INTERVIEW
by
Vilma Barr
34
RAY GRENALD
while drawing out the natural
beauty and colours in the stone
The techno cafe in The Zone
formations. He considered dimin-
ishing the brightness of the lamps
as visitors’ eyes get accustomed
to the dark; helping the sense of
disorientation by making the light
come from the same direction;
adjusting colours to help depth
perception; and eliminating sight-
seer burnout.
“We had to adapt the Cavern’s
400,000 annual tourists slowly
to the lower level of illumina-
tion they would encounter at the
bottom,” he describes. His final
plan involved seven transform-
ers, almost 1,000 fixtures with
almost two dozen broad spectrum
lamps ranging from 3,000°K to
5,000°K. All the sources were
white to illuminate the cave’s
natural elements without distort-
ing them. To establish scale and
accent the cave’s vast depths he
used warm spot-type lights close
to the visitors walking the trail and
cooler flood-type lights further
away. His new lights, placed
strategically, created shadows and
depth and lit the hall the way na-
ture would have, if sunlight could
have crept in and done the work.
The combination of techniques
successfully combated “museum
fatigue”, a boredom he had
noticed in tourists during his
research. “When I began, 35 per-
cent of the visitors didn’t finish the
tour,” Grenald points out. “After I
finished, 95 percent of those who
began a tour finished it, and of the 95 percent a third returned the next
1979 to outline the frames and portals of the early twentieth-century
day.” He is also proud that he reduced the maintenance team to a sin-
structures used by university and local boating clubs to store their sculls
gle man on a half-time schedule to handle group relamping for 1,000
and as a clubhouse. Grenald stretched the $55K budget to include the
lights after 2,000-hour level. On July 4, 1976, the lighting project was
wiring for 9,818, 71/2-watt lamps that cost the city about $44 a day to
complete. “You could not see a single bulb anywhere,” Grenald says.
run. “We used low-wattage lamps that give off a warm yellow colour.
Grenald Waldron Associates received a Presidential Award in 1988
You saw individual points of light instead of a band,” Grenald says.
with the relighting of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., a
(Grenald’s lamp specification was later changed by the city. The build-
20-year project that links the Capitol and the White House. The project
ings are now lit by LEDs, producing an antiseptic utilitarian effect that
gradually expanded from major to monumental, to include utilities,
lacks the distinctive glow of the original.)
paving, and landscaping, plus lighting.
Grenald designed seven lighting fixtures during his career when there
“For Pennsylvania Avenue, we didn’t focus on fixture types,” Grenald
was nothing on the market that fulfilled his project needs. They include
explains. “Rather, we identified how the Avenue worked, what it should
early forms of track lighting, metal halide street lighting and decorative
be, where and why it succeeds and fails. Then, we studied the usage of
street lighting fixtures for Pennsylvania Avenue modified with full cut-off
the space and then established three hierarchies,” Grenald points out.
optics.
He cited the perception of the Avenue as an entity, the need to rein-
“Light is magic,” he believes. “That’s something I learned from Lesley
force its image at both terminuses, and an ongoing appeal to stimulate
Wheel, a fellow lighting pioneer, that has stayed with me all these
pedestrians both by day and evening.
years. Architecture is the art of expressing space and the science of
Another favourite landmark project that Grenald virtually single-hand-
enclosing it. Light is the medium by which it is perceived. We use light
edly brought to life was the outlining of the Schuylkill River boathouses
as architecture. We build with light.”
in Philadelphia. The original high-visibility project was initiated in
www.gwalighting.com
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