SPECIAL PROJECTS

Project Name: Power of Houston

Location: Houston, Texas

The Power of Houston festival provides the community with a weeks worth of music, dancing, performances, dining and drinking opportunities. The culmination of the week is the Sky Power music, fireworks, lasers, and lighting show. Illuminart designed the lighting for the 162 square blocks of downtown Houston skyline for the duration of the festival, including the effects for the Sky Power show.

Houston's skyline features dynamic architecture that is visible in 3 primary elevations from around the city. Temporary architectural façade lighting was required for the celebration. The lighting was designed to be programmed to accent a musical presentation, which required control of color, movement, and brightness.

Illuminart created initial design concepts from a photo study of the three elevations. Hand colored sketches and computer illustrations were rendered with proposed lighting effects onto various shapes, sizes, and reflectance values of the facades. Lighter buildings were selected for color effects while dark facades for edge lighting. Site mockups were used to verify design specifications.

Over 2,000 1,000w fixtures, many with color changing capability, were used for much of the general façade lighting. Seventy-two 7,000w Xenon lights were specified for the edge lighting of large buildings and for the tops of the buildings for a searchlight aerial effect.

In the end, the combination of façade lighting effects, lasers, pyrotechnics, and music thrilled an estimated three millions of viewers around the city.