NEW YORK — To help launch the Space Shuttle Enterprise exhibit at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum here this summer, Focus Lighting worked with the architects at H3 Hardy Collaboration and the in-house exhibit and aircraft restoration team to light the 1976-vintage prototype for the space shuttle program.
One of the challenges involved was creating a rich backdrop for the 150,000-pound monument to space travel — the first of the six space shuttles ever made. The lighting design team created a four-foot long replica of the Space Shuttle and pavilion to study various lighting schemes and properly gauge the large scale of the shuttle.
By testing five interior tent colors, the team was able to demonstrate that a rich blue backdrop provided the desired dramatic contrast with the stark white Space Shuttle.
The Enterprise is lit with close to 130 70W PAR30 Metal Halide accents located on eight custom-built light towers from Times Square Lighting. The surrounding “Blue Horizon Line” is created with 380 linear feet of 3-lamp T8 fluorescent striplights with “night blue” color filters, concealed behind the perforated perimeter walls.
The shuttle, propped up on supports, hovers about 10 feet above the USS Intrepid’s aircraft carrier deck, letting visitors walk beneath the craft. They can also view the 137-foot-long shuttle prototype from an elevated platform.
The Enterprise arrived in New York via a piggy-back ride on a jumbo jet, then onto the barge from JFK, before it was hoisted aboard the aircraft carrier’s deck and then covered with an inflatable dome roof.
Space Shuttle Enterprise Pavilion
Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum
New York, NY
Architects: H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture (exhibit architects), Aform (tent architect / architect of record)
Lighting Design Company: Focus Lighting, Inc.
Principal Designer: Brett Andersen
Senior Lighting Designer: Stephanie Daigle
Lighting Designer: Samuel Kitchel
Project Manager: Kenneth Schutz
Lighting Fixtures (Supplied by Times Square Lighting)
128 MC70H 70W Metal Halide fixtures with wrench-lock yokes
60 380-B Line Voltage PAR38 fixtures with wrench-lock yokes
23 MC3916 39W Metal Halide fixtures
2 S100 100W quartz flood fixtures
Photos by Juan Pablo Lira
