Created as a calm, non-commercial oasis for the creation of the theatre arts that are the heart of Broadway in an ocean of commercial development, the 10-storey, glass-walled Studios contain rehearsal rooms and small performance spaces, as well as providing a frontage to what is now called the American Airlines Theatre. As a long-time New York lighting designer who subsequently spread into architectural and other areas of lighting, including a spell with Walt Disney Imagineering, Militello was brought into the project at its design development stage, four years ago. "I worked closely with the architects [Platt Byard Dovell] and client, examining our intentions and conducting mock-ups. We researched materials that would accept and reflect light, we studied optimal angles and optics, and worked with fixture manufacturers before we decided on a final design."
That design involved adding carefully angled steel-mesh panels to the outside of the building, in front of the glass walls; supported by regular uprights that work with the building’s floors to effectively form a grid across the building. During the day the panels shield those inside the building from the glare of daylight; in the half-light of afternoons and evenings they work like a gauze, leaving the creation of shows within visible to passing pedestrians.
As night falls, Militello’s work comes into play. Planning regulations in the 42nd Street area demand exterior signage and lighting: in the Studio team’s interpretation of this rule, the building’s entire frontage acts as one enormous lightshow with colour patterns and fades moving across and around the building’s grid. It appears alive: though there are clearly patterns to the sequences, it is hard to understand what is triggering them. In fact, Militello eschewed the current trend for using environmental feeds (sound, light, movement) to trigger lighting and instead created the patterns herself. "The programming was the interesting part: I did it on the street from dusk till dawn for three months. I sat by myself in a folding chair on the sidewalk across the street from the building and spoke by radio to my programmer, Ryan O’Gara, who was perched four storeys above me in another construction site across the street. I needed to be on the street to program from the perspective of the optimal viewing area. I often took requests from gangs, cops and homeless people who would sit and watch me work. I composed to the sounds and sights of the street, in order to capture the essence of the environment. Now the building lighting moves to its street choreography every night, with different nightly compositions and with holidays programmed specially."
The building’s many looks are achieved with a relatively simple complement of equipment: each segment of the grid is uplit in two colours by two pairs of Altman Outdoor Pars together with a Sterner metal halide flood providing a base wash of dichroic blue; these are mounted on catwalks for ease of maintenance. High End EC-1 colour-mixing architectural fixtures at the base of the building provide variable colour washes up its height, and Elliptipar fluorescent wall washers on gauze screens inside the windows provide a deeply coloured background. 180f
