Lifesaving Lighting Design for the World's Largest 3-D Printed Garden
Lifesaving Lighting Design for the World's Largest 3-D Printed Garden
Chicago’s Field Museum is home to plenty of fossils, but when the museum decided to add elaborate hanging gardens filled with living plants to its Stanley Field Hall, a unique lighting problem emerged.
The plants, suspended from the architecturally significant 76-foot-high ceiling, were ensconced within 3-D printed “clouds” which function as hydroponic growing environments — with more than 1,000 plants across 4 structures, they represent the world’s largest 3-D printed garden. To meet the needs of the museum’s new houseplants, the initial project designer had included a watering system and white LEDs to supplement daylight from skylights.
Unfortunately, that original plan proved inadequate for both plant growth and colored lighting for the museum’s many special events — enter Morlights.
Called in to solve these issues under the unusual, specialized conditions of the hanging gardens, Morlights undertook a complete reimagining of the hanging gardens lighting design. Extensive prototyping revealed a need for deper digging to find a solution which could meet plant needs and provide color for events.
Identifying grow lights specially designed with color capabilities to enhance plant growth, the designers then worked with the manufacturer to re-engineer the fixtures to allow control of the color spectrum, satisfying event lighting needs. The power structure of the museum needed to be modified, and the new lighting integrated into the existing control system, allowing event users to apply color to the clouds.
A specialized mounting structure was designed to allow installation of the new lights, and in December 2020, the Hanging Gardens’ journey was finally complete. Thriving, lush plantscapes now soar above Stanley Field Hall, requiring frequent trimming, and museum event-goers are thrilled by the colorscapes on the gardens.
“There’s nothing like a unique lighting problem to get our creative juices flowing — and seeing our solution help this garden grow is a treat.” — Thatcher Waller
Thatcher Waller