A diamond-tipped chainsaw was used to cut through the wall of the Arthouse for a prototype glass block. Graze remembers standing outside at night in an alley with Lewis as Dannenbring tested different light combos of white and green. “We needed to see the quality of the lights and how the building looked at night on the street with the streetlights,” Graze says. They settled on a combo of three white and two green.
Bulaevsky had dreamed of creating a unique wireless IP address for each block so that he could “talk” to the circuit boards, but ultimately he hardwired the lights. “He thought the hard part was figuring out how to make the thing, but it was actually the programming of the lights that was hard,” Dannenbring says.
It was so hard, in fact, that when Bulaevsky died unexpectedly in April 2010, Jenkins had to consult with nine software, engineering, and lighting specialists to reverse-engineer the complex system. At the time, only half of the circuit boards were ready. The shocking loss of the brainchild behind the lighting system and software nearly derailed the endeavor. “If Nelson Downend had not gone to the apartment one Sunday or retained the information acquired during that brief tutorial, it is doubtful the project would have been able to be completed,” Jenkins says.
The final installation of 177 glass blocks appears random. Inside, though, the logic becomes evident: more glass blocks clustered in the administrative offices for more natural light, fewer blocks in the galleries where light might compete with the art. The placement of the light boxes took months of on-site tinkering. Custom-fabricated based on measurements of the varying thicknesses of the walls, the glass blocks ended up being 48 different sizes. At street level, the blocks are flush to the building to avoid vandalism and deter climbing. But at about 10 feet above ground, they break through the exterior plane. The top of each block cluster is sloped to avoid water accumulation.
The design saves Arthouse, which recently merged with the Austin Museum of Art, from being a staid, white-box gallery. “It ended up being a sculpture because of the light. The building is its own object,” Graze says. “At night they [the glass blocks] glow. During the day and during different seasons, the blocks cast amazing shadows on the gray stucco. People really notice them. They are strong but lyrical at the same time.”
Jenkins believes that Bulaevsky would have been proud of the result. “It feels like a nice tribute to the very creative mind that Alejandro had,” he says.
| Glass Block Feature The project’s signature architectural feature along the façade walls is 177 glass blocks, each composed of half-inch laminated sheets of glass to create a “structural box” to hold the LED circuit board and Ethernet wiring. By day the blocks allow natural light into the building’s interior spaces. At night, the illumination transforms into a green accent light, thanks to the LED circuitry. |
Manufacturers/Applications: Alcko (undercabinet lighting); Amerlux Lighting Solutions (interior downlights); Bartco Lighting (gallery linear fluorescents); DesignPlan (exterior sign lighting south façade); Edison Price (interior downlights); Humanscale (desk tasklighting); LaMar Lighting (egress stair lighting); Linear Lighting (offices and studio lighting); Lighting Services Inc (gallery lighting); Lucifer Lighting (interior downlights); Matirical/Lumen Architecture (custom glass-block façade luminaires); HK Lighting Group (egress stair accentlights); Winona Lighting, An Acuity Brand (ipe-stair accentlighting and roof deck parapet lighting); Selux (donor wall lighting); USAI (awning canopy and entry lobby downlights)