One of the Nation’s Largest Performing Arts Centers Amps Up Exterior With New State-of-the-Art Full-Color LED Lighting Solution
Acclaim’s Unity fixtures set The Music Center in downtown Los Angeles aglow while maintaining the historic look and feel of the massive venue
The Los Angeles Music Center (officially the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County) is one of the three largest performing arts centers in the U.S. Set on a 22-acre campus in downtown Los Angeles, it serves as the city’s premier cultural hub with four main indoor theaters and an outdoor plaza. It is home to four internationally renowned resident companies, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, Center Theatre Group, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
Despite its high standing in the community, the highly visible structure had lost some of its allure in recent years due to outdated, inefficient exterior lighting fixtures. In what can only be described as a transformational “glow-up” at two of its venues—the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the adjacent Jerry Moss Plaza—The Music Center now brilliantly illuminates the grounds and the sky thanks to a new full-color LED architectural lighting system consisting of more than 350 dynamic fixtures from Acclaim Lighting.
Not your ordinary entertainment venues
The first and largest of the four Music Center venues, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion has one of the largest and most flexible stages in the country. The massive, curved structure with stylized columns, a gently swooping flat roof and a glass façade was designed to fulfill the functions of three major halls, including a symphony, a grand opera and a more intimate setting ideal for light opera, ballet or similar presentations.
Measuring 330 feet long and 252 feet wide and featuring 92-foot-high columns, the Pavilion has been described as elegant and beautiful while being contemporary and understated. The exterior walls are constructed of charcoal black granite and dark glass, providing a strong contrast to the fluted quartz-chip concrete columns and the broad overhang. Crystal sconces and columns faced with more than one million hand-cut Byzantine-style mosaic tiles from Venice adorn the interior onyx walls.
The Jerry Moss Plaza is a beautiful 35,000-square-foot outdoor urban oasis and destination for free and low-cost festivals, concerts, special events and other art-making experiences. The Plaza unites The Music Center’s three original theaters, creating the largest open, landscaped downtown area in the country. Focal points of the Plaza include multiple dynamic water fountains and two oversized LED screens, which are equipped with sensors and cameras. The screens provide interactive artistic experiences that bring to life video art in realistic and abstract ways.
Not your ordinary lighting project
Enhancing the overall visual impact of the Pavilion and Plaza while maintaining the historic design was no easy task, but that’s exactly what The Music Center’s management wanted. For enhanced dramatic effect, the owners also wanted a new control system that would allow for more creative color mixing during special events and holidays.
It took the combined talents of Burbank, CA-based Volt Lites serving as the lighting systems integrator and the internationally recognized Lightswitch collective of lighting designers to meet the challenge. As for the fixtures chosen to check all of the boxes for the project, the design team turned to Acclaim Lighting and its Unity Series.
Designed to deliver exceptional performance in demanding outdoor environments, the Unity Series combines powerful output, precision optics, and advanced color technology in a versatile architectural fixture. Featuring vibrant RGBAL color mixing, tunable white light, flexible control options, and durable all-weather construction, Unity fixtures are often chosen by designers looking for the creative freedom and reliability needed to illuminate facades, bridges, landmarks, landscape, and other architectural spaces.
“The project transformed the campus with a state-of-the-art full-color LED lighting solution that significantly enhances the visual presence of the venue while improving overall luminosity and energy efficiency,” said Grant Dunn, director of integration for Volt Lites. “The new system enables dynamic color-changing effects and creative lighting scenes that support performances, civic events, holidays, and special celebrations, creating a vibrant and flexible visual identity for one of Los Angeles’ premier performing arts destinations.”
The 142 Unity S1 and 32 Unity H1 fixtures were recessed into existing architectural elements so as not to detract from the elegance of the historic structure. Surface-mount fixtures with color-matched housings to blend with the existing architectural elements further minimized any aesthetic detractions. As a result, the historic columns that wrap around the sides of the building are elegantly highlighted, creating an enhanced appearance with lighting that is more vivid and more evenly distributed across the building exterior.
“Through careful coordination and precision installation, along with the capabilities of the Acclaim Unity fixtures, we were able to deliver a reliable, high-performance lighting system that meets both the artistic vision of the design teams and the operational needs of The Music Center,” said Dunn.
