As one of Beijing's most iconic venues for the Winter Olympics, the Wukesong Ice Sports Center is a stunning sight to behold. Its façade features an array of dazzlingly intricate snowflake patterns, which soar upwards, appearing to melt into a picturesque snow-like texture and igniting excitement and anticipation in all who see it. To emphasize this awe-inspiring effect, the building's structural truss system was angled at 45-degrees and set against lights to simulate glimmering snowflakes in the evening sky.
In order to ensure that our lighting fixtures remained invisible during the day, we custom designed a special junction box to house the fixtures behind a snowflake pattern. We adjusted the beam degrees of the fixtures to be between 4° and 8° to create the desired effect. Coordinating closely with the architect and façade engineer helped us overcome various challenges such as ensuring all fixtures were no larger than 4 inches and working out the complex programming and ventilation issues. After numerous sample tests, in-house mockups and angle calculations, we have successfully achieved a result in which the layered ice flower changes infinitely and “melts” naturally!