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'Evenly uneven' illumination allowed the Bunker Hill Monument to take command of the Boston skyline BY PAUL TARRICONE
"Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes," was the legendary exhortation attributed to American colonel William Prescott during the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Today, after a major renovation of the Bunker Hill Monument, future Boston tourism guides may tell visitors, "Don't leave until you see the lights with your eyes."
The two-year, $3.7 million site restoration-which included new monument lighting-was completed in April 2007. The lighting objective, according to Chris Ripman of Ripman Lighting Consultants, Belmont, MA, was to create a landmark for the night skyline; reinforce a major tourist attraction; and create an amenity for the surrounding neighborhoods. Ripman collaborated on the lighting scheme with Parsons Brinckerhoff and the New England Technology Group. The designers were recognized with a 2008 IIDA Award of Merit.
The monument, completed in 1843, had been previously lighted, but "only vaguely," says John Powell, supervising architect/senior lighting designer with Parsons Brinckerhoff. "There were a couple of large metal halide floodlights 150 ft back from the monument. It was a fly swatter approach to hit a pencil." That approach was not very friendly to local homes, Powell adds. "The monument is on a very steep hill. All around it are 17h-century houses packed cheek to jowl. They were taking it on the chops with the lighting."
INCONSISTENT APPROACH
One key stipulation of the relighting project was that the lighting equipment should not interfere with any normal viewing angle to the monument. But the biggest challenge, notes Ripman, was "to render clearly the monument's form."
The 221-ft-high obelisk is made entirely of dark gray granite. The original lighting plan called for even illumination of the 27,500sq ft façade, but "my concern was that even illumination of all facades would make the monument look like a cylinder, since there would be no contrast to define the corners," Ripman says. Mock-ups confirmed that uniform illumination of the façade was less effective than consistently asymmetrical illumination of each façade...