"RJ" Lights Innovative Display Technology At New England Patriots Hall Of Fame
Robert Juliat Quincy profiles play a key role in the new Hall at Patriot Place, a unique sports and educational experience showcasing the history of the New England Patriots and housing the team’s Hall of Fame. The venue, adjacent to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, includes four 30-foot high Magink pylons whose digital displays highlight the careers of each Hall of Famer via video, still images and text information.
As lighting consultants on the project Salem, Massachusetts-based Available Light was tasked with lighting the two-sided, Israeli-made Magink pylons. “They have no light source of their own; they’re essentially like a giant LED screen which has to be externally illuminated,” explains designer Matt Zelkowitz, a Principal Designer at Available Light.
In talking to the manufacturer Zelkowitz learned that each pylon needs approximately 300 foot candles of illumination and a 3:1 max-to-min ratio for a typical configuration. “They usually use Magink pylons as billboards in a landscape orientation with lights below the bottom rim shining up. That wasn’t really appropriate to our situation at the Hall of Fame where the pylons hang vertically. We couldn’t obstruct their view, and they are double sided so we couldn’t blast them from one side.”
In determining how to light the pylons he was drawn to Robert Juliat fixtures, which are extremely bright with a flat, even field of illumination and framing shutters for control. “We would have needed nine traditional metal halide fixtures for each side of the pylon, and it would have been a nightmare aiming and maintaining them,” says Zelkowitz. “Using Robert Juliat Quincys we only needed three for each side.”
Quincy profiles are typically employed in architectural and theatrical applications. They boast the same features as the Robert Juliat 600SX tungsten range: high-performance double condenser optical system, three-lens zoom, 90-degree rotating zoom, and shutter-locking device.
Zelkowitz arranged with Robert Juliat USA’s headquarters to send Quincy profiles to Magink to make sure that “the color and quality of the light was appropriate,” he reports. “The company was very accommodating in arranging to ship samples to Israel, then to Maryland where Cortina Productions, the media producer, mocked up the pylons with content, and finally to Boston where, at a full-scale trial, we signed off on all 24 Quincys.”
While the Quincys are doing “everything we expected them to do” to illuminate the Hall of Fame pylons, Zelkowitz is especially pleased with the profiles’ zoom function. “It lets us go from 25 to 50 degrees with one fixture, so we’re able to achieve three different throw distances and keep the lighting fairly even,” he says. In each three-light configuration “we can have the widest beam spread at the top of the pylon, then zoom in a bit at the middle, then zoom in to almost the narrowest point toward the bottom.”
At Available Light president Steven Rosen served as codesigner with Zelkowitz, Richard Chamberlain is managing director, and designer Bill Kadra handled the profiles’ positioning onsite. Barbizon New England did the install with Tim Johnson project manager and Scott Stipetic systems sales. Architectural firm Cambridge 7 Associates served as the exhibit designers.