Beneath the Surface Blog

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.

If you missed our first blog post about GPI technicians arriving on-site for this long awaited backlighting installation at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco, check it out here (and take a peek at the project rendering).

After a labor-intensive weekend, the bottom and center rows of the custom-built 3Form Varia Ecoresin and wood slatted surface panels are now illuminated.

To ensure that the intense patterning of wood and light was not further disrupted by structural shadows and inconsistent lighting, the fastening system has been considered hand-in-hand with the backlighting system design from the earliest concept stage.

Blocking on the back of the 3Form/wood surface panels not only reinforces the eight foot panels, but also provides a channel to hold the Flat-Lite™ at the correct distance from the lens.  The combination of burying powered LED edges into the blocking and employing diffusing tapes ensures that hot spots are not visible from any viewing angle of the feature walls.

Notice the trapezoidal panel shapes along the bottom course of panels? With special attention to light collection in the acute corners,the LED light panels were custom designed with controls and filters to provide even illumination.

More photographs of the entire completed feature wall coming soon as this installation wraps up!

For the extensive renovation of the San Francisco Grand Hyatt in Union Square, the teams at Indidesign (interior design) and Revolver (lighting design) envisioned a custom panel and backlighting treatment to revive the wall surfaces at the main escalator.

Extending from the lower lobby to the main lobby, dark wood panels striated with thin lines of illuminated 3Form Varia Ecoresin clad the escalator walls. The custom-built backlit panels bring innovative light, interesting texture, and a unique pattern as viewers move throughout the levels of the hotel.

Above: Project rendering from Indidesign

The team here at GPI has worked on the project for over 6 months, coordinating closely with the millwork team at Acosta & Sons to merge our backlighting solutions with their custom wood and resin panels.  Flexibility has been key in the project, as field dimensions shift, so have our strategies, LED panel sizes, fastening devices, and methods of controlling and balancing the light. (Special thanks to Cliff at Acosta & Sons for hand-delivering the 3Form panels on a redeye from California to Ohio so we could test the lighting!)

The custom components (Flat-Lite™ LED panels, Infuse™ custom lighting controls, wiring, and diffuser panels) arrived to site on August 1. Shortly thereafter, GPI lighting technicians arrived on-site to assist with the time-sensitive installation.

Above: Photograph of the first day’s progress, east elevation center and bottom rows of LED panels installed.

We enjoy being on-site to finally witness these intense coordination efforts come to fruition. Stay tuned for more photos and updates as this project progresses - we’ll share more about the process of generating the LED panel design, how the custom wood /resin panels were created, and how shadows and hot spots were eliminated.

Natural sunlight is a seamless light that provides enveloping spatial qualities, free from interruption. With designers increasingly turning to nature for design inspiration, recreating this smooth quality can be tricky with artificial lighting technology. How do you avoid choppy, spotty, discontinuous appearance within your artificial lighting sources?

When translating your design from small samples to fully cladding an entire wall, don’t forget that the every material has its scalar limits. (Yes, even LED light panels are limited to 4’ x 9’ sheets!) This means that for a cladding a 10’ x 40’ backlit glass wall, you could have anywhere from 11 to 100 individual LED light panels, and probably only 8 glass panels. How do we make those seams in the lighting disappear? It depends on the specific condition and how the Flat-Lite™ LED panels are designed.  At GPI, we use these terms to qualify what type of light seam we are designing around:

1. Non-powered field seam

Non-powered field seam condition without diffusing methods or correct cavity

This type of edge does not have LEDs located on it, but when light bounces off the edge of the panel, a slight bright spot still occurs. When non-powered field seams are located in the center (or “field”) of the surface panel, it can become apparent. Calculating the correct lighting cavity (situating the surface the correct distance away from the light source) typically mitigates the evidence of a non-powered field seam.

