LOS ANGELES – When more than 170 landmarks around the world – from Niagara Falls to the Sydney Opera House – marked the 50th anniversary of Special Olympics, Coca-Cola’s global headquarters in Atlanta joined the tribute. The top 15 floors of the North Avenue tower were bathed in red for “Light Up for Inclusion,” a global display of tolerance, respect and celebration of difference. Coca-Cola’s participation was especially fitting since the brand is a founding partner of Special Olympics International.
More details from ACT Lighting (www.actlighting.com):
Claypaky Mythos 2 fixtures figured prominently in the lighting rig created by Lighting Designer Noah Hammer, Owner of Full Circle Lighting & Productions in Atlanta. ACT Lighting, Inc. is the exclusive North American distributor of Claypaky lighting.
Coca-Cola, a long-time Full Circle client for corporate events, contacted Hammer for his advice on how to tackle the lighting for Special Olympics. “They wanted to light one side of the building, the side visible from the interstate, and were getting massively high quotes involving rigging the building, hanging fixtures for days and hoping they’d hit the building,” says Hammer. Unlike some of the other participating landmarks, which have their own LED lighting systems, Coca-Cola headquarters is not illuminated at night.
Hammer and Full Circle’s Assistant Lighting Director Benjamin Hay and Project Manager Amanda Michaels started to research fixtures that could light the building from the ground. “We do a lot of architectural lighting, especially around curing cancer month when hospitals and other healthcare institutions want colored lights and commemorative ribbon designs on their buildings,” says Hammer. “But lighting Coca-Cola headquarters was a very different kind of project.”
Hammer and his colleagues decided that Claypaky Mythos 2 were right to light the headquarters from the parking lot across the street. Hammer planned to fill the center of the HQ with Mythos.
Full Circle erected an elevated truss structure on the top tier of the Hampton Inn’s parking deck across the street from Coca-Cola headquarters and enclosed the rig in a tent in case of inclement weather. All of the landmarks worldwide turned on their lights at 6 pm local time and kept the illuminations live until dawn. Full Circle disassembled the rig just minutes before a major storm hit Atlanta at daybreak.
“Mythos 2 delivered exactly as expected,” Hammer reports. “They’re so super-bright that their intensity outperformed the photometrics. And they played very well with other fixtures: The color matching was very simple.”
The Mythos 2 were provided by Mainlight. Full Circle has its own inventory of Sharpy fixtures, and Hammer notes that, “We’ve always been happy with Claypaky — the reliability of their fixtures has been great.”
