Museum Tower Miami, Florida
Bold Renovation Brings Color to Skyline
Museum Tower is an iconic, 29-story, 259,666 square-foot, high-rise office building located on Flagler Street in the heart of downtown Miami’s legal district. Built in 1983, the architectural beauty is one of the most recognizable structures in the city’s skyline with its striking reflective glass curtain wall and signature twin, I-beam exterior. It is often shown on live TV for news background views.
With its prime location within walking distance of Miami’s established legal infrastructure, amidst various downtown shopping, dining, and cultural destinations, and with easy access to interstates and major public transit systems, the desirable building was acquired in 2019 by Bridge Investment Group.
Under the new leadership, Museum Tower quickly began a complete renovation, including new outdoor seating options, high-efficiency systems upgrades, completely refurbished common areas, an expanded and fully-renovated lobby, and of course, skyline-defining, art-inspired new exterior lighting.
The previous lighting on Museum Tower featured a 10-year-old LED lighting system that was not functioning properly. Bridge Commercial, the management company for The Museum Tower, approached Skyline Arts, LLC, an architectural lighting systems provider based in Delray Beach, Florida, to retrofit the failing system.
“Bridge Commercial tasked us with replacing and upgrading the exterior lighting system to highlight the building, as well as increase its visibility for marketing purposes since the iconic building is visible from I-95 and various points around Miami,” said John DiDomenico, Managing Partner for Skyline Arts LLC.
After reviewing the building's architecture and discussing the lighting needs, Bridge Commercial and Skyline Arts established the lighting criteria for the building. They wanted the lighting to have enough intensity to smoothly illuminate 15 stories of a concrete wall—with eight-foot-wide setbacks—and the ability to offer both excellent white light and color rendition.
“Bridge Commercial required the ability to highlight the building in deep reds, dark blues, emerald greens, and warm white so that the new lighting had the increased capabilities for recognizing holidays, charities, and sporting events through accurate color representation,” added DiDomenico.
Dyna Drum HO Specified
During its extensive research, Skyline Arts investigated a variety of competing lighting fixtures. After comparative testing with competitive products, they recommended Acclaim Lighting’s Dyna Drum HO fixtures utilizing the Outdoor Link System (OLS). Dyna Drum HO Color is a high-output, outdoor-rated, quad-color LED floodlight. It features an internal 100-277VAC power supply and onboard DMX+RDM driver, and each unit carries Aria wireless DMX technology inside. The quad-color chip provides superior color mixing and saturation over single-source LED fixtures. It has a narrow 10-degree beam standard, with optional quick-change spread lenses for wider applications. It is ideal for facade lighting applications and as an area floodlight.
“Dyna Drum HO was the hands-down winner in terms of intensity and color,” said DiDomenico. “Plus, the OLS system decreased installation costs and improved system reliability by having factory-sealed connectors for fixture-to-fixture connections. In fact, The Acclaim OLS system saved us thousands in installation costs.”
The new LED lighting system is controlled via a Pharos LPC, which is web-enabled, running the Lumentender Cloud application for scheduling and control. As a result, Bridge Commercial has direct, real-time control over management of the lighting’s scheduling, as well as control for daily and special events. The combination of the controls with the flexibility of the Dyna Drum HO color capabilities and smoothness of dimming allows for a variety of high-impact scenes each night.
DiDomenico concluded, “The new LED lighting system provides the prominence on the skyline that the customer required, while the OLS system will make any future maintenance simple enough to be performed by in-house staff. Overall, Bridge Commercial is elated to have its new system. They are amazed at how bright the fixtures are, the smooth coverage, and the ultimate control they have from any web-enabled device.”
Products Featured:
Project participants
Lighting Designer –John DiDomenico, Managing Partner, Skyline Arts LLC, Delray Beach, Florida
Distributor – Skyline Arts LLC
Electrician – Bob Messing, Excel Electrical Group, Coral Springs, Florida
Installation Partner – Gavin Cooper, LEDSmith LLC
Engineering firm – Andrew Youngross, TYEC Engineering, Boca Raton, Florida
Cloud Controls – Lumentender Control Solutions Inc.
