April 2013

Auroralight Creates a Modern Take on Old World Festoon Lighting for a Mixed Use Redevelopment in Salt Lake City

In the heart of Salt Lake City just steps from the Mormon Temple, you can experience the new City Creek Center, a vibrant, 24-hour, mixed use redevelopment. As a pilot participant in the new LEED for Neighborhood Development Rating System, City Creek Center is integrating the principles of smart growth, urbanism, and green building into its design and construction. The completed project is registered LEED Silver. The project exemplifies sustainable urban living with a comfortable pedestrian scale, unparalleled access to transit, and open spaces for residents and visitors to enjoy. The five condominium buildings, an office building and the 900,000sf of retail space support sustainable design with native landscaping, water conservation, energy efficient equipment, green material selection, abundant daylighting, access to views, and high levels of indoor environmental quality.

According to Wayne Chubb of Hobbs & Black Architects and the Project Architect for the retail portion of the Center, the design inspiration is evocative of a European streetscape with pedestrian plazas, water features and various points of interest that showcase public art and large open spaces. Part of the design concept was to unearth the creek that once flowed from the mountains into the heart of the city and was originally used as the settlers? fresh water supply. The creek is now a major element flowing through most of the 20-acre site.

To reinforce the European streetscape theme at one of the more prominent entrances and only vehicle friendly roadway into the Center, Chubb and Associate /Project Manager Laura Yates of Horton Lees Brogden called on Mike Joye of Auroralight for assistance.

They wanted to create a modern take on Festoon Lighting and knew that Auroralight’s expertise in exterior lighting design and manufacturing made them an ideal choice for the custom LED project.

The functional purpose of the hanging lights was to bring the scale of the surrounding buildings down to a more intimate and welcoming level. By doing so, visitors could enjoy outdoor seating at night at any of the several restaurants located in this area of the Center.

Chubb and Yates asked Joye to develop a series of custom LED hanging lights inspired by Auroralight’s existing LHL50 Candela luminaire. Joye took on the design challenge and created a variety of engineering objectives and solutions that were based on esthetics, safety, energy efficiency and serviceability.

With three different lengths, 12″, 24″ and 36″, the luminaires, nicknamed “The Necklace” now hang in a random pattern connected by a single cable that zigzags over a large area high above the roadway. If one light should ever need to be replaced due to lightning strike or other calamity, it typically requires the entire cable be taken down. However, Joye thoughtfully designed both a removable luminaire and interchangeable LED module so that individual lamps or complete fixtures can be easily serviced in the field quickly and efficiently. This state-of-the-art, solutions-based feature has become the catalyst for several other Auroralight luminaires that are also available in the company’s product catalog.

“We are extremely pleased with the results of working with Auroralight,” says Chubb. “Our clients are very happy. The lights installed without difficulty and have performed without problems since installation. Despite the natural swag of the cable, every luminaire hangs plum and the light output is beautiful even with the different lengths,” he says.

“More importantly”, Yates adds, “the construction of the candelas by Auroralight is extremely solid, which was very appealing to us and the contractor because we wanted to make sure they could withstand the tricky Utah climate. Everything is so well thought-out and thorough in the engineering that we couldn’t ask for more. It’s been a real pleasure working with Mike Joye and his team at Auroralight.”