Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Children's Hospital Los Angeles
Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Los Angeles, California, 2003
Model of the new Children's Hospital entrance with living rainbow beams projected onto ceiling entrance ceiling. A heliostat solar tracking mirror installed on the roof of the hospital parking garage across the street is designed to project 30,000 watts of sunlight to mirrors on the lobby roof, and thence to prisms under the canopy and inside the lobby.
Model of the new Children’s Hospital entrance with living rainbow beams projected onto ceiling entrance ceiling. A heliostat solar tracking mirror installed on the roof of the hospital parking garage across the street is designed to project 30,000 watts of sunlight to mirrors on the lobby roof, and thence to prisms under the canopy and inside the lobby.
The hopital’s logo features a rainbow, so Erskine’s light art was an obvious choice.
A, 60″ diameter flat laser-cut prism is mounted in each of the roof’s structural “tree” supports. Motors rotate the prisms at different subliminal speeds to insure that the mixing colors and patterns on the ceiling never repeat. Like a garden of fresh flowers, the living light painting is always a fresh offering to children and their families.
As we walk inside and glance up, we can see some of the outdoor rainbows flowing into the lobby. A ten by fifteen foot interior rainbow at the far end of the space, washes floor, walls and furniture – and arriving and departing kids. Here people can actually step inside a rainbow and play!
Healing light installation made from Sunlight, prisms, and the new Children's Hospital Lobby
Using a 35,000 watt heliostat solar tracking mirror, custom prisms and light-bending mirrors, Peter Erskine's proposal for the new Children's Hospital Los Angeles lobby will transform ordinary Sunlight into giant, glowing solar spectrum beams - bathing patients, families and staff in the playful beauty of living rainbows. Powered by our life-giving Sun and the rotation of the Earth, this ever-changing healing space organically shifts in color and shape - every hour, ever day and every season. Always a fresh offering to the heart and mind.
