Pittsburgh, PA
LAM Partners

LAM Partners illuminates the sweeping forms of Rafael Viñoly’s Convention Center in Pittsburgh

By Leanne French

	Photo © Stephen M. Lee

Anyone who has ever walked the exhibition halls of a traditional convention center is familiar with the slightly dazed feeling of time standing still. The standard function of a “black box” convention space, after all, is to make exhibited products look the same whether it’s eight in the morning or six in the evening.

“It’s like a sensory deprivation tank,” laughs Keith Yancey, senior associate of Cambridge, Massachusetts–based LAM Partners, the lighting firm that collaborated with Rafael Viñoly Architects on redefining the trade-show experience at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittburgh.

Viñoly’s structure took a pioneering sustainable approach, making the 1.45-million-square-foot space the first LEED Gold–certified green convention center and the world’s largest certified green building. Beyond its environmental profile, the architectural presence of the convention center, located on the Allegheny River, is transcendent, with a sweeping roof, tall masts, and a column-free tensile structure inspired by Pittsburgh’s suspension bridges. Part of the architect’s original concept was to illuminate the exhibition spaces primarily with daylight.

LAM Partners was working with the architect on the Boston convention center when it was asked to join the design team in Pittsburgh. Electrical engineer Burt Hill Kosar Rittelman had already developed preliminary daylighting concepts that were tested and refined based on analysis by Lawrence Berkeley Labs. LAM Partners followed through by designing a comprehensive luminous environment encompassing the green aspects of the project.

Using a physical model, sundial, tilt table, and digital video camera, the lighting team tested how the architectural design would perform in various daylight conditions. The team considered factors such as skylight configurations, shading devices, glazing types, and sky conditions through various seasons.

The solution for controlling daylight was a solar-dimming system, which offers three types of shading for admitting or altering available sunlight: no shade, diffusing, and blackout. During the intermediate or diffusing stage, opaque shades can be overlapped incrementally to throttle down the amount of daylight until full blackout is achieved for exhibition purposes.

When adding electric lighting to the daylight component, LAM Partners took its cues from Viñoly’s structure. “We wanted to celebrate the volume of the space,” Yancey says. “The architecture called out for a linear lighting solution. To hang big pods of glaring light fixtures would have ruined the flow of the sweeping rooflines.”

Want the full story? Read the entire article in our November 2006 issue.
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the People Owner Sports & Exhibition Authority of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County Architect Rafael Viñoly Architects PC tel 212 924 5060 fax 212 924 5858 www.rvapc.com/ Project Director: David Rolland Lighting designer: Lam Partners Inc www.lampartners.com Lighting project team: Keith J. Yancey, LC, AIA, PE, IALD Paul A. Zaferiou, IALD             General contractor: Turner – P.J. Dick – ATS www.turnerconstruction.com Electrical contractor: Lighthouse Electric Company, Inc. www.lighthouseelectric.com Consultants Electrical Engineer: Burt Hill Kosar Rittelman Associates, Inc. www.burthill.com/ Photographer Brad Feinknopf, tel 617 225 0414 Feinknopf Photography www.feinknopf.com Stephen Lee Stephen M. Lee Photography CAD system, project management, or other software used: AutoCAD www.autodesk.com Lightscape www.lightscapenetworks.com

the Products Lighting Interior ambient lighting: Portfolio, Neoray, Corelite Downlights: Portfolio, Metalux, Kramer Task/Local lighting: Portfolio www.portfolio-lighting.com LSI www.lsi-industries.com Light Project/Steng Exterior: Greenlee www.greenleelighting.com Gardco www.gardcolighting.com DesignPlan www.sitelighting.com Portfolio www.portfolio-lighting.com SPI www.spilighting.com/ Lumiere www.lumiere-lighting.com Shaper www.shaperlighting.com Other fixtures: Corelite – custom exhibit hall lighting; local neon fabricator         www.corelite.com Controls: Colortran www.lms.leviton.com Roof System: Birdair, Inc. www.birdair.com