Chrysler Building Lobby

The shallow Art Deco bowls of these historical, urn-shaped uplights posed an immediate challenge for restoration because they did not appear to offer the space required to produce LED output equivalent to their old quartz sources.

The goal was to reduce the deleterious effects of heat upon the interior surfaces, evenly graze the polished African red granite walls as before, spilling out upon the mural ceiling design while having more individual control over each sconce. Rambusch implemented the Xicato XIM Beauty Series LEDs with integrated drivers, each controlled by a newly developed Bluetooth dimming interface. The path was a traditional design assist where Rambusch developed and installed a working prototype on site.

The unique chip with driver-on-board reduced the bulky electronics, but the success of the fixture is due to Rambusch’s proprietary flite® cooling plate system, which allowed everything to fit within the crowded fixture space. The on-site design assistance proved that a smaller lumen package could perform as expected, providing greater flexibility to visually balance the light output on the walls and ceiling within this world-famous German Expressionist lobby. Furthermore, the extra space provided by the innovative cooling plate system eliminated the proposed single-gang attitude adjustment for all three LEDs and allowed separate LEDs to move in three axes of rotation.

This achieved the main lighting objective, which was to graze the red granite consistently, then softly and safely illuminate “Transport and Human Endeavor,” the great 1930s ceiling mural depicting “energy and man’s application of it to the solution of his problems.”