Lighting

NARRATOR:

There are 318 skylights above you. They’ve been engineered to span 200 feet across the roof without any visible support. At 14 feet tall, they channel and soften daylight.

Liz Diller.

 

LIZ DILLER

When you look up the skylights, you notice that there's a diagonal coursing in the skylights; almost at 45 degrees to the sidewalls. That's actually true north. Facing true north allows us to bring in natural light, without any direct sunlight.

 

In fact, we worked with Andy Sedgwick in London, who is a master of daylighting. And he was able to digitally model the shaping of the skylights in relationship to L.A. light, all through the year. So that we could monitor exactly the path of the sun and make sure, to be able to shape the profiles of all of the cells around the building, to never allow a ray of direct sunlight through the year. So, when you're in the galleries and a cloud passes over, you actually sense that there's a slight change in the light level.

 

NARRATOR

Sensors on the roof tell the artificial lighting system what the light levels are outside. With dimmer technology, the interior gallery lights adjust.

 

LIZ DILLER:

As the afternoon advances into early evening, you sense that there's a little bit of change. This is a kind of living system.