2. Powered field seam

Powered field seam condition without diffusing methods or correct cavity

Powered field seams are the illuminated edge along which the LED light sources are located. These are the brightest and most susceptible of seams. When butted together and placed behind the center of a continuous surface panel (glass/resin/stone/fabric), powered field seams can create a very evident bright line. Without finish trims and edge treatments to disguise the bright line, their location within the center continuous surface makes them even more apparent. Diffusing panels and optic films are often applied to the Flat-Lite™ LED panels to disguise the evidence of a powered field seam.

3. Powered perimeter

In gray circle: powered perimeter without any diffusing methods

A powered perimeter is an edge with LED light sources located around the perimeter of your feature (where it meets the wall, ceiling, or finish trim). The powered edge seam doesn’t fall in the middle of a glass or onyx panel, so it doesn’t appear as disruptive as #2, but can provide evidence of bright spots.

4. Non-powered perimeter

The non-powered perimeter is our best friend. This condition does not contain LED light sources and is usually tucked away.  When all of the other conditions are diffused, it typically fades away quietly into the background, with little attention needed.

--> Don’t think that testing with one small lighting sample that appears continuous in a small square means your design work is done.  Pay careful attention when translating the lighting design to full scale panels, with particular attention to how the lighting panels meet at seams and match up with your surface module sizes.

When you envision the city of Cleveland, the awful traffic ala NYC doesn’t usually come to mind, right? Driving home from work this week, torrential downpours streamed down from the suddenly gray sky, and power to the traffic lights was diminished. At Westlake’s largest intersection, this could have been pretty disastrous, but not with a reliable traffic cop ready to step up.

Waiting (impatiently, I admit) for my lane to be waved through the light, I couldn’t help but observe the brightly orange-clad officer confidently navigating the sea of cars. I immediately could relate to his role. The cop was a single entity directing a fairly complex situation, which without his involvement would have been a huge catastrophe. Ushered quickly through the intersection and soon cruising down the highway, I started thinking about exactly how our value at GPI comes into play, and how our strengths as a company are mirrored in the officer’s actions.

1. One entity

There is only one main traffic cop responsible for directing the entire intersection. Same as backlit features - with so many elements, you need one company to step up and direct all of the various components (structural steel, lighting products, wiring, power, controls, stone, glass, finish trims). This is true not only from a production standpoint, but from engineering, quality control, and installation. It’s a full time job!

2. Timing and Sequencing

When it comes to traffic jams, accurately timed instructions are key. Halting certain areas and moving others, the traffic officer moves with confidence with an overarching goal: to streamline. Same comes to our guidance of design, engineering, and production schedules to meet your clients’ deadlines (which are usually demanding, given our extensive work in the hospitality industry). A managing attitude is helpful in keeping all elements moving forward, from the very first sketches to final approvals.

3. Presence and Responsiveness

It would have been pretty tough for the traffic cop to direct over the phone, or from a remote location. An ability to think on your feet and react to a given set of circumstances allowed for a smoother outcome for all involved.  There’s value in having physical presence at an installation. As we all know, construction sites are unpredictable!

4. Put Your Best Resources At the Most Vulnerable Areas

Backlit features are inherently interesting, easily becoming focal points of spaces and even whole buildings. Don’t put your laziest officer at the busiest intersection.  For the best outcome, rely on the experts to direct the most visible (and scrutinized) areas of your design.

--> To ensure that your space doesn’t become a full blown rush hour traffic jam, choose companies with a proactive managing attitude to deliver the feature areas of your building. It's an invaluable skill that is only developed over years of experience.

Image Credit: ExpertInfantry via Flickr Creative Commons

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!

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.

Stay tuned for final installation photographs!

Cloudy skies bring to mind images of open spaces, soaring objects and unlimited imagination when interpreting their organic forms. Changes in natural cloud patterns occur rather slowly, marking the passage of time over the course of the day. In this project, the form and psychological implications of clouds, altered by a speedier manipulation of time, provide an anchor of connectivity for a busy airport space.

