Radiant Topologies

CONCEPT

As students at Carnegie Mellon University, we all have experienced the Pittsburgh International Airport, at least once.  We go through the seemingly mundane Airside Terminal on various occasions in our lives. Sometimes we are trying to get back home. Sometimes we are returning for another semester of learning. Sometimes we are on our way to an epic spring break. Sometimes we are moving to another city and this is the last piece of Pittsburgh we see. In the end, all our forrays into this building signals the start of another adventure. 

In a nutshell, "Radiant Topologies" was born from the hushed feelings of awe and excitement we experience when we visit the Pittsburgh International Airport at the start of our every new adventure. We wanted to distill this feeling and let others experience it through the interplay between light, space and form. We got inspired by David Svennson's "The Pulse of City Life" which can be found at the Odenplan station in Stockholm. Both of the venues are very much about movement. They are not the end goal, only a point of transition. We wanted to cherish this feeling of transition along with the feeling of muted excitement, by hanging down a similar structure down the dome of the Airside Terminal to calmly welcome or bid godspeed to the people who are passing through.  

To define the form, we turned to the city itself by abstracted its topography and suspending it in space. With the help of the long strips of light slowly flowing and transforming in the central atrium, we wish to remind the people passing through the terminal that their adventure is just starting.

DESIGN

The design can be broken down into two main components: The Animating Lightstrips and Diffusion Chamber that surrounds it. The form and geometry of the chambers are directly influenced by the topography of Pittsburgh. The two sides and the bottom of each chamber are covered with diffusion material to achieve the desired effect. Each strip is hung down from various distinct points of the main atrium's ceiling to form a vivid 3-dimensional structure. 

The connection between the suspended light strips is established by their slowly morphing form and the soothing animation that flows through all of them. The light patterns, the colors and the rate of change of the animations are kept fairly slow and simple to prevent the structure from becoming distracting and overwhelming for the visitors. 

PROTOTYPE

We experimented with different material to produce a well diffused and pleasant glow. 

In the end, we chose to create our prototype from transparent acrylic covered with vellum. The height and depth of the diffusion chambers were carefully optimized to prevent any hotspots without sacrificing from the structural integrity. 

To create a better diffusion for LED, we chose to cover the acrylic structure with vellum. We carefully test the proper distance between the lights and the surface. Finally, the size of the box is 2.5 inches width by 3 inches height. We also produced the hanging system to simulate the real situation of the airport ceiling.