Prize(s) Honorable Mentions
Lighting Design/Product Company Abernathy Lighting Design, An Eos Lightmedia Studio
Lead Designers Jason Rainone CLD, LEED AP, IALD
Other Designer's names Katherine Abernathy LC, FIALD
Architecture Company Michael McInturf Architects / THP Ltd
Interior Design Company Jack Rouse Associates
Client Hamilton County, OH
Photo Credits Phil Hartley / Jack Rouse Associates
Completion Date July 2023
Project Location Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Entry DescriptionThe Cincinnati Black Music Walk of Fame is a half-acre (22,000 sq/ft) interactive urban park celebrating Cincinnati area Black musicians. It was designed as a colorful celebration to serve as a draw to the riverfront while managing the river’s 100-year flood line by allowing all attraction features to be fully removable. Further challenged by compressed timeframes, a tight city budget, and a park hardscape that was designed before anyone knew it would be a music attraction, extensive coordination efforts were required to incorporate the necessary color-changing and programmable lighting. By the time the attraction design was underway, concrete was being poured to form the sites ramps and tiers, so incorporating necessary power and control distribution became a race against time.
Specifications of low-level lighting already within the landscape design were updated to color-changing LED, controllable in 1-foot increments, so as to not modify the already approved mounting details.
Park-wide pole mounted area lighting was respecified to RGBW to provide white-light LED for safety and security after curfew, while providing the dynamic lighting needed for the parks normal evening program.
Necessary fill lighting for Augmented Reality (AR) interactives blend with colored lighting and moving light accents for a pre-programmed dance party celebration twice each night.
Sustainability ApproachAll lighting systems on this project are low energy long life LED systems controlled thourgh a central lighting control system to allow for lighting intensity and energy consumption to be limited to only what is necessary based on activity and time of day. Timeclock based programming allows the park to be active only when lighting will have the greatest impact and late night curfews are established to limit overnight energy consumption to only what is required for basic white light safety and security needs.
Due to the flooding concerns from the adjacent river and overall foward-looking resiliency concerns for the exhibits, all exhibit and lighting systems are designed to be fully removable in the event of impending flooding.
