Factory Six•03, the first adaptive reuse project from Granite Properties, is a historic warehouse turned Class A office space in Dallas’ West End. Constructed in 1903 for Brown Cracker & Candy Co., the edifice has hosted a variety of tenants, including Sunshine Biscuit Company, a furniture distributor, West End Marketplace and Planet Hollywood. The site is now an eight-story, 215,000 square foot modern office space that was designed to preserve its historic and architectural integrity. As part of their effort to provide a lighting scheme that would adequately address the historic character of the building, Essential Light Design Studio used Rosco Image Spot LED Projectors and customized Rosco Gobos to draw attention to the three roof-top water tanks that are icons in the West End Dallas skyline.

After exploring different ways of lighting the 20-foot tall water tanks, Essential Light Design Studio chose Rosco Image Spots and Gobos to meet their budgetary constraints and space limitations. Jill Klores, Founder and Partner, Project Manager and Senior Designer at Essential Light Design Studio, said:

“Quite visible from the adjacent city highway and West End neighborhood, the water tanks atop the historic Brown Cracker & Candy Company are a Dallas landmark, therefore we were not allowed to mount any lighting directly on the tanks. To highlight them we used colored flood lights carefully arranged at the support structure and Rosco Image Spots with tree branch gobos mounted on the Amenity Deck below.

Due to their small size yet great centerbeam candlepower (CBCP) they were an excellent solution for a location at the corner of an occupied deck.”

The designers at Essential Light Design Studio originally specified outdoor-rated, metal-halide Source Four fixtures to project Rosco Gobos on both sides of the water tanks. However, due to limited space on one side, they needed to find a much smaller fixture with a similar light output. They contacted Rosco’s Henry Cowen who provided them with an Image Spot LED projector to test, and it proved to be the right solution. Jill Klores explains:

“The original design thought was to use (2) ETC Source 4 Metal Halide outdoor units as we did on the roof side. But these fixtures are at least 5 times larger than the Image Spots, and hardly inconspicuous, though they do deliver a very strong CBCP. Instead we used three of the Image Spots on the Amenity Deck side to get the light we needed in an appropriate form factor for an occupied space.”

Three IP65-rated Image Spot projectors with 19º Lens Optics were installed on a small ground-rig on the Amenity Deck side to ensure bright and crisp imaging in all weather conditions.

The designers at Essential Light Design Studio also tested several standard Rosco foliage gobos. In the end, they decided that R77101 Tree 5 was the perfect choice for this project. Klores shared that experience:

“Rosco has such an amazing collection of gobos. We played with a few of the samples we had and found the Tree 5 branches had a perfect amount of breakup to conceal some floodlight imperfections and call attention to these tanks.”

Rosco customized the standard R77101 design to ensure proper illumination of the water tanks. Areas of the pattern were masked in order shutter off areas of the beam that were spilling onto adjacent tanks. The Tree 5 gobo projected onto the center tank was also customized with an open area shaped to highlight the tank’s prominent Factory Six•03 logo.

A standard R77101 Tree 5 gobo (L) and the customized version of it for the center tank (R)

The three water tanks, enveloped in their luminescent Tree 5 gobo design, blend gracefully with the overall building architecture and draw attention to themselves in the West End Dallas skyline. Jill reflected on the results of the project:

“It is great that the tanks take on a completely different aesthetic at night. The breakup pattern provides a light and somewhat mysterious vibe, as compared to the stolid silver volumes by day.”

Jill also appreciated the help that she received from Henry Cowen, Rosco’s Account Representative for the Central U.S:

“Thanks again to Henry Cowen for all of his support: from advice, to samples, to specification assistance, to on-site troubleshooting, he is an asset!”

Essential Light Design Studio has offices in both Dallas and New York City. If you’d like to see more examples of their work, be sure to visit their website: www.essentiallight.com. You can learn more about the products the designers at Essential Light used to highlight the iconic Factory Six•03 water tanks, explore the Image Spot and Gobo product pages on the Rosco website: www.rosco.com.