Daylighting Diffusers at the North Carolina Museum of Art

Transformit

“Most museums are just too closed to natural light, perhaps because they're afraid of controlling it,” said Thomas Phifer. Architect Phifer’s design for a new wing at the North Carolina Museum of Art makes unprecedented use of daylight. Starting from scratch, he developed a daylighting system that gives even illumination, free of cast shadows and without excessive ultraviolet light. The one-story building’s roof is covered with hundreds of identical skylights. Below each skylight rests a polymer sheet cast with thousands of pyramidal prisms which break up the light entering the building. Below that sheet rests a fabric ellipse that lets more or less light enter the building, depending on the fabric used.

The project called for more than 400 identically shaped ellipses to be installed below the pyramidal prism sheets, but above the fiberglass coffers in the ceiling. The fabric panels are essentially an unseen element, because no attachment is visible from below. They are seen only though their effect.

The daylighting system was refined and proven prior to construction in a full-scale building- laboratory in which prototypes of every element were installed, and light levels were measured in every part of the room. For this environment, we produced numerous prototypes using a wide variety of fabrics. After studying the results of the measurements, the architects chose four fabrics of varying transmissivity for the ellipses. We developed a system for framing the ellipses that allowed them to conform to the slight curvature of the coffers while holding the fabric wrinkle-free.

This project earned a 2011 National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.

Project details

Location: Raleigh, N.C.
Size: 160,000 sq. feet
Fabrics: Knit Voile by Dazian Fabrics LLC, Brilliance Plus by Dazian Fabrics LLC, Eco Celtic by Dazian Fabrics LLC, Carbonight II by Dazian Fabrics LLC
Engineer: Acousti Engineering Company of Florida
Design: Phifer, Acousti, Transformit
Architect: Thomas Phifer, Thomas Phifer and Partners