POWER IN PARTNERSHIP
B2B2B collaboration at the Grandscape
The Grandscape, a sprawling development in North Texas, is a destination for all aspects of modern life, boasting offices, restaurants, and entertainment spaces. Tying everything together is an expansive outdoor environment carefully segmented into smaller intimate gathering “living room” spaces intended to create a sense of community. One of the components of the design contributing to the intimate feel of the outdoor areas is a product born of collaboration by the lighting community: the AURA ring, designed by Structura and illuminated by QTL’s Q-CAP product.
The Olsson Studio, the company that designed and executed the development of the outdoor space, is a specialized subcompany of Olsson that focuses in creating community spaces including conceptual design, master plans, and execution. Therefore, the complexity of creating an outdoor destination that would suit the wide range of activities taking place at The Grandscape was a natural fit.
Korey Schulz, Team Leader of Planning and Design at the Olsson Studio, describes the challenges. “The atmosphere during the day and during the night was ever changing. There are people living there, there are office spaces, there’s a yoga group doing yoga in the lawn, they do outdoor concerts and movies. The energy of the space needed to work for all the activities.”
He describes that the outdoor living spaces tucked throughout the property were concepted to be small gathering spaces for people enjoying their morning coffee after yoga, taking a lunch break, or enjoying nightlife activities.
“In the intimate seating spaces, we looked to the light ring up above to give the feeling of a ceiling on the space, as opposed to leaving it open to the sky. The AURA ring’s design works in the day and night even though there’s a completely different feel at each time,” states Korey.
A major focal point of the spaces that plays a large part in the changing vibes of the area is “the kaleidoscope” which changes color and can even take interactive video of occupants and shuffle it into random mosaics. There are also color changing LED lights embedded into the limestone walls that connect the different areas of the exterior space.
“We knew there would be a lot of intensity in things changing color and movement of the color. The overhead was selected as static white light to be a calm cap to the space,” shares Schulz. “I also like AURA because of the wood, it looks softer than metal, and you can play with different finishes and get a lot of variety.”
Brandon Rohr, Design Engineer at Structura, comments, “We’re the only one that does a ring with wood, especially solid wood housing, that’s exterior rated. That’s a big reason Q-CAP was a good fit, its exterior rated, and QTL has a 5-year warranty which supports our 5-year warranty on the fixture.”
He goes on to share that AURA has been in the market for many years, although illuminating the fixture wasn’t always a smooth ride. Before partnering with QTL, Structura used another vendor and experienced multiple issues including poor lead time, incorrect cut marks, and malfunctioning diodes.
“We started testing Q-CAP product in the hopes of having reliability, a US source, better lead times, and openness to customization. Everything was smoother. We were able to customize the wire feed, so the fixture looked cleaner, and got better output and better CRI. We were able to offer more options for the lighting designers and architects. They need quality and expect perfection,” Brandon explains.
Lighting challenges are not isolated to the manufacturing world, illustrated by Korey’s experience bringing The Grandscape to life.
“We played a lot with the specific placement of the AURA rings in the living areas. To do that we thought about whether we’d need crossing wires, about avoiding trees we planned on planting, and the structures we’d hang the suspension from. There were a lot of things that needed to be coordinated with the elements in the project. It was a challenge,” Korey explains.
Adam Shay, Product Development & Quality Control Manager at Structura, comments on this. “The ability for Structura to provide a turnkey catenary solution for the designer is unique. Making all the components work isn’t very easy in the real world. There are very few companies in the world like us that have dedicated engineers and provide all the components for this type of systems.”
Brandon interjects that he sees similarities in QTL’s dedication to going above and beyond. “We view QTL the same way that our customers view us. We appreciate their strong customer service, being able to get someone on the phone reliably, their helping us work through technical problems, and being flexible.”
Adam also shares that having QTL as a vendor helps build trust with specifiers. “People want to know where the light source is from and like that it’s from QTL since they know the company and use QTL products on other jobs. They’re comfortable with that. It’s a pretty ring but they want to know that the quality is there, the QTL brand tells them that.”
Korey’s favorite part of working on complex projects like the Grandscape is one that Structura can relate to after their search for the right vendor for the AURA ring.
“It’s fun designing, but seeing things evolve and come to life is the best part.”