Corporate Art Collection
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
An interior public walkway is home to a corporate art collection celebrating the region’s history. The commissioned pieces are life-sized representations of the timeline of settlement and progress.
Lighting design challenges were many; creating lighting separation within a common area, improving appreciation of the art during both daytime and nighttime viewing, and understanding material effects relative to lighting selections. The common area, base building lighting needed to remain unchanged. LDI designers specified LED spots and narrow flood monopoints to create artwork highlight in an area with existing illuminance uniformity. Precision aiming was performed by LDI staff to create the perfect glint on each piece.
Highlighting the face of this heavy horse was extremely difficult because of how it peers over the escalator railing. LED spot monopoints were precisely located and aimed to provide focal glow without impeding persons traveling on the escalators. With this design approach, LDI featured the mare’s attentive watchfulness.
The orthoceras bed is displayed in front of a window. The texture created by the collection of nautiloid cephalopod provided an opportunity to highlight an otherwise black and grey fossil. Track-mounted LED narrow flood projectors were installed to ensure three-axis adjustment during aiming and LDI precision aimed the luminaires to create the “halo” around the piece required to bring brightness to an otherwise black exhibit.
Roughnecks work together in this two-story piece. Like the horses, a lightweight composite material with a hand-applied finish gives the appearance of cast bronze. The lighting designer visited the artist’s studio to understand the material response to light. LDI carefully orchestrated and documented the installed arrangement of LED floods, narrow floods, and spots to feature the art over its entire height.
Built around a segment of drill pipe, the woman concentrates on the safety of her coworker, below.
0-10V dimming was utilized and luminaires strategically zoned to establish daytime and nighttime illuminance levels that maintain the lit feature highlights for all views of passerby inside and outside the building. An astronomical timeclock ensures effortless time-of-day coordination.
The roughneck on the floor features the likeness of the company founder. An adjustable LED is embedded in the base of the sculpture to ensure that a shadow never crosses his face.