The eCloud (designed by Aaron Koblin, Nik Hafermas, and Dan Goods) is a sculptural installation suspended from the ceiling of the San Jose airport. The animated sculpture, composed of thousands of LCD pixels in laminated plexiglass, interacts with weather data to animate the pixels. With liquid crystal technology and electric switching, each small square panel transforms as an individual pixel in the composition, slowly changing from opaque to transparent according to weather patterns at various airports across the world.

eCLOUD from Dan Goods on Vimeo.

With its sheer scale, the element of time, and manipulation by outside data, the eCloud is an ensemble of surface, technology, controls – an impressive work of art that celebrates both the local specificity and global universality of cloud forms.

In studying our website metrics that indicate which keywords our visitors are searching for, it’s mind-boggling how many designers are searching for answers to detailing backlit panels. And while we love to stock our website full of useful information that makes it easy for busy designers to quickly understand and specify our systems, typical details can sometimes actually hurt the process.

When backlighting architectural panels, there are many considerations that affect the arrival at a detail.   It’s a process that we forge through per job.  As an architect or designer, can you imagine if your potential clients (developers or building owners) called you up and asked to see a typical floor plan from your firm? Sure, there is a general aesthetic and personality to your design process, but each solution is generated by working through several design phases/iterations, and that’s what makes the finished project unique. A single floor plan doesn’t fully do justice to all of the variables that affected that final solution. That’s how much attention and iteration goes into one of our details; they’re like our blueprints.  

Here is a wall section detail we generated for a specific project that incorporated backlit onyx panels. The variables:

• Surface type and translucency levels
• Surface thickness
• Light source (method, panel sizes, color temperature, brightness)
• Necessary diffusers
• Structure and fastening method
• Ideal spacing between elements (this can only be derived from physical testing)

As you can see,we develop our details based on the above considerations, and they must be considered holistically to achieve high-quality finished works.

The honest truth? For backlighting architectural panels, you don’t need typicals. Rely on a company's portfolio and expertise to trust that they will arrive at an equally thoughtful solution for your backlit project.

Learn more about our custom solution for the backlit onyx lobby features at the Wells Fargo Center:

Designing and specifying backlit onyx panels is a unique process. (Since onyx is a natural stone material, you can’t just call up Mother Nature and ask her to send samples of her latest collection.) This post outlines the three key items that you need to communicate in order for your backlit onyx design visions to become reality.  Here we outline the necessary steps for designers to ensure their conceptual intent is properly translated:

1. Communicate the shade, coloration, and veining characteristics of the translucent onyx surface.

• Use photographs to communicate your preferences.  As onyx is a highly exotic material, clearly establish color baselines and veining parameters with the use of targeted images. Typically, verbal and written descriptions will not sufficiently describe the nuances found across an onyx slab.
• In most cases, you will need to specify glass-backed translucent stone if even and continuous backlighting is desired. (Not all natural stone slabs transmit light, but in the process of slicing thinly and laminating to glass, nearly any type of stone can become transparent - even granite.)

2. Identify the backlighting method that suits your design aesthetic.

• Even illumination across entire face of onyx panel?
• Gradient wash that fades from one edge to another?
• Colored RGB lighting?
• Dimming capability? Would you/your client like the control and automation that comes with tying the LED backlighting into a central lighting control system?

3. Provide drawings of the application that indicate panel sizes and book-matched joints.

• If the backlit onyx panels must match surrounding stone or millwork finishes, make sure your backlit natural stone supplier has the exact panel sizes so that they can recommend stones that work within your module.
• If your exact panel sizes are flexible, that could open up more possibilities in the stone selection. (Remember, onyx is a natural material so it is not available in standard sheet sizes like man-made building materials.)
• Use standard drawing convention to indicate the bookmatching arrangement in your backlit onyx composition.

If you're working with a backlit onyx supplier, as a designer you really just need to communicate numbers 1 through 3 above.

Proactive companies will act as part of your team to guide you through the subsequent steps: lighting design, mock-ups, detailing, structural engineering, quality control in production, and construction itself.