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ETC Selador LED lighting graces San Francisco cathedral
(9 September 2009) -- Located partway between beautiful Golden Gate Park and The Presidio in San Francisco, California, St. Ignatius Church brings its own inspiring beauty to the elegant cityscape. Constructed between 1910 and 1914, this Jesuit parish is a city landmark, with its twin towers rising over 200 feet into the skyline.
Any aging structure faces its challenges. St. Ignatius’40-year-old fluorescent architectural lighting was beginning to fail, and the color temperature of the fluorescent fixtures did little to bring out the beauty of the architecture and stations of the cross, depicted through oil paintings created in Rome.
To address the church's lighting needs, Lindsley Architectural Lighting, based in the Bay Area, was hired to design a lighting master plan. The side chapel lighting was addressed first. Howard Case, the church's capital projects manager, says, “When we first added architectural lighting to the side nave arches, it revealed how beautiful this church can be, so we wanted to extend it to the upper sanctuary.” This presented the opportunity to highlight the extraordinary architectural details of that space, with a core component of the solution being ETC's Selador Series LED lighting fixtures.
Alan Lindsley, principal, states, “We were charged with making the lighting more energy efficient. Additionally, we wanted to reinforce the spirituality of the space, support different worship-service formats, and ensure the lighting-control system was easy to operate.”
“When we started the analysis of the space,” Lindsley describes, “the upper ceiling area was almost hidden from view due to the glare from the stained-glass windows and the lack of light.”
As they discussed options for bringing out the beauty of the interior architecture, Lindsley suggested adding color to accent the details and coordinate the lighting color with the colors of the liturgical calendar. Additionally, a system with color-changing capability could enhance the musical and theatrical performances that occur frequently in the main sanctuary.
Various technologies were investigated to achieve color-changing capabilities, but Lindsley was displeased with the complexity of the equipment and the power needed to project saturated colors over the required throw distances -- until he tried out ETC's Selador LED fixtures.
“We tried a Selador fixture and discovered it did a great job of meeting the design parameters. The decrease in complexity was also a benefit to the church to keep maintenance requirements minimal.” And due to Selador's unique seven-color LED design, the fixtures were able to match the color temperature of existing lighting -- something competing LED fixtures could not do.
“We started conceptualizing the application of color to the nave and sanctuary. We wanted the ability to highlight the columns, the ribs around the oculus, and the proscenium arch. This required a wide variety of beam spreads in two axes. The Selador units provide a wide range of spread lenses to meet the designer's needs. We ended up with one two-foot unit per column and rib with two high-power units at the spring points of the proscenium arch. ETC’s Unison® architectural dimming with LCD control panels provides centralized control over the lighting system and offers the ability to easily expand the system in the future.”
Installation was completed just in time for last Christmas, when the new architectural lighting enhancements would be revealed for the first time. Case describes the moment: “We created looks for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, which incorporated red and green. The reaction of people when they walked into the church, where the dome over the sanctuary and all of the upper pilasters were lit for the first time (and not just lit, but with Christmas colors) was pretty amazing.”
Adds Lindsley, "The Selador units met and exceeded our hopes for a low-maintenance, energy-efficient, and robust color-changing instrument.”
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