GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Crosland Tower Library reading room chandelier 

Two adjoining library buildings on this technical university campus were transformed to facilitate the university’s vision of creating a research library for the 21st century. The university’s vision reconceived the role of a library from “knowledge storage” to “knowledge generating” and rethought how a library may serve new collaborative relationships between student peer groups and faculty and students. A new reading room was developed as a collaborative study space and located at the circulatory nexus between the two buildings. With interest toward ingenuity, Derek Porter Studio developed a custom media-based chandelier that provides task illumination as it gives the reading room an iconic identity on campus and facilitates prospective collaboration.  

Numerous studies were conducted surrounding scale and performance. In the end, the final chandelier is 80’ long by 10’ deep by 8’ wide and comprised of 324 individual pendants, each of which has six two-sided exposed LED boards and one downlight. The downlight cylindrical body contains a high-output LED with a 40 degree TIR optic, cumulatively producing 40fc task illumination. All LED’s are static white, 3000K, 90+ CRI. Each of the nearly 2,000 exposed LED boards is tied to an independent DMX channel that is linked to an automated controller and time clock that regulate light output and speed of motion for different times of day.  Pre-established shows are imagined to be replaced or augmented in the future through pedagogical engagement; faculty and students are encouraged to engage the chandelier as technological infrastructure to explore data visualize or to conduct research through diverse disciplines.

The chandelier is the only electric light source for the reading room – a single luminaire that serves practical task requirement, offers iconic decorative appeal and is infrastructure for teaching and research.  

Design Architect: BNIM Architects   
Architect of Record: Praxis3                        
Lighting Designer: Derek Porter Studio and Kama Wybieralska (Research Assistant, Parsons School of Design)
Electrical Engineer: Newcomb and Boyd
Manufacturer: Lumid
Renderings: Kama Wybieralska

Awards
IESNA Merit Award, 2021

Details
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia
Chandelier dimensions: 8' wide, 80' long, 10' deep.
DMX control system having 2,240 individual channels.
Bottom pixel located in weighted housing and provides downlight task illumination.