story and completion photos.
Make sure to wear surgical gloves and a hospital mask if you ever have the fortune to visit a Pieke Bergmans display. Her works have an infection that runs rampant through the crystal she hand blows. The disease twists and mutilates water carafes, vases, and crystal light "bulbs" of her Design Virus collection into shapes that don't belong in the ordinary world, taking mundane forms and making them into something organic, alive, and flowing.
Resting on office furniture, hanging in defiance of gravity, or scorching a table with their fever, her LED light "blubs" ignore conventional doctrine and defy the shapes to which we have accustomed ourselves. The vases lie in all different places and even lounging in a puddle seeking relief.
We enjoy the work of this Dutch artist and cannot wait to have an infected lamp blistering the studio desks at our office.
Update: new field photos and video from our 1828 L Street project
Original blog in [italics] below posted in April 2011
[Contact closures, relays, Cue servers, DMX decoder units, din rails… if you’re a conceptual designer, you’re probably not too interested in what those mean, but when implemented through a thoughtful electrical engineering process, these items can add a whole new element of fluctuation to your spaces.
Imagine synchronizing the vertical movement of an elevator with a lighting effect that “speaks” to the waiting patrons. At the renovation of 1828 L Street in Washington, D.C., lighting designers MCLA and architects DEP Designs envisioned a full scale elevator lantern that capitalized on the dynamics of time and movement (fitting for an elevator lobby). The elevator call lanterns take on a modern architecture with full height panels of backlit glass. Goodbye, standard call buttons!
Standard Elevator Indicator Buttons - small scale, appear "additive" to the architecture (Image Credit: robinsonsmay)
Re-designed Backlit Lanterns - large scale, integral to the architecture
The design intent was to have the elevator lanterns illuminated at a dim level at all times. When the elevators descend to the main lobby at the first floor, the lanterns slowly brighten up to 100%, signifying the arrival of the elevator cab. Pretty cool visual reinforcement of movement!
Custom controls by GPI sync the elevator control system with our Flat-Lite™ LED panels
Only one of the elevators descends to the basement; the designers wanted the lantern at this elevator to illuminate in a red color. At this area, GPI designed a dual-illumination red and white LED panel to backlight the glass. The colored and white settings were engineered to be controlled independently. When the cab is above ground, the lantern remains white like the others. The relay to the red LED string only fires when the elevator drops to the basement level, at which time the LED panel changes to its red hue.
Flat-Lite™ LED panel on white and red settings
This is just one job that goes to show the value of integration when it comes to backlit features. As you’ll often hear us advocate, to have a truly well-executed backlit feature, it’s much more about the LED panels themselves. In this case, the LED panels were properly designed to both seamlessly illuminate the surface and interface with the existing elevator control system, for a lighting effect that strengthens the architecture. The challenges of the project were perfectly suited for our team and we’re looking forward to publishing the final installation photographs soon!]
While the exterior of building has been criticized with terms that approximate “foreign spaceship”, the interior of the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel in London employs deep textures and artistic expression. From carpet inscribed with poetry verses to high-end artwork, understated luxury abounds. But what really take center stage in this interior are the illuminated feature walls at the main entry staircase.
Designed to augment the journey through the hotel entrance with a translucent boundary, Digital Space created these massively scaled backlit walls. Framing the main staircase, the walls sweep hotel visitors from the ground floor entrance up into the first level reception area. The woven plastic mesh panels with dimensional texture provide a tactile surface with just the right amount of transparency for the visual and lighting effects the designer envisioned. LED light fixtures graze the inner surface of the wall to illuminate the mesh, changing shades of color as the day progresses.
With the unique surface choice, even continuous backlighting, and controllable color schemes, the custom illuminated wall contributes a boutique feel to this large contemporary hotel. Can't wait to get our hands on a sample of the lovely mesh and have some fun with backlighting in our Design Lab...!
Excellent .. Amazing .. I’ll bookmark your blog and take the feeds also…I’m happy to find so many useful info here in the post, we need work out more techniques in this regard, thanks for sharing
Hi there, thanks for the kind comments. I would love to hear more about you and what you do. Do you work on these types of backlighting projects often? What kind of challenges do you run into?
Designers, has your education and (hopefully subsequent) career left you completely terrified to implement colors other than white? Sure, sleek white will always be the go-to minimalist choice, but wouldn’t it be nice to stir things up once in awhile?
Proving that colored light need not only be relegated to Vegas casinos, here are some well-executed displays of multicolor architectural lighting designs to mix up the visual palette. (If only to expand our imaginations… we’re not expecting a complete paradigm shift here.)
