Fabric illuminates art, diffuse daylight

[Transformit] Gorham, Maine, U.S.A.

A new wing at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, N.C., makes unprecedented use of daylight through an unusual system, which provides even illumination free of shadows and without excessive ultraviolet light. The one-story building’s roof was covered with hundreds of identical skylights; below each skylight rests a polymer sheet cast with thousands of prisms that break up the light, and below the sheet rests a fabric ellipse that lets more or less light enter the building, depending on the fabric used. The project, fabricated by Transformit, called for more than 400 identically shaped ellipses to be installed below the prism sheets, but above the fiberglass coffers in the ceiling. Because no attachment is visible from below, the fabric panels are unseen except for their effect.

2011 IAA Award of Excellence