Project Description
Replacing an existing screened-in porch, the clients requested an uplifting sunroom, full of light and enjoyable year-round. The architect desired a fluid presence to soften the “ordinary” rectilinear space. The result: a hand-formed, three-dimensional, curvilinear, translucent, backlit, full-room suspended ceiling.
While daylight enhances the sculptural presence, the sculpture avoids becoming a brutal focal point by its sheer size and undulating geometry. By extending to, and beyond, the sunroom’s boundaries, the ceiling passes beyond the field of vision of any single vantage point, becoming into an environment rather than an object. The crossing and blending of the curves imbues a non-hierarchical, asymmetrical yet balanced composition, allowing the client to focus undistracted below while being encompassed by the fluid presence overhead.
Nighttime dissolves the physical character of the sculpture when the ceiling’s form dematerializes into light.
Avoiding shadows by scattering uniform, indirect illumination across the ceiling were fundamental goals to the project’s success. Eschewing opaque formwork, a tab and slot L-panel system was devised, hanging each sculptural piece by two thin suspension wires. With minimal distance between the sculptural panels and the roof underside, hotspots and dim areas were major concerns. A vast, thin LED array, floating on clear support panels, spans the entire ceiling. Aiming upwards, it transforms the underside of the roof into a massive lightbox dispersing direct rays off its flat white paint, eliminating wire shadows cast onto the translucent acrylic, and radiating soft light to the room below. The LED fixtures alternate between two color temperatures and create a cleaner, purer white light while providing client adjustability for cool summer evenings or warm winter nights.
The architect and the client together fabricated and installed the entire ceiling consisting of 397 uniquely-shaped and custom thermoformed translucent pieces, 128 clear acrylic support panels, 1,200 eyehooks CNC-drilled into 33 plywood parts, 5,000’ of suspension wire, 7,000’ of electrical wire, and over 29,000 LED diodes.