Multicolor lighting systems tend to have a bad reputation for appearing tacky, but can actually provide great flexibility in color schemes for interiors. With adjustable color in your backlit features, the surfaces merely provide the intended texture and sheen, with the light as the dynamic variable. Unleashing unlimited opportunities to illuminate the surface in different hues or color cycles, you and your building owner can then select your favorite color settings on-site, react to ambient conditions, or change colors on special occasions. With the flick of a switch, the entire ambiance of space can shift.
1. Nordwesthaus building designed by Baumschlager Eberle
In this screened facade, lighting changes are reflected on both the interior and exterior surfaces. Cool lighting renders the space in an icy tone.
2. Marriott Pulse Bar building designed by TVS Interiors
A soaring feature by 3form consisting of LED backlit resin panels that shift color as the day progresses, tracking the programmatic changes in the hotel over the course of a day.
3. Galleria Department Store designed by UNStudio
This custom facade consists of backlit glass discs, each performing as a pixel. The facade takes on a mother of pearl sheen during the day and transforms into a lively colored billboard at night.
-->Does your design sensibility embrace the use of fluctuating color and light? How do our educational, cultural, gender, and workplace contexts affect our manipulation of these elements in design?
Thinking of designing a backlit glass bar or countertop? It's not quite as easy as just placing a light source behind the glass. There are many details that can slip through the cracks in backlit architectural features, and when the lighting system is sloppy, the time and investment that you’ve put into the surface is rendered useless.
Particularly when the glass panels and the backlighting system are provided by two different companies, it is often unclear who is responsible for these seemingly secondary items (attachment methods, diffusers, accountability for the final look). But it's really those details that make your backlit feature sink or swim. The most overlooked item when backlighting glass panels is diffusion. It’s one of those items that often slides through the design and construction process unnoticed.
A few important tests can ensure that your backlit glass designs perform to your expectations. We’ll use this recent project as an example: the designer wanted to seamlessly illuminate vivid blue glass panels from Jockimo. The glass specifications, color, and patterning were already set. The Jockimo glass sample was sent to our Design Lab here at GPI to determine the best illumination and diffusion strategy. Based on the custom LED light panel design (LED panel sizes, color temperature, spacing between LED bulbs), GPI was able to quickly generate a light diffusion strategy that complemented both the glass panels and the construction assembly.
When placed in direct contact with the LED light panel as shown below, the hot spots (bright edges) were quite visible. (Distracting, muddled look - doesn't do justice to the beauty of the glass.)
Backlit Glass Assembly Before Diffusion: Hot Spots at Edges, Cold Spots at Center
As time was of the essence, we didn’t want to increase lead time by altering the glass panel specifications with the addition of interlayers or frosted treatments. (Cross those methods off the list.)
To keep the countertop assembly as simple as possible without adding thickness, the glass surface needed to rest directly on top of the LED light panel. That meant that we couldn’t rely on the air space cavity for diffusion. (Cross that method off the list.)
We tested optical acrylic diffusing panels, but even with a slim 3/16” gauge, the added thickness was not desired. (Acrylic diffusion panels won’t work here, scratch that.)
The outcome: a specialty diffusion film was applied directly to the face of the LED panels. The corrective film blends the light and even brightens up the saturated blue colors. We applied the film using varying pressures that balance the LED panel lighting into a truly seamless plane of light. The LED light panels were shipped with the film applied, ready for easy on-site construction by the installation team.
Backlit Glass Assembly After Diffusion Film: Continuous Plane of Light, Saturated Glass Coloration
VOILA! The custom solution for evenly illuminated glass countertops– with our integrated methods, a few simple testing iterations allowed us to preserve the designer's vision.
Designing with translucent surfaces, structure, and backlighting is a delicate balance– those are three difficult materials to make work together. There are several methods to illuminate glass surfaces with backlighting, and chances are if you're creating a ceiling or wall, then you have little space in which to throw the light. Because glass is a substantially heavy material, throwing cumbersome structural members into the mix further complicates things.
Here's a video example of a prototype that GPI developed for a backlit glass ceiling project. The assembly includes metal standoff hardware, recycled glass panels, colored LED panels, and lighting controls – all customized and calibrated to complement each other, for a seamlessly blended illuminated finish.
Here are our top 3 tips for designing with backlit glass panels:
1. Don't disregard structure. Move the flat LED panels in front of all structural pieces in order to avoid casting shadows. Glass is often used in conjunction with standoffs or steel angles. Ensure that the lighting elements can be implemented into your chosen method.
2. All types of glass have different diffusion characteristics. Be sure that your lighting manufacturer can make proper modifications to the lighting fixtures to properly illuminate your chosen glass, or consult a lighting designer that is well-versed in methods to eliminate halos, hot spots, and cold spots. Create a custom mock-up or consult an expert to discuss the optimal dimension between LED panel and glass surface for best light diffusion.
3. Consider specifying a clear or white glass and use the lighting to provide the color. That way, your client can dial in the exact color desired and use different settings for special occasions.
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