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[drawing board] The latest exciting works in progress from the world’s most imaginative designers.
DEEP INTO THE SEA Focus Lighting is currently working with the Wildlife Conservation Society, a conservation organisation that manages the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Central Park Zoo,Queens Zoo, and Prospect Park Zoo in New York City, to design the lighting for New York Aquarium’s Ocean Wonders: Sharks!, a 57,000sqft, three-story building set to house hundreds of new animals come June 2017. The exterior of the building will be wrapped in a shimmer wall designed by environmental artist Ned Kahn. The shimmer wall spans 1,000ft and uses wind and reflected sunlight to create a mesmerising effect reminiscent of waves in the ocean. Extensive mock-ups were carried
out to determine how to effectively light the 33,000 aluminum tiles that compose the piece. A 20ft x 20ft version of the wall was built on the Coney Island beach, where Focus Lighting’s design team lit the model from each side with multiple fixture types, before accomplishing an iridescent look, similar to that created by a school of silvery fish swimming in a moonlit sea. The solution was to integrate two rows of linear LED strips at the foot of the wall. Uplights behind the shimmer wall bounce off the swinging panels and directly into viewers’ eyes. A row of linear LEDs in front of the wall work to evenly distribute an undulating layer of blue-toned light. Inside, the design of the exhibit takes the
viewer on a dramatic journey through the undersea world as each space takes you deeper into the ocean. The culmination of the exhibit is the Canyon’s Edge tank with deep ocean sharks on display. A few shafts of ‘sunlight’ from 6,500K LED spots will illuminate a narrow strip of sandy beach along the front edge of the tank, then the exhibit falls off into darkness. The deeper recesses of the huge tank are flooded with deep blue LED light so sharks are just barely visible in the murky depths, and then suddenly come into the light as they approach the front of the tank. www.focuslighting.com