A Miami Tower Receives Skyline-defining Exterior Lighting

Museum Tower is an iconic, 29-story, 259,666 square-foot, high-rise office building located on Flagler Street in the heart of downtown Miami’s legal district. Built in 1983, the architectural beauty is one of the most recognizable structures in the city’s skyline with its striking reflective glass curtainwall and signature twin, I-beam exterior. It often is shown on live TV for news background views.

**After being acquired by Bridge Investment Group, Museum Tower underwent a complete renovation, including the addition of art-inspired exterior lighting.**

With its prime location within walking distance of Miami’s established legal infrastructure, amidst various downtown shopping, dining and cultural destinations, and with easy access to interstates and major public transit systems, the desirable building was acquired in 2019 by Bridge Investment Group.

Under the new leadership, Museum Tower quickly began a complete renovation, including new outdoor seating options, high-efficiency systems upgrades, completely refurbished common areas, an expanded and fully renovated lobby and, of course, skyline-defining, art-inspired new exterior lighting.

Previous lighting on Museum Tower featured a 10-year-old LED lighting system that was not functioning properly. Bridge Commercial, the management company for The Museum Tower, approached Skyline Arts LLC, an architectural lighting systems provider based in Delray Beach, Fla., to retrofit the failing system.

“Bridge Commercial tasked us with replacing and upgrading the exterior lighting system to highlight the building, as well as increase its visibility for marketing purposes since the iconic building is visible from I-95 and various points around Miami,” says John DiDomenico, managing partner for Skyline Arts LLC.

After reviewing the building architecture and discussing the needs of the lighting, Bridge Commercial and Skyline Arts established the lighting criteria for the building. They wanted the lighting to have enough intensity to smoothly illuminate 15 stories of concrete wall—with 8-foot-wide setbacks—and the ability to offer excellent white light and color rendition.

“Bridge Commercial required the ability to highlight the building in deep reds, dark blues, emerald greens, and warm white, so that the new lighting had the increased capabilities for recognizing holidays, charities and sporting events through accurate color representation,” adds DiDomenico.

Dyna Drum HO Specified

During its extensive research, Skyline Arts investigated a variety of competing lighting fixtures. After comparative testing with competitive products, they recommended Acclaim Lighting’s Dyna Drum HO fixtures utilizing the Outdoor Link System (OLS). Dyna Drum HO Color is a high-output, outdoor-rated, quad-color LED floodlight. It features an internal 100-277VAC power supply, onboard DMX+RDM driver, and each unit carries Aria wireless DMX technology inside. The quad-color chip provides superior color mixing and saturation over single-source LED fixtures. It comes with a narrow 10-degree beam standard, with optional quick-change spread lenses for wider applications. It is ideal for facade lighting applications and as an area floodlight.

“Dyna Drum HO was the hands-down winner in terms of intensity and color,” says DiDomenico. “Plus, the OLS system decreased installation costs and improved system reliability by having factory-sealed connectors for fixture-to-fixture connections. In fact, The Acclaim OLS system saved the owner thousands in installation costs.”

**Acclaim Lighting’s Dyna Drum HO fixtures utilizing the Outdoor Link System (OLS), were specified. Dyna Drum HO Color is a high-output, outdoor-rated, quad-color LED floodlight.**

The new LED lighting system is controlled via a Pharos LPC, which is web-enabled, running the Lumentender Cloud application for scheduling and control. As a result, Bridge Commercial has direct, real-time control over management of the lighting’s scheduling, as well as control for daily and special events. The combination of the controls with the flexibility of the Dyna Drum HO color capabilities and smoothness of dimming allows for a variety of high-impact scenes each night.

DiDomenico concludes: “The new LED lighting system provides the prominence on the skyline that the customer required, while the OLS system will make any future maintenance simple enough to be performed by in-house staff. Overall, Bridge Commercial is elated to have their new system. They are amazed at how bright the fixtures are, the smooth coverage, and the ultimate control they have from any web-enabled device